Maud Newton was kind enough to tweet today about the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus, the first edition of which I worked on, way back when, and I thought it might be fun to blog about how it came to pass that there is a Word Note in that book that is credited jointly to David Foster Wallace ... and me.
So back in ought-whenever-it-was, the general consensus was that print thesauruses were dead, dead, dead, and that nobody would ever buy them again, but, leaving that aside, Oxford being Oxford and having to publish thesauruses much in the same way that birds gotta fly and fish gotta swim, we had to create a new one anyway. I was the person tasked with doing so. There was much wrangling back and forth about the source material for the book (reference books, like sourdough, are almost always grown from a "starter", rather than created from scratch), and it was finally decided to grow the OAWT from a Canadian thesaurus, rather than a UK one. The bulk of the work in Americanizing can be more properly thought of as "North Americanizing," and our colleagues at the (now shuttered) Canadian Oxford dictionary group had also done the majority of the heavy lifting in slimming down the stately flagship that is the New Oxford Thesaurus of English (usually abbreviated as NOTE).
But just getting the right "starter" wasn't enough. What was going to bring the punters to the counter and make them plunk down their hard-earned cash for a reference book, one that was (by all accounts) going out of style?
It was a long time ago, but I'm fairly certain the thought process went like this:
- What's a thesaurus? A thesaurus is a tool for writers.
- Let's put writers in the thesaurus! And brand it as "for writers by writers!"
- Who do we know?
One of the great things about working at OUP was that the list of "Who do we know?" goes back hundreds of years. Once we scrolled down to the "still alive" section of our joint address books, we were really spoiled for choice. So many fantastic writers! Soon we had a short list of names that was very long on talent: we had three Davids: Foster Wallace, Auburn, and the poet Lehman, Jean Strouse, Francine Prose, Zadie Smith ... plus the OED's best friend, Simon Winchester. I lobbied hard to get Stephin Merritt (I made an all-Merritt mix CD for my boss at the time, to convince him), and also Michael Dirda. (Dirda is my favorite book reviewer, not least because he's vocal in his appreciation of Georgette Heyer.) I should also disclose here that I went to college with David Auburn, who, in addition to being a fine playwright, is also in my top-three list of human beings to work at a coffee shop with (and I married #1).
We sent out the letters, asked the writers to choose the words for their notes, sent out copies of the OED (another thing you learn working at OUP: lots of people don't mind getting a print copy of the OED as part of their compensation), and then the notes came back. And, as was the standard practice, went out to be copy-edited, and (again in accordance with the practice) the copy-edited ms went back to the authors.
For some writers, reading the copy-edits is like going to the dentist. You know you have to, and you'll be happy, long-term, that you did, but the actual process involves a certain amount of drooling discomfort and incoherent mumbling. Other writers think of copy-editing as massage: someone works you over, and then you stumble out feeling good -- kind of dazed, and a bit greasy, but good.
David Foster Wallace's reaction to the copyedit was more like someone invited him to an all-day grammar seminar (with celebrity photo signings and vendor's expo hall), combined with a debating society picnic, where the topic was "RESOLVED: This Comma Should Be Removed." (You're not surprised, are you?)
So he called me. "I have a question ..." he said. I looked at the first edit about which he had a question, and I realized that well, yes, it could go either way, and maybe I should haul out the Garner's (which I did), and then maybe I should haul out the Fowler's (which I did -- all three editions, so we could be sure if and when anything changed), and then maybe CMOS had something to say about this particular issue? The OED?And would Googling help at all?
And so the first hour went.
By the end of the fourth hour, DFW was happy with the notes, and I was newly possessed of strong opinions about all sorts of language niceties I don't remember at all now -- but which seemed perfectly clear at the time -- and just as we were finishing up the last question on "effete", he said something along the lines of "you've put so much work into this particular one, you should put your name on it, too." I demurred, since I felt I was wearing an editor's hat, not an author's hat. And an editor's job, in my opinion, is to get rid of any and all obstacles that exist between the author and the success of the book. (I only wrote notes for the OAWT to bulk up the numbers -- since I was on OUP's payroll anyway, we could add more features without affecting the P&L of the book).
DFW insisted. I demurred again. Then he said something like "Well, if you won't, we'll have to take it out." Well, when he put it that way ...
So that's the story of how my initials wound up on that note. (I wish I had the original ms, but almost everything was electronic, and I think what wasn't got recycled.)
