CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.
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A Turkish Delight of musings on languages, deflations of metaphysics, vauntings of arcana, and great visual humor.

January 14, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From "The Haunted Man," by Bret Harte [a Dickens parody]:

***
It was a wild and pitiless wind. A wind that had commenced life as a gentle country zephyr, but wandering through manufacturing towns had become demoralized, and reaching the city had plunged into extravagant dissipation and wild excesses. A roistering wind that indulged in Bacchanalian shouts on the street corners, that knocked off the hats from the heads of helpless passengers, and then fulfilled its duties by speeding away, like all young prodigals,—to sea.
***

#wind
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January 12, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From "The Little Spy," by Ellery Queen:

***
Its engraved monogram consisted of one large gold ticklesome question mark.

***
"We meet to mystify each other...in a sort of ritual adoration of the question mark."
***
#question mark
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January 10, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From How Not to Write a Play, by Walter Kerr:

***
In the course of more than half a century, however, we have fairly thoroughly explored the possibilities of [onstage] chocolate-sipping.

***
[We erroneously suppose that] literary value transposed to the theater is simply literary value enclosed in quotation marks. [I.e., dialogue and other structural constraints.]

***
For the dramatist, the door remains wide open....But he does have to find the door.

***
[Quoted from the program of The Seven Year Itch]
"The curtain will be lowered for thirty seconds to denote a lapse of thirty seconds."

***
There is no way in which precise mathematics can be applied to the problem, but a hypothetically perfect imitation of something would be about fifty per cent like it and fifty per cent unlike it. A fifty-one per cent similarity begins to move us toward chaos....
[Nice job resisting a silly mathematical precision, Walter!]

***
We conclude that the only way we can say something about the universe is by becoming Universal, with capital letters strewn all over the place.

***
Abstractions do not have to sit down.
***
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January 7, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Misadventures of Sherlock Holmes, ed. Ellery Queen:

[Three snippets attached, from John Kendrick Bangs, Vincent Starrett, and Richard Mallett.]

[Bonus: The Dowager Countess of Coldslaw (sic)]

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January 5, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The New Yorker, July-Dec. 1925:

***
Bebe Daniels, who always looks as though she had just finished a Reuben's sandwich...

***
One reason why Theodore Dreiser is a big, significant, etc....

***
The effect of plausibility steals mournfully into the wings.

***
Upper Tooting, or whatever the gag London suburb is this year

***
Cast hands entire kudos to author.
[Entire kudos!]
***

Bonus:
a "closed sesame"

Note on one of the attachments:
Aunt Prue, Ph.D., may have made her one and only appearance in this ad for the Lewis & Conger shop. (The asterisk is redeemed below with the note that she is *not* "the old lady from Dubuque," which is a New Yorker in-joke.)
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January 3, 2025 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Way of the World, by William Congreve:

***
WIT.  My dear, I ask ten thousand pardons.  Gad, I have forgot what I was going to say to you.
MIRA.  I thank you heartily, heartily.

***
[Is this the Restoration equivalent of having oneself paged at the Beverly Hills Hotel swimming pool?]
As soon as your back was turned—whip he was gone; then trip to his lodging, clap on a hood and scarf and a mask, slap into a hackney-coach, and drive hither to the door again in a trice; where he would send in for himself; that I mean, call for himself, wait for himself, nay, and what’s more, not finding himself, sometimes leave a letter for himself.
***
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December 31, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From "'Lars Porsena,' or the Future of Swearing and Improper Language," by Robert Graves

***
No form of humour is more boring than nonalcoholic substitutes for the true wine of swearing as "Great jumping beans!", "Ye little fishes!", "Snakes and ladders!" and "Jam and butter your whiskers, you irregular old Pentagon!"

[Naturally, I disagree strongly with the assertion, and the proof is how much I enjoy the examples. (I don't know if Graves spotted any of these in the wild as oaths, or whether, as I hope, he simply imagines them as such, as I would have to assume is at least the case for the last one.)]

***
[Graves quoting a Sheridan play]
"The ancients would never stick to an oath or two, but would say, by Jove! or by Bacchus! or by Mars! or by Venus! or by Pallas! according to the sentiment...this we call the oath referential or sentimental swearing."

[Graves himself also makes mention of what he calls "negative swearing," which seems to encompass ironic benedictions as well as oaths so understated that they manage to imply loud, over-the-top cussing.]

