Word: shenkers
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...Shenker never lets his light touch get our of hand, and he keeps a firm grip on even the most elusive conversation (Shenker's word games tend to be infectious). Suiting his style to subject, he rises to the sublimity of Vladimir Nabokov ("Q. What struggles these days for pride of trace in your mind?"), and caters to the acidity of Gore Vidal ("Have you read any bad books lately?"). Mark Van Doren's answers "seemed to demand the topography of poetry," and so Shenker has reproduced them in verse form. Only once, in an interview with Eugene Ionesco, does...
...recurring theme, since many of the men and women interviewed are over 65. In fact, younger writers get hardly any representation at all in this collection, and the "radical innovators"--Samuel Beckett, Nathalie Sarraute, Eugene Ionesco--have all been around for quite a while, Surely Shenker could have made room for some new faces by omitting a few of the more trivial pieces--for instance, "Howlers," a collection of high-school malapropisms only slightly above the level of Kids Say the Darnedest Things...
...Shenker's fascination with words also leads him to delve into the technical aspects of language, and he includes pieces on linguistics and lexicography, linguists and lexicographers. He covers everything from the staid Oxford English Dictionary--where, with true British resistance to modernity, no researcher is allowed near a typewriter--to the bitterly sarcastic Great Society Dictionary, a radical guide to the vocabulary of Vietnam by a professor of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, at the American Heritage Dictionary, and panel of experts bickers over what is acceptable English and what...
...HIGH SPOTS of the book are the interviews. Shenker's interviewing technique is to keep his presence to a minimum, leaving description at the barest essentials and letting his subjects speak for themselves. Many of the conversations are really just strings of quotations, supplemented only by some remarkably vivid photographs by Jill Krementz. This approach usually proves successful, thanks to the caliber of the interviewees; unlike Rex Reed, Shenker doesn't have to resort to bitchy observations to spice up vapid quotes. Inevitably, some of the conversations are not all that fascinating, and at least one--a piece on Noam...
...move mountains. Work, exacting work moves mountains." Words and Their Masters isn't likely to budge the Himalayas, but it does provide some insight into the major literary minds of the day. Besides, it doesn't take itself too seriously, and it's a pleasure to read. Shenker has proved himself a minor master of words in his own right...