Word: potterer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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SOME NOTES ON LIFEMANSHIP (120 pp.) -Stephen Potter-Holt...
...most significant contribution to civilization, more important even than plum pudding, plaid dinner jackets and Winston Churchill, is the principle of the survival of the fittest. Adam Smith applied it to economics, Charles Darwin to biology and Cecil Rhodes to Empire. In these illustrious footsteps follows Stephen Potter, who threatens to apply it to everything...
Well, the sequel has come, and has been called, obviously enough, "Lifemanship," and it is good. Potter uses the same technique, but he has not run dry - Lifemanship is every bit as charming a science as Gamesmanship. It is, in fact, simply an extension of Gamesmanship, which is Potter's big name for psychological warfare in friendly games, into the province of life. Where before Potter spoke of "Nice Chapmanship" (the art of putting the opponent in an embarrassing position by being excessively nice to him) he now speaks of "Weekendmanship" (the art, to put it roughly, of dominating...
...mater of fact, as one might suspect from the fact that the sequel is as good as the original, the secret of Potter's charm does not lie in the humorous gimmick he uses (Definition Humor is an old and overworked technique) But in his deft touch: shrewd use of examples, characters, and dialogue, and delicately pitched understatement (along with plenty of overstatement). And there is also that pleasant touch of satire, which marked the earlier book...
There is plenty of simple labeling ("Lowbrowmanship," "Woomanship," "Daily Mirrorship") but we get the real Potter charm in such characters as Hope-Tipping of Buttermere who "first made a name for himself in 1930 by saying that 'the one thing that was lacking, of course, from D. H. Lawrence's novels, was the consciousness of sexual relationship, the male and female element in life.'" Hope-tipping may be a formula man, and the humor which made him may be limited, but he has the resi spark of original humor. So does "Lifemanship...