***
[A naughty take on the Cholmondeley phenomenon]
In Bigland’s Life and Times of Horatio Bottomley, a famous practical joker, he is said to have protested against this excess of delicacy by introducing himself to a member of the Siddybotaam [i.e., Sidebottom] family as "H, Bumley, Esq."
[I think Graves made all of this up, btw.]
***
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December 29, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From False Goddesses, by Rachel Ferguson:

"He's miles older than me."
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December 27, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Post after Post-Mortem, by E. C. R. Lorac:

***
"To hear her giving Kant and Hegel beans is as good as a play."

***
His dark eyes were set beneath penthouse brows.

***
"I thought the poor thing looked all flamboozled."
[I did not find "flamboozle" in the OED nor M-W Unabridged, but it gets plenty of Google Books hits, including one instance where it's the name of a pet dog.]
***

[Bonus: "Hegel in the Haberdashery"]
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December 24, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Only You, Dick Daring! by Merle Miller and Evan Rhodes:

[In this behind-the-scenes book about television production in the 1960s, the following simile is used regarding the near-monopoly of the William Morris agency.]
"It's like betting on every horse in the race with the horses putting up the money."

[By the way, this library copy was signed in 1970 by one of the authors, "to" the recipient, with the addendum, "with inscription to follow." Well, not only did the inscription apparently never follow, but the bookplate shows that the copy was donated from the estate of someone whose name does not match that of the (non)inscribee. So much for that!]
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December 22, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Plunder, by Ben Travers:

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December 21, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

Throwing things into the Grand Canyon:

Didst thou not promise us wagons that could safely be thrown into the Grand Canyon without even starting a nut…?
The Automobile, June 15, 1921

What to do with the used safety razor blades? This is a joke of long standing and the best answer up to date is that they be thrown into the Grand Canyon.
The Gillette Blade, Silver Jubilee Issue, September 1926

If all the jokes that ever were written about the Grand Canyon were thrown into the Grand Canyon, there would not be the slightest decrease in the flow of Grand Canyon jokes.
Judge, 1930

DEVEREAUX: Destroy all modern artifacts…throw the cyclotrons and piles and isotopes and all the paraphernalia of the last century into the Grand Canyon, cover it with dust and proclaim, “It’s done!... Man is now saved!”
—Dore Schary, The Highest Tree, 1960

We will show you what real conservation is. It isn’t the locking up of all our natural resources and then throwing the key into the Grand Canyon (empty or full).
American Paper Industry, v. 48, 1966

The gulf between the description of drug action… at the functional and behavioural level remains, for the most part, very wide. Attempts to bridge it seem, at times, like throwing candy floss into the Grand Canyon.
—Humphrey Rang et al., quoted in The Joyless Economy, by Tibor Scitovsky, 1976

Vince Evans can too throw a football into the Grand Canyon while standing next to it, as previously doubted here.
—John Underwood, “USC Is Right on Pitch,” Sports Illustrated, Nov. 29 1976

“Toil” means… all the marbles that we throw into the Grand Canyon of meaninglessness in a necessary but doomed attempt to fill it up….
—Peter Kreeft, Three Philosophies of Life, 1989

Albert Fine once threw a collection of my letters into the Grand Canyon, which I thought was a marvelous Fluxist gesture.
The Print Collector’s Newsletter, 1992(?)

[Artist Ross] Birrell’s ongoing “Envoy” series features books thrown into the sea or void, including The Interpretation of Dreams thrown into the Gulf of Finland (2001); Brave New World thrown into the River Vurjan on the Norwegian-Russian border (2001); and Heidegger’s Being and Time thrown into the Grand Canyon (2012).
Book Destruction from the Medieval to the Contemporary, ed. Adam Smyth and Gill Partington, 2014

“Fine,” Rosemary concedes. “We can throw out the itinerary for a few days….”
“Throw that thing into the Grand Canyon and let’s roll!”
Rosemary takes a deep breath and holds the binder out in front of her. She turns toward the edge of the canyon.
“Whoa there!” Logan holds up both hands. “Throwing it into the Grand Canyon is a metaphor.”
—Alison Cochrun, Here We Go Again, 2024


From Life, 1928.
#grand canyon
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December 20, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Just in Time, by Phyllis Newman:

