Tuesdays with Story

Tuesdays with Story
January 10, 2020

The first word . . .

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let them think you were born that way.”
― Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), novelist, journalist, short story writer

 

Tuesday evening at Barnes & Noble . . .

Eight good souls gathered around the table at B&N Westside Tuesday evening to critique the works of six of their colleagues. Here is some of what was said:

 

— Kashmira Sheth and Amit Trivedi (chapters 31-32, untitled novel) . . . (1) Add ‘listing’ more times in the first paragraph of chapter 32.  (2) Have Kedar go inside the church and contrast the noise with the silence in the church. (3) Tie in the water of the Kund with the holy water of the Church. (4) “All this cloth…” It is not clear who says it. Also move the line closer to the description of the cloth market.

 

— Jack Freiburger (poems, “The end of the stars as I knew them” and “Vico 1”) . . . Read two Imagists poems, one of which I’d forgotten since writing.  Star was accessible and Vico was interesting for me, as I ended up deconstructing it myself.  John suggested I never do that again.  Larry was encouraging and found a word spell-check didn’t.   Bob, please give a read as I value your opinion, Chris, ditto.  These two I hope to be part of a chapbook.

— Larry Sommers (chapters 36-37, Freedom’s Purchase) . . . Jack thought Colonel Latham’s tepid response to Crawley could be warmed up and given an edge that would, with other clues, suggest an enterprising postwar future for Crawley. Jerry and Jack both questioned “Secesh” as a slang term for the Confederates. Jerry also felt “Minié ball” should be spelled “Minni ball,” which he argued was more common. Mike suggested Anders’ thoughts while relieving himself in the open-air latrine should have been more fundemental and less contemplative. John wanted more concrete details in some sections that still read as third-person narrative. Jack had ideas for improving the accuracy of the battle scene, and Jerry pointed out that neither Anders nor anyone close to him gets hurt. In Chapter 37 there is a problem where Tante appears to be speaking English, and another where Maria under-reacts to Tante’s stroke symptoms. Thanks to all for these great and helpful comments.

— Mike Austin (short story, “Second Date” – Part 1) . . . The discussion over the short story, “Second Date,” was brief, as it’s unfinished. I mostly need to do some editing, tighten up the prose, and finish the story. Thanks everyone for your comments!

— Amber Boudreau (chapters 13-14, Mavis) . . . John wanted Mavis to be more angry about being poisoned and toss the doc’s card back in her lap, or face. Larry questioned how an adult mental patient would be attired and if they would wear scrubs, even plain ones. Amber volunteered to get herself committed and find out. Jerry was confused as to how Mavis would have seen the scratches on the overhead and thought that would be a great place for our protagonist to wonder what could have made such marks. Overall, John thought the chapters moved the story along and Jerry really like the end of Ch. 13, a guaranteed page turner.

— Jerry Peterson (short story, “The Texas Christmas Train”) . . . The consensus of the group was that the second ending was more appropriate to the story, however Amber, Jack, and Mike want Hank to be maintained as an undercover I.A.B. investigator rather than being a truly new hire. Larry did not like running in the speeches in Spanish followed by the English translations in parentheses. Makes for difficult reading. Jack said an easy solution, since Hank does not speak Spanish, is to have Running Deer provide the translations to Hank when they are needed.

Who’s up next . . .

January 21

Larry Sommers (chapters 38-39, Freedom’s Purchase)

Chris Zoern (???)

Bob Kralapp (chapter, Capacity)

Cindi Dyke (???)

Jessica Smith (???)

Jerry Peterson (chapters 27-29, Killing Ham)

Our editor . . .

Larry Sommers edits Writer’s Mail’s this month. If you have good news you’d like to share with the group, please do email it to Larry now for the next issue.

 

News from the alumni . . .

Jeff Franz, one of our writers of a decade or so ago, is now the assistant manager of the store where we meet, Barnes & Noble Westside. He got the promotion last August. He’s worked at the store for 14 years. It was Jeff who suggested the name for our group.

 

Major Publication Event . . .

Amber Boudreau reports: The Dragoneer will be released June 2, 2020 with a reading and book signing event at A Room of One’s Own located at 315 W. Gorham St. beginning at 6:00 pm.

 

Digging into the language file . . .

You know what antonyms are. Do you know what contronyms are?

Here’s the story, first published in Mental Floss on June 15, 2018.

25 Words That Are Their Own Opposites

Stumble into the looking-glass world of contronyms.

Mental Floss

by Judith Herman

Here’s an ambiguous sentence for you: “Because of the agency’s oversight, the corporation’s behavior was sanctioned.” Does that mean, “Because the agency oversaw the company’s behavior, they imposed a penalty for some transgression,” or does it mean, “Because the agency was inattentive, they overlooked the misbehavior and gave it their approval by default”? We’ve stumbled into the looking-glass world of contronyms—words that are their own antonyms.

1. Sanction (via French, from Latin sanctio(n-), from sancire ‘ratify,’) can mean “give official permission or approval for (an action)” or conversely, “impose a penalty on.”

