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Michael Merschel: Michael Merschel is The Dallas Morning News books editor. September 2009
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A salute to William Safire, wordsmith "Oxford American's" Southern Lit poll: Yep, it's full of Faulkner Let us now praise punctuation. Punctuation? Punctuation! "Best American" poet Michael Grabell on journalism and poetry Books on book clubs -- is your favorite listed? Sachse-Wylie Author Festival starts Saturday Review of and excerpt from Oprah pick "Say You're One of Them" Recent Comments
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In any case, those who were there were treated to the pleasant discourse you would expect from a professional wanderer. He was one of the surprisingly few authors I have seen make proper note of their venue, when he kicked things off by asking, "Before we get started, is there anybody you want me to impeach?" And although I seriously doubt he had time to read the enthusiastic review of Roads to Quoz that we ran this morning, he indirectly responded to some of the criticism directed at him -- namely, that at moments he can be a little ... precious with his language. On his choice of "peculiar words," he noted, "We have the greatest vocabulary, that is, the largest vocabulary, of any language on Earth. More than 400,000 words. Shakespeare -- so I read, I haven't counted them -- used about 30,000. Now, I have been keeping track ... of the number of words I use in a book. And I think I'm only something up to 15,000, only halfway to Shakespeare. So people who complain I'm using too many strange words, well, I have respectable people behind me who are really in trouble." And along those lines, he said: "It's good to put a few things in the book that are quite obvious that some reviewer can go after -- keep them off of the big questions." He also provided some great analogies for the festival itself with his definitions of the essence of "quoz," which he said at their essence are about "the fecundity of the unexpected" and carry a "silent and persistent energy" that can change and transform us, and expand, link and connect us. Which is vital, he said, "Because when we start connecting, we start behaving better." E-mail entry: |
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