Word: hermes
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...stand, goes to great lengths to emphasize the legitimacy of his product, seldom found outside the Windy City. The two partners have toured the Vienna hot dog plant, sampled the wares of innumerable Chicago hot dog "restaurants" with names such as "Poochies," "Fatso's," "Bumpkin's" or "Herm's," and even worked a street stand to learn how the culinary creations are made...
This hint at sexlessness is further developed in another piece. Featuring yet another unique style, "Overture and Incidental Music for a `Midsummer Night's Dream'" develops a name in Shakespeare's play into a character, the Herm. This creature is simultaneously the source of desire and puzzlement to all the denizens of the forest--from Puck, who is a hairy, horny little bugger in Carter's fantasy, to Oberon and Titania...
Carter has turned the little Indian boy who catalyzes the action in Shakespeare's play into a hermaphrodite. Everybody wants him. The Herm, however, is different: "What does the Herm want? The Herm wants to know what `want' means...
...each story Carter, like the Herm, seems to take on two natures, historian and psychologist, or antiquarian and storyteller, or feminist and philosopher. Although she might be called one or all of these things, in the end she defies any rubric. She tantalizes, she informs, she delights. She may occasionally mystify, but good writers do that...