Topical Guide 454
Mark Dorset
Embarrassment
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2:
“Hole?” Matthew says. “What hole? This hole? This hole represents the unstinting efforts of our management company, Ingalls and Nelson, known affectionately as Ignore and Neglect, to discover the source of — ah — ” He’s embarrassed to say it. The idea that his apartment stinks is as embarrassing as the idea that he might.
“Leaks?” asks Richard.
“Yeah,” Matthew says. This seems less painful to admit. He glances at Belinda. She looks surprised. He shrugs. The idea that his friends now think his apartment leaks begins to embarrass him, but not as much as their thinking it stinks would, and not as much as, say, having to admit that he has begun to leak, that he’s started dribbling after urinating, like an old man. “Let’s not talk about it,” he says.
Revenge
Critics and Criticism
Reservations Recommended, Chapter 2:
Matthew pours and Belinda hands the drinks around. The story of Jack’s missing lobster is told again. Richard mimics Jack’s looking for it under the plates of food. Belinda asserts that she and Effie could have talked the people at the next table out of one of theirs. Jack snickers and rubs his hands together and vows to get even somehow in his commercial. Matthew chuckles and says, “Don’t worry, I’ll get even in my review.”
Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language: in which the words are deduced from their originals, and illustrated in their different significations by examples from the best writers:
REVE´NGE. n.s. [revenche, revanche, Fr.] Return of an injury. […]
What will not ambition and revenge descend to.
Milton.
The satyr in a rage
Forgets his bus’ness is to laugh and bite,
And will of death and dire revenges write.
Dryden.CRI´TICK. n.s. [ϰϱιτιϰος.] […]
2. A censurer; a man apt to find fault.
My chief design, next to seeing you, is to be a severe critick on you and your neighbour.
Swift.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary:
CRITIC, n. A person who boasts himself hard to please because nobody tries to please him.
There is a land of pure delight,
Beyond the Jordan’s flood,
Where saints, apparelled all in white,
Fling back the critic’s mud.
And as he legs it through the skies,
His pelt a sable hue,
He sorrows sore to recognize
The missiles that he threw.
Orrin Goof
Pseudonyms, Aliases, Disguises
Don Swaim, “The Pseudonyms of Ambrose Bierce,” from The Ambrose Bierce Site:
Bierce aficionados know that Bierce published his first three books using the pseudonym “Dod Grile” and as “William Herman” for The Dance of Death (1877). But often overlooked are the scores of assumed names Bierce applied in writing the satirical definitions he began in May 1881 in his column “Prattle” in the San Francisco Wasp. The definitions (from A-L) were gathered in The Cynic’s Word Book (Doubleday, Page, 1906), and later expanded as The Devil's Dictionary in Volume VII of his Collected Works in 1909. Bierce cleverly used the pseudonyms to cite various “authorities” for the little poems and asides that he himself actually wrote. I apologize in advance if I inadvertently included any real-life figures. Here she is:
Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.
Jamrach Holobom
Jogo Tyree
Jeramy Tate
Judibras
Jebel Jocordy
Junker Barlow
Bosley Fito
M.P. Nopput
Jodo Rem
Joel Huck
Jebel Dai Lupe
Ro Amil
Jorace
Richard Gwow
Atka Mip
Bettel K. Jhones
Polydore Smith
Elevenson
Purzil Crofe
Anita M. Bobe
Quincy Giles
Conroe Apel Brune
Giacomo Smith
Orrin Goof […]
[One hundred thirteen more pseudonyms follow in Don Swaim’s astonishing list. You’ll find them all here. MD]
Soundtrack Album Selections
For this scene:
Wonder what I’m thinking
Wonder why I’m drinking
But it’s plain to see
I’m not the man I used to beOh, it’s plain and it’s a shame
I can’t explain
But I’m not the man I used to beIt’s a shame, don’t know my name
I can’t explain
I’m not the man I used to be
See also: Embarrassment TG 149; TG 150; Embarrassment, Humiliation, Losing Face TG 166, TG 438
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