***
He finally asked me out for a real date and I would have freaked, but the expression wasn't around then.

***
Abe [Burrows] thinks like Immanuel Kant, but talks like Casey Stengel.

***
They all phumphed...you know, uh, how do you say it...spoke elliptically.

***
From then on we were home free, or at least home, marked down.
***

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December 17, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Showcase, ed. Roy Newquist, ill. Irma Selz (1966):

***
If there is such a thing as reincarnation, and we have a choice of identities, how many Sammy Davis, Jr.'s will there be? [Newquist]

***
"I'd heard that Queen Victoria had a German accent....That was why I wanted to see the Marchioness....I asked her if her grandmother, her majesty Queen Victoria, had any discernible German accent, and she said, 'Ach, no, she hadt no more accent than you or me.'" [Helen Hayes]

***
NEWQUIST: Are you sensitive about the reviews of your movies?
ERNEST LEHMAN: Oh, Lord. You are talking to the seismograph of screenwriters. I can record a bad review in Bombay.

[Also, Lehman describes one of his own early writing efforts as a "road-company Jerome Weidman," i.e., a second-rate imitation of Weidman.]

***
"[A show that failed] sort of spurred me on to bigger and better things. Like never working again." [Phyllis Newman]

***
"Bob Hope can make you laugh at something that isn't funny, and he goes on to his next joke so quickly you're not aware that you laughed at nothing. He's rhythmed you into it." [Robert Preston]
***



#vintage illustration #illustration
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December 15, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Simon the Jester, by William J. Locke:

***
My friends “lucky-dog'd” me until I began to smirk to myself at my own good fortune.

***
A wild appeal burned in her eyes and was refracted oddly through her near-sighted spectacles.

***
She rode in a circus or had a talking horse—he was not quite sure.

***
I did not pursue the question, but alluded to autumn gaieties. She spoke of them without enthusiasm. Miss Somebody's wedding was very dull, and Mrs. Somebody Else's dance manned with vile and vacuous dancers.
***

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December 13, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smiling Corpse, by Philip Wylie and Bernard A. Bergman:

***
Literary criticism these days is like the drug-store business: three acres of bicycles, camping outfits, and electrical appliances, with a little counter in the back where they still sell medicine. [This is from 1935, btw.]

***
She had brownish hair and brownish eyes and she was smallish. In fact, nothing about her was so definitely anything that you'd have to modify a description of any of her characteristics with an "ish."
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December 10, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From Fools Die on Friday, by Erle Stanley Gardner:

***
"What school of telepathy did you graduate in? Do you take the Morse Code, or does the stuff just come to you in flashes?"

***
"There are seventeen million two hundred and eighty-six thousand four hundred and ninety-one pick-ups taking place every night."

***
"We have a client who wants to find out whether the moon is made out of green cheese and this chap was sent out to get some moonbeams trapped on flypaper and take them to a laboratory where they could be analyzed."
***
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December 8, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From A Cuckoo in the Nest, by Ben Travers:

***
a place called Something-Fitz-Whatnot

***
rehearsed hypothetical telegrams aloud to himself with strange facial contortions

***
"I can't sleep in the what's-its-name parlour."
***Something_Up-Jenkins

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December 6, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Devil and the C.I.D., by E. C. R. Lorac:

***
"What a poem of a night."
[I.e., a miserable night--an ironic "beaut" of a night. I see no evidence that "a poem of a" has had any currency outside this novel.]

***
"Why not go up yourself to Mr. Hythe's flat and complain?"
"Good God, man, go and teach your grandmother! I've been up, I tell you."
[This abbreviated version of "go and teach your grandmother to suck eggs" does seem to have had some general currency.]
***
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December 3, 2024 (permalink)


Jonathan Caws-Elwitt

unearths some literary gems.

From The Smart Set, 1908:

***
Victor Moore...is an actor whose possibilities stick out at the elbows of his role. [Channing Pollock]

***
"It's absolutely wonderful. Really, I've exhausted my adjectives over it."

***
You will find yourself getting a hundred laughs for a dollar. [Pollock]
***

[More attached. "The Prodigal Parent" is included only because, at first glance, I thought it said "The Prodigal Parrot"--which ties in, of course, to that newsworthy parrot that returned after a long absence speaking a different language.]












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