Thanks to Jonathon Green’s magnificent three-volume Dictionary of Slang, which arrived yesterday compliments of Oxford University Press, I’ve already learned that the first recorded use of “bad shag” dates to 1788, that to “beat skin”* (1944) doesn’t mean what you think, you pervert, and that the term “dude” was once (1883) considered so offensive that “a vigorous Bloomington woman cowhided . . .
According to Jill Lepore, Longfellow’s much-maligned “Paul Revere’s Ride,” published the day South Carolina seceded from the Union, “was read at the time as a call to arms, rousing northerners to action.”
The human brain’s readiness to imagine “objects with certain characteristics, such as flimsiness and movement … has always been exploited by successful literary artists.” Emma Garman on Dreaming By the Book (and other critics on neglected faves).
The second season of Chapters, the reading series I curate for Girls Write Now, begins this Friday, March 25, when our delightful first guest, writer and mentor Emma Straub, reads from her new story collection, Other People We Married. Join us at 6 p.m. at the historic John Street Church (no affiliation). Coming up: Anna North, America Pacifica, on April . . .