2. Oversight is the noun form of two verbs with contrary meanings, “oversee” and “overlook.” Oversee, from Old English ofersēon (“look at from above”) means “supervise” (medieval Latin for the same thing: super-, “over” plus videre, “to see.”) Overlook usually means the opposite: “to fail to see or observe; to pass over without noticing; to disregard, ignore.”

3. Left can mean either remaining or departed. If the gentlemen have withdrawn to the drawing room for after-dinner cigars, who’s left? (The gentlemen have left and the ladies are left.)

4. Dust, along with the next two words, is a noun turned into a verb meaning either to add or to remove the thing in question. Only the context will tell you which it is. When you dust are you applying dust or removing it? It depends whether you’re dusting the crops or the furniture.

5. Seed can also go either way. If you seed the lawn you add seeds, but if you seed a tomato you remove them.

6. Stone is another verb to use with caution. You can stone some peaches, but please don’t stone your neighbor (even if he says he likes to get stoned).

7. Trim as a verb predates the noun, but it can also mean either adding or taking away. Arising from an Old English word meaning “to make firm or strong; to settle, arrange,” trim came to mean “to prepare, make ready.” Depending on who or what was being readied, it could mean either of two contradictory things: “to decorate something with ribbons, laces, or the like to give it a finished appearance” or “to cut off the outgrowths or irregularities of.” And the context doesn’t always make it clear. If you’re trimming the tree are you using tinsel or a chain saw?

8. Cleave can be cleaved into two homographs, words with different origins that end up spelled the same. Cleave, meaning “to cling to or adhere,” comes from an Old English word that took the forms cleofian, clifian, or clīfan. Cleave, with the contrary meaning “to split or sever (something)”—as you might do with a cleaver—comes from a different Old English word, clēofan. The past participle has taken various forms: cloven, which survives in the phrase “cloven hoof,” “cleft,” as in a “cleft palate” or “cleaved.”

9. Resign works as a contronym in writing. This time we have homographs, but not homophones. Resign, meaning “to quit,” is spelled the same as resign, meaning “to sign up again,” but it’s pronounced differently.

10. Fast can mean “moving rapidly,” as in running fast, or “fixed, unmoving,” as in holding fast. If colors are fast they will not run. The meaning “firm, steadfast” came first; the adverb took on the sense “strongly, vigorously,” which evolved into “quickly,” a meaning that spread to the adjective.

11. Off means “deactivated,” as in to turn off, but also “activated,” as in the alarm went off.

12. Weather can mean “to withstand or come safely through” (as in the company weathered the recession) or it can mean “to be worn away” (the rock was weathered).

13. Screen can mean to show (a movie) or to hide (an unsightly view).

14. Help means “assist,” unless you can’t help doing something, when it means “prevent.”

15. Clip can mean “to bind together” or “to separate.” You clip sheets of paper to together or separate part of a page by clipping something out. Clip is a pair of homographs, words with different origins spelled the same. Old English clyppan, which means “to clasp with the arms, embrace, hug,” led to our current meaning, “to hold together with a clasp.” The other clip, “to cut or snip (a part) away,” is from Old Norse klippa, which may come from the sound of a shears.

16. Continue usually means to persist in doing something, but as a legal term it means stop a proceeding temporarily.

17. Fight with can be interpreted three ways. “He fought with his mother-in-law” could mean “They argued,” “They served together in the war,” or “He used the old battle-ax as a weapon.” (Thanks to linguistics professor Robert Hertz for this idea.)

18. Flog, meaning “to punish by caning or whipping,” shows up in school slang of the 17th century, but now it can have the contrary meaning, “to promote persistently,” as in “flogging a new book.” Perhaps that meaning arose from the sense “to urge (a horse, etc.) forward by whipping,” which grew out of the earliest meaning.

19. Go means “to proceed,” but also “give out or fail,” i.e., “This car could really go until it started to go.”

20. Hold up can mean “to support” or “to hinder”: “What a friend! When I’m struggling to get on my feet, he’s always there to hold me up.”

21. Out can mean “visible” or “invisible.” For example, “It’s a good thing the full moon was out when the lights went out.”

22. Out of means “outside” or “inside”: “I hardly get out of the house because I work out of my home.”

23. B**ch can derisively refer to a woman who is considered overly aggressive or domineering, or it can refer to someone passive or submissive.

24. Peer is a person of equal status (as in a jury of one’s peers), but some peers are more equal than others, like the members of the peerage, the British or Irish nobility.

25. Toss out could be either “to suggest” or “to discard”: “I decided to toss out the idea.”

The contronym (also spelled “contranym”) goes by many names, including auto-antonym, antagonym, enantiodrome, self-antonym, antilogy and Janus word (from the Roman god of beginnings and endings, often depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions). Can’t get enough of them? The folks at Daily Writing Tips have rounded up even more.

The last word . . .

“It is perfectly okay to write garbage—as long as you edit brilliantly.”

― C. J. Cherryh (1942-), sci-fi, fantasy novelist and short story writer