33: John McPhee's dictionary trick
The writer John McPhee, in his essay “Draft #4,” suggests using a dictionary for punch-up. Not a typical modern dictionary, but a certain poetically inclined kind of dictionary that identifies multiple shades of meaning, “in which you are not just getting a list of words; you are being told the differences in their hues, as if you were looking at the stripes in an awning, each of a subtly different green.” And McPhee suggests you steal from these gradient definitions.
McPhee doesn’t name his chosen dictionary, but writer James Somers figured out it’s Webster’s Unabridged, 1913. (He links to app and web versions.) So I looked up each significant word in my story, and replaced it with an appropriate portion of its definition. I give you:
John McPhee’s dictionary trick
When the sun shone most directly on the region, when I’d finished primary instruction but not yet joined the society of scholars in the higher branches of knowledge, I gave up for a valuable consideration some instruments of a sharp edge, from a list arranged methodically, as of the stars.
But sell is correlative to buy. And through no act of understanding could I overcome anyone by argument to give the accepted price. I only satisfied myself by proof that these were the most excellent knives at any rate demanded. I did get the woman who bore me to secure a pocket knife for the one who begot me, for the anniversary of his birth.
It was conveyed under public authority, and received at the post office. The bundle, made up for transportation, was in our vehicle as my generatrix urged us on to where I’d depart on my voyage. In my appropriate traveler’s place of sitting, I unclosed the instrument to make evident the mechanical operation that insured against harm. And in this unsuccessful effort, I did the work of an edged tool: I gashed the inner part of my hand.
The next return of the warmest period, I transferred to others small fried cakes, from the opposite side of the table over which business is transacted.
Let’s listen to another cover that changes the time signature. The Bad Plus stumbles and trips on “Lithium.”
And another “Teen Spirit” jazz cover (click to open, sorry, Elon Musk broke Twitter embeds):