Word: lifemanly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...unpublished notebooks of Rilke," says Potter, "there is an unpublished phrase which might be our text, '. . . if you're not one up (Blitzleiscti) you're . . . one down (Rotzleisch).' " In his constant pursuit of One-Upness, the sound Lifeman first of all makes his opponent (i.e., everybody) feel like an idiot child, a boor or a cad (heel, if opponent is an American). To a visitor, the Lifeman remarks: " 'You want a wash, I expect,' in a way which suggested that he had spotted two dirty finger-nails." A rival talker is completely thrown...
...South. Experts of all kinds are the Lifeman's deadly enemies. One simple ploy (or gambit) against them is the Canterbury Block...
...Lifeman happens to be a writer, he knows how to disarm the critics, e.g., one Lifeman dedicated his book "TO PHYLLIS, in the hope that one day God's glorious gift of sight may be restored to her," which made the reviewers feel it would be rude to pan the book. (They did not know that Phyllis was the author's 96-year-old great-grandmother.) Smart writership includes the use of "O.K.-words," e.g., diathesis, mystique, and classique, and deference to O.K. fellow writers, meaning chiefly Kafka and Rilke (who, "it is believed . . . will still be absolutely...
...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...