Comments on: Jessica Papin on "Nostalgia"

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By: Wanda B. Ontheshelves

Wanda B. Ontheshelves — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:59:00 +0000

I had to look "concerted" up:

"In chemistry, a concerted reaction is a chemical reaction in which all bond breaking and bond making occurs in a single step"

Having done so, I kind of forget what the non-chemistry sense of "concerted" was, so I had to look that up too:

"Planned or accomplished together; combined: We made a concerted effort to solve the problem."

***

There are such things as text message novels - maybe a chemist could write a novel as a series of chemical reactions - or just a short story.

By: Judy Schneider

Judy Schneider — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:05:00 +0000

As a research chemist-turned-writer, I love when non-science writers/readers use words like “equilibrium” and “concerted” to describe character relationships, for example. When I hear those terms (and others), I have to shake images of beakers of bubbling solutions and condensors housing hopefully balanced chemical reactions.

By: kimmelin

kimmelin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:28:00 +0000

Less collecting a list of words, I found myself collecting a list of complications related to pregnancy, while completing my physician assistant degree ten years ago. Personally horrified at the thought of pregnancy, I firmly attached a running list to the back of my note-taking clipboard. Every time an instructor would mention a gestational complication or pregnancy-related side effect (gestational diabetes, rashes associated with pregnancy, uterine prolapse after pushing a few puppies out…) I’d frantically make a notation on my list. If my husband were to approach me any time soon with the idea of starting a family, by God, I’d have all the evidence I needed to convince him otherwise.

Funny how, back then, I never could have imagined I’d be the mother of three children, teaching childbirth education classes and writing in my spare time…

By: Wanda B. Ontheshelves

Wanda B. Ontheshelves — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 20:51:00 +0000

I wouldn’t call my feeling toward words like “problematize” and “reconceptualize” nostalgia, more like – guilty conscious? I’ve presented (read) a few papers at academic conferences, and I was very aware that I was imitating – mouthing – aping is the unattractive word for it – the language favored by academics, in particular, feminist academics. Just as I imitated John Steinbeck or tried my hand at Amy Tan-flavored reminiscence, so I wrote conference papers! Since such conferences are “pay to play” affairs, I wonder if they really didn’t care what I wrote, as long as I was paying the conference fee…kind of like vanity publishing, in a way?

I’ve also had the experience of standing in the hallway outside an academic conference, giving away free crafty-whimsical items to passers-by – I remember one beautifully coiffed and attired conference attendee hardly even looking at me, while the young female hotel staff were happy to get a freebie, and peppered me with questions. Which was a bit weird, because according to academic feminists who attend conferences, young women blah blah objectified blah blah shame blah internalized – and here right out in the hotel hallway, I was “collecting raw data” that contradicted that. Strange, very strange.

I would offer War and Peace as a zeitgeist-capturing tome, except as a “comp title frame of reference” it is admittedly outdated! Instead I’ll go with Toby Barlow’s Sharp Teeth set in LA. A great read for Michiganders in January.

By: Dawn Maria

Dawn Maria — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 17:33:00 +0000

Vexed immediately brings me to deep inside a Jane Austen novel- a lovely place to be.

By: Mary Witzl

Mary Witzl — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 09:02:00 +0000

I had Talshannon’s experience: the books we read as kids tended to be the fusty old classics my grandparents left us, which we read over and over whenever we’d finished our library books. They were great, too — not at all fusty — but the language was hardly contemporary. This has wreaked havoc with my idiolect; I couldn’t write a trendy book if you put a gun to my head. So it’s probably better that I write for geeks and nerds.

I love ‘vexed’, but ‘reify’ is a new one. Great word, though.

By: talshannon

talshannon — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:31:00 +0000

I lack the college education in literature that you obtained, but when I was young, most of the reading material I checked out of the library was by Brits long dead and as a result, I would often blurt out a word in daily conversation that I did not know had not been used in a hundred years — and get a round of funny looks from adults who thought I was making words up again.

By: E. J. Tonks

E. J. Tonks — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:09:00 +0000

So glad I’m not the only one to note the schism between genuinely popular literature and the stuff academia wants us to *think* was popular literature back in the day!

I am determined to make this the subject of my dissertation–this unwillingness of academia to accept that what’s loved by the masses isn’t all bad, for what were the Illiad and the Odyssey if not the blockbusters of their own day?

The words I love most but cannot use as an author are “about” (rather than “around”), “before” (rather than”in front of”), and “perhaps” (rather than “maybe”).

Then there’s “rather than” in the place of “isntead of” that my proofreaders are always nixing from my manuscripts, since YA’s aren’t expected to understand such archaic phrasing. But—like you–as a grad student of English lit, this is the language I speak, alas.