Make your cussing specific to the target, whether that's a person, an object, or situation.
Calvin Trillin urges us to never say car if we can say Pontiac. "When it comes to using foul language, be specific. Equal parts informative and hilarious, this volume will delight Dunn’s legion of fans, but it’s also a must-have for anyone looking to more successfully wield their expletives, be it in writing or in everyday speech. But she also explores their physiology―the physical impact on the reader or listener―and makes an argument for how and when to cuss with maximum effect.
In On Cussing, Dunn sketches a brief history of swear words and creates something of a field guide to their types and usages, from the common threat (“I’ll squash you like a shithouse mouse”) to the portmanteau intensifier (“Fan-fucking-tastic”). And as a true exegete of the expletive, she remained undividedly devoted to obscenity―both as scholar and practitioner.
For many of us, the language of Geek Love carries a similar staying power, born of Dunn’s agile use of language and her strange, beautiful diction. Readers of Katherine Dunn won’t be surprised that this was her father’s favorite sentence, or that, as a young girl, she heard it as a kind of profane poem, a secret song. Dunn is survived by her son and husband.F uck the Fuckity Fuckin’ Fucker. Her School of Hard Knocks art project (published here), which chronicled the history of Stateside boxing gyms with photographer Jim Lommasson, notably won the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize in 2004. On the nonfiction front, Dunn was especially known for her boxing writings, which, in 2009, were anthologized in One Ring Circus: Dispatches From the World of Boxing. Dunn also penned the novels Attic and Truck, and filed pieces for such publications as the New York Times, PDXS, Playboy, The Oregonian, and Willamette Week, among many others, over the course of a roughly four-decade career. “It’s so influential.” Now a cult classic, the book was published in 1989 and became a National Book Award finalist that year. The 70-year-old’s son confirmed the update with Willamette Week on Thursday, citing complications from lung cancer. ” Geek Love is a book that will live forever,” said Jeff Baker, a retired Oregonian critic, upon learning the news. Katherine Dunn, writer of the best-selling novel Geek Love, died Wednesday at her Portland home. Photo: Elisabetta Villa/2008 Getty Images
0 kommentar(er)
