liguistic [sic] showoff

[Jasper Fidget]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
> Behalf Of Terrance
> Sent: Monday, September 15, 2003 12:01 PM
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: re: liguistic [sic] showoff
> 
> I'm not quite sure what David Morris & Dmitri Nabokov mean by
> "linguistic showoff."
> 
> 

I guess the controversy would surround the sense of the word "showoff" as
pejorative, as in:

"intransitive senses: to seek to attract attention by conspicuous behavior
<boys showing off for the girls>" (MW11), "Someone who deliberately behaves
in such a way as to attract attention", "Display proudly; act ostentatiously
or pretentiously" (Wordweb); rather than "transitive senses: to display
proudly <wanted to show our new car off>" (MW11), or simply "A display or
exposure of something" (OED).

I'm not sure I find anything wrong with being a liguistic [sic] showoff.
Aren't most great writers to some extent showoffs?  Isn't the elevated,
artistic use of language one of the things that makes them great?  Or is it
indeed the case that VN's (and others') prose is written in the only manner
possible in order to exactly express the author's intentions?  Would anyone
claim that's the case for Pynchon?

Perhaps Dmitri took David's expression literally when DM wrote "VN is
nothing if not a liguistic [sic] show-off," which common American vernacular
is meant to convey "he's *certainly* a liguistic [sic] show-off," rather
than "if he's not a liguistic [sic] show-off then he's nothing."  I would be
pretty annoyed too if somebody implied my father was either a "showoff" or
"nothing".

JF