Word: gramont
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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First the bad news: Sanche de Gramont is not a French count any more. Now the good news: he became an American citizen last year and, in the process, shed his title and the name his family has borne since "the morning hours of Western civilization." He is now Ted Morgan. Big changes: De Gramont, says Morgan, was the strict, rather European father, for instance, and something of a male chauvinist; Morgan, says Morgan, is a permissive American father of two, and an earnest believer in feminism. De Gramont kissed the slender hands of titled ladies, the rascal; Morgan...
...becoming an American is readily apparent, especially to Americans. To him France is all but fossilized, and his highborn relatives there are wholly so, as the funniest parts of his account maliciously attest. (Ted Morgan's Uncle Armand once brought Marcel Proust to lunch. Afterward the due de Gramont, Armand's father, handed his guest book to the already famous author "and with the total disdain of the nobleman for the artist, said, 'Just your name, Mr. Proust. No thoughts.' ") The U.S. he sees as still an open society, free and easy, rambunctious, optimistic, cheerfully ready...
...storytelling or good sense. Meanwhile, what about this name change? Why Morgan? Why not Carnegie or Rockefeller? Why not Svensen or Von Humboldt or Verrazanno or Sun Yatsen? Well, Morgan explains, he threw away his first name, Sanche-a contraction of St. Charles -and scrambled the letters of De Gramont. Among the anagrams that resulted were Dr. Montage, R.D. Megaton and Ted Morgan. Morgan, he felt, was someone you would lend your car to. Dogs and small children would like...
Nancy Morgan objected that the anagram was a "remuddling of an already felt confusion." His brother George, both a De Gramont and a brand manager for Lipton Tea, said that Morgan was throwing away a valuable brand name. (Sanche de Gramont had written several books, including an astringent national portrait, The French, and a good popular history of the Niger River, The Strong Brown God.) The author ignored all this and became Morgan...
...Mark Rothko); Michael Igor Peschkowsky (Mike Nichols). If Columbus had hung around, he might have called himself Collins. By the end of the volume does the reader feel a giddy temptation to throw away his own first name and mess around with the letters of the rest? As De Gramont-Morgan proves, that requires a lot of thought. - S. Wok (formerly John Skow...