ALPHABET JUICE

author:
ROY BLOUNT JR.

Fiction
384 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Roy Blount, Jr. shares his passion for words in this delightful, rollicking book. He mixes etymology with anecdote to create as entertaining a book about the origins of words as one could hope for. Blount fairly gushes with enthusiasm for words which he deems “sonicky” that is, any word “whose sound doesn’t imitate sound, like boom or poof, but does somehow sensuously evoke the essence of the word: queasy or rickety or zest or sluggish or vim..” He goes on to state that, “If you were a caveperson earnestly trying to communicate how you felt digestively, you might without benefit of any verbal tradition come up with something close to nausea.” You get the picture. Mixed in with all the wordplay and bon mots are oodles of examples of how slippery and dynamic our language is, as well as how ridiculously silly it can seem. Blount makes no attempt at being objective; though he’s obviously done his research over the years, this is far from a straightforward reference book, though at first glance it looks kind of like one. The book is arranged alphabetically, with each section beginning with a discussion of the letter in question, sometimes criticizing the placement of a letter in the alphabet, such as T (“It ought to be the last in ours”) or merely expressing appreciation (“Let us pause to enjoy the movement between sliding and sidling”).

Blount quotes everyone from Franz Kafka to Wilt Chamberlain, scrambling archaic and contemporary references together to put them into new context. (My only quibble with the book is that his references to more fleeting modern phenomena – often involving the internet – will most likely be lost on future readers.)  I’m not sure I’d always take Blount at his word, however: a cautionary yet playful entry titled “solecisms, contradictions, factual errors, etc.” reads simply, “There are 167 in this book. See if you can find them all.” But factual errors or not, if you’re looking to either spark or renew your love of words and their quirks, this terrific tome will certainly do the trick.

purchase via IndieBound