Word: potterism
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Explains Potter: " 'Yes, but not in the South,' with slight adjustment, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person. It is an impossible comment to answer...
Americans, in their open-faced optimism, are apt to believe that the basic assets for social success are good will, a pretty wife, and perhaps a few funny stories. Potter, product of an older and more cynical order, is convinced that all social intercourse is in fact a merciless jungle struggle, where the weaker will be gobbled up like an anchovy canape by the man with the firmer grip on the conversation and the Martini glass. In his scholarly The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship, or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating (TIME, Sept. 6, 1948), Evolutionist Potter...
Actually Using a Crowbar, Potter extends his spirit of unfair play to the game of life in general...
...unpublished notebooks of Rilke," says Potter, "there is an unpublished phrase which might be our text, '.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...
...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...