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Thursday, December 15, 2005

Going Postal, Statistically Speaking

Posted by John Holbo on 12/15/05 at 07:23 AM

When my second daughter was born I swore that, with luck and a little hard work, I would write a novel about an idiot man-child named Downy Lanugo. And now I read Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, in which a minor character is Apprentice Postman Stanley, raised by peas: “he tends to twist toward the sun, sir, if you get my meaning;” whose hobby is collecting pins; whose shirt reads “Ask me about pins!”; whose bible is Pins, by J. Lanugo Owlsbury. That’s pretty close. What were the odds?

Speaking of which (and courtesy of Amazon): I notice that, in addition to an amusing array of SIP’s [WARNING: oblique plot spoilers] - golem rumbled, clacks tower, hat with wings, other golems, postmen were, golden suit, acting postmaster, winged hat, shift code, about pins, penny stamps - Going Postal boasts an online concordance and set of text stats. (Flesch-Kincaid readability, that sort of thing.) I’m not sure how useful this specific array of stats is, to those not raised by peas. But it’s sort of interesting to check out concordance and stats for The Zizek Reader, for example. See under the fold for a Zizek poem, in effect. I call it “Between itself subject”. I like the way it sort of whimpers off with ‘words work yet’.

Comments

Heh. I was waiting for someone to post on this. I discovered it the other day while seeing if AMZN had gotten my book back in stock. Immediately on seeing the found poetry of the concordance, I dashed it off to pals. These things really are a kind of marvel--and, strangely, often a damned good--if slant--summary of their books.

By joel turnipseed on 12/15/05 at 12:46 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Link therefrom to the only nonZizek, Emptiness of the Image, is exemplary.

By nnyhav on 12/15/05 at 02:09 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I notice that Zizek averages 38.3 words per sentence while Adams only 20.3 words per sentence. I suspect that’s why Zizek is so much more difficult to read—at least according to the three indices including—than Adams. It does not follow, however, that Zizek will become easier to read if an editor hacks all his sentences in half.

By Bill Benzon on 12/15/05 at 03:56 PM | Permanent link to this comment

As with all those indices, but who’s more lacanic?

Offtopical to many recent Holbonica: Moby bin Laden.

By nnyhav on 12/15/05 at 04:48 PM | Permanent link to this comment

I love that word. In MMORPGs my character’s name is usually Lanugo, or Lanugo Simone, Lanugo Tyrone, or some variation, and he is usually as hairy, ugly, or embryonic-looking as the game permits. I remember in high school my friend and I found that word in Lolita (Humbert is travelling through Appalachia and remarks how the hills were covered with young trees “like baby elephant lanugo") and looked it up, and we thought it was just perfect, and lo, the word entered our nerd-mythology. I wonder what its etymology is: whatever languages lanugo passed through on its way to English, their accumulation has magically forged such a perfect and unholy union of word and subject matter.

By on 12/15/05 at 07:09 PM | Permanent link to this comment

A little parlor game for a sleety evening…

1. Add in “book,” and run permutations.

The book, caught between itself and the subject.

The book’s subject “betweens” itself.

The book itself is the subject between.

The subject is between itself and the book.

2. Then add in paradoxical negating remarks, and a few theory-ish turns of phrase:

The book, caught between itself and the subject, can never know its object. Indeed, one can even say that the book’s subject “betweens” itself with a form of objectless indeterminacy that is always-already inscribed in its form. The book itself is the subject between, the border which both divides and reanimates the content of subjectification. Truly, the subject is between itself and the book, which is never properly the subject of itself, nor can it be.

Presto—you’ve got (bad) Theory!

By Amardeep on 12/15/05 at 07:50 PM | Permanent link to this comment

The OED just references “lana”, Latin for “wool”, which seems a little coy since their entry for “lanuginose” describes “lanugo” as the Latin for “down”. First cited use in English in 1677: “The lanugo seen upon a Peach, Quince, or the like.” But the first cited use of any of the related forms is from 1575: “Lanuginoous az a lad of eyghteen yee[r]z.”

By Ray Davis on 12/17/05 at 03:41 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Thursday, December 15, 2005

Going Postal, Statistically Speaking

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