Word: lifeman
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...Lifeman is listening to the Expert, who is just back from a trip to Florence and is showing off his newly gathered bits of intelligence. "And I was glad to see with my own eyes," the Expert says, "that this left-wing Catholicism is definitely on the increase in Tuscany." To which the Lifeman replies: "Yes, but not in the South...
Friends and admirers of British Humorist Stephen Potter, who died in London last week at 69, will recognize Lifeman's rejoinder as the Canterbury Block, a devastating all-purpose ploy. "Yes, but not in the South," as Potter went on to explain in Some Notes on Lifemanship, is a phrase that "with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person. It is an impossible comment to answer." Lifemanship can take many other directions. One gifted practitioner, cited by Potter in the same volume, dedicated his book "TO PHYLLIS, in the hope that...
Freudian man, Marxian man, organization man, lifeman, gamesman and grey-flannel-suit man-what were they compared to the S-Man? Piglets to a python. In the diabolically clever guise of a self-help manual, The S-Man aims a good Swiftian kick at the cult and cultists of success. A British export, the book lacks the clubby good humor of Parkinson and Potter, substitutes instead the wittily barbed aphorisms of the success man's ascent ("New friends are best friends"). Cocktail party Platos will find a host of new S-Man concepts, including the Inhibition Barrier...
...greatest merit lies in the fact that it should stimulate readers to develop Lifemanship ploys of their own. The first to practice with is obviously Counter-Potters. The possible scene is a cocktail party. Hostess: "And now I'd like you to meet Mr. Potter, the author." Apprentice Lifeman: "Crocker, did you say? Are you the fellow who writes all those cookbooks...
...Counterpotter. Far from being merely a dry manual, Potter's book is alive with the personalities of real Lifemen. There are men like G. Odoreida, a thorough cad even by Lifemanship standards (to a fellow Lifeman ecstatically in love he would dryly remark: "Well, how is your little caper with Julia going?"). And there are crafty operators like G. Cogg-Willoughby, whose most famous victory came at a weekend party against an egregious hostess-nobbier named P. de Sint, the kind of man who develops a rich, bronze suntan in a matter of hours...