The OAWT is one of the projects I'm proudest of having worked on (and would be even without this story). It's a great book and many, many talented and thoughtful folks were involved in bringing it to a bookstore (and operating system) near you.
And as a bonus for reading this far, here is a list of all the notes in the first edition (some of these may not be in the iOS dictionary widget edition), by author. Enjoy!
David Auburn
aghast
bleary
desultory
druthers (at preference)
elegant
feckless
fervent
fixing to (at about)
galoot (at klutz)
hacker
lurid
murderous
phlegmatic
pulchritude (at beauty)
quirky
remarkable
saucy
stunning
swift
torpid
traipse (at walk)
whipper
woo
Michael Dirda
boring
brave
class
crapulous (at drunk)
dawn
depressed
Faulknerian
feisty
female (at woman)
I
like
limn (at describe)
literate
naturally
patriotic
politically correct (at unprejudiced)
postmodern
said (at say)
sexy
stippled (at spotted)
style
subtext
very
whilst (at although)
David Lehman
avant-garde
blue-collar
“Commencement” (at senior)
credo
dead cat bounce
“The Difference Between Brutality and Cruelty” (at cruelty)
edgy, hip
ekphrastic
existentialism
foundation garments
freaky
haiku
jeans
“Made in the USA” (at United States)
“One Day at a Time” (at cliché)
poetry
postmodernism
romantic
rose
“Sooner or Later” (at sooner)
special
swell
synergy
unconscious
Erin McKean
bathos
classy
clothes horse
cordial
fortnight
grandiose
grumpy
ham-fisted (at ham-handed)
inordinate
kempt (at unkempt)
lackadaisical
lagniappe (at extra)
lone
mollycoddle
novel
obdurate
old-time
paralipsis, proslepsis
saturnine
shiny
slack
smush (at crush)
sordid
stilted
triage (at prioritize)
unconscionable
Stephin Merritt
album
dance
drum
echo
experimental
fatigue
genre
love
lover
music
opera
rhyme
romance
sing
suburb
synthesizer
tacky
tan
tinnitus
verse
warm
world
xylophone
Francine Prose
adult
artiste (at performer)
bovine
comprise
crippled
Darwinian (at competitive)
decency
ectoplasm (at spirit)
edifying
elitist (at snobbish)
hapless
jealousy
jingoism
longueur (at tedium)
prescience
rumpus
schadenfreude
scud
share
spinster (at maiden)
storied (at mythical)
taqueria
tired
tolerance
Zadie Smith
auricular (at ear)
bourgeois
cernuous (at droopy)
ensorcell (at enchant)
exilient (at exultant)
fornent (at facing2)
fulvous (at red)
mentalist (at maniac)
motley
nullipara (at barren)
orbs
plash (at splash)
pleonexia (at greed)
prochronism (at date)
pulvinate (at plump)
pyrotechnical (at showy)
salto (at gamble)
sciurine (at squirrel)
setaceous (at bristly)
sexercise (at exercise)
stillicide (at drop)
tabagie (at smoke)
thole (at endure)
vagitus (at cry)
yump
Jean Strouse
achingly (at ache)
aren’t
batty (at mad)
bloviate (at orate)
cheeky
chimera
clueless (at oblivious)
deft
filch (at steal)
flummox
hook up (at pair)
hornswoggler (at cheat)
issues
jeremiad (at complaint)
lugubrious
orchidaceous (at exotic)
parameter
problematize
quite
sanction
shirty (at irritable)
so
whinge (at whine)
whup (at thrash)
David Foster Wallace
all of
beg
bland
critique
dialogue
dysphesia
effete
feckless
fervent
focus
hairy
if
individual
loan
mucous
myriad
noma (at canker)
privilege
puchritude (at beauty)
that
toward
unique
utilize
Simon Winchester
adumbrate (at foreshadow)
baroque (at rococo)
disinterested
enfeoff (at bargain)
fulsome
haruspex (at soothsayer)
indiction (at tax)
Jew
Levant
mallemaroking (at carouse)
négligé
niggardly
periphrastic
portmanteau (at suitcase)
putonghua
raspberry (at catcall)
Rechabite (at teetotal)
rococo
set
uber (at ultra)
ur (at ultra)
Yggdrasil
(The other feature of OAWT that I really liked was the "word spectrum" -- you can see one here.)
