Word: slang
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...that a non-bogus, paraphrased, uncolorfully detailed Nabokov told me last summer on his Montreux veranda that he had always emphasized his status as an American writer because America has the richest vocabulary in history, graced with an unparalleled number of technical terms and vigorous, constantly changing slang. Even its cliches are at the highest level. That is why, in Nabokov's opinion, the best writing in progress today is being done by Americans...
...know his mother is dying -- and every once in a while the comedy seems not only wry but also thin, as though the play were called not Moonchildren but Charlie Brown Goes to College. But such moments are rare. Surprisingly little of the dialogue, or even the slang, has dated. And the characterizations -- the hostile policemen, the guy who lives downstairs ("I see the cars go by. I see the Fords. The Chevies. The Datsuns. I see the Datsuns. And the odd Cadillac, I don't miss them."), the pair of put-on artists, the bemused graduate student in mathematics...
...setting the mighty linguistic engines of Shakespeare and the Bible against the bankrupt slang and pusillanimous euphemisms of the witnesses, Ervin is admittedly using cannons against sparrows. But he is also constantly reminding us that the gap between language and truth has not always existed-and need not continue to exist...
...stock the drive-ins during the late 1950s and the '60s. This allows Lucas to mock, carefully and compassionately, the conventions and stereotypes of a genre as well as a generation. All the details are here, from the do-whop music and lovingly customized cars to the slang, which hovered between Ivy League and street gang, and the clothes, which seemed, like the time, both shapeless and confining. Even the jokes come straight from AIP: "How'd you like a knuckle sandwich?" inquires a hood of a nervous, bespectacled sad sack outside the local hamburger drivein. "No, thanks...
...tourist can always find someone who speaks English at the hotel or at the airport," said Lafont, who is limited to schoolboy English himself. "Here, nobody speaks French. We got along as best we could. In New York we couldn't understand anybody. They must speak some special slang...