The Elegant Variation: WE HONESTLY HAVEN'T GOT THE VAGUEST IDEA

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September 07, 2006

WE HONESTLY HAVEN'T GOT THE VAGUEST IDEA

NFL player or a character from Dune? Take this test and find out. (Thanks to Brandon Walker for the link.)

Laveranues Coles: Wide Receiver for the New York Jets or Sword Master for the House of Atreides?

Glossu 'Beast' Rabban: Defensive End for the Oakland Raiders or Demon Ruler of the Butlerian Jihad?

When Frank Herbert's 'Dune' appeared in 1965, little did the world know that it would become the best-selling Sci-fi novel of all time; nor that it would influence the naming of an entire generation of professional athletes.

No, we're not on Spice. Check it: All across America, wearers of Authentic NFL Player Jerseys and wearers of Cellular Headsets are debating into the wee hours over whether Franco Harris was (a) a running back for the Steelers or (b) sixteenth leader of the Zensunni Free-Men, successor to the legend of Selim.

Still confused? Help set the record straight by taking the FEED's Fantasy or Football Quiz. The fate of the universe is in your hands.

Posted at 12:01 AM in Litlinks | Permalink

Comments

brilliant - I only got 4/10

Posted by: Randy Johnson | September 11, 2006 at 09:38 AM

So funny. And inspires me to read those old books again!

Posted by: Joan Beldare | September 12, 2006 at 03:16 AM

LOL. This was really clever. I'm picturing all those Dune characters on Monday Night Football.

Posted by: Bill Kelley | September 12, 2006 at 08:04 AM

Thanks for sharing. So damn funny. Love the tricky Jared Devries question.

Posted by: Heinrich Delonghe | September 13, 2006 at 04:52 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

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TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

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Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

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*Now in Paperback*

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Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

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In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.