The Secret Lives of Words

Novelist Paul West has selected some 400 words from A to Z to present to the readers of this homage to words. Some of the words reviewed in The Secret Lives of Words are abacus, ablative absolute, ampersand, catharsis, flamingo, fuselage, gremlin, humble pie, lilac, media, ordeal, poetry, quisling, salience, stigma, treasure, ugly, zed and zymurgist. More than a dictionary or staid etymology directory, this is a graceful and piquant exploration of the “extraordinary life story” of each word.

West writes “they come to us, not new-minted at the local supermarket, but hand-me-down remnants of ancient mutterings, over the centuries mauled and muddled, misused and misheard, twisted and new-fangled, yet somehow surviving their origins and incessant use. Able to use language to talk about itself, we might miss the vast story of human experience that has not only informed words – filled them with meanings – but shaped them as well.”

It is worth reading this book merely to enjoy the winsome introduction explaining West’s fascination with words.

“I hope to have communicated the thrill of finding yet another word, and then another, full of lore, and kept alive the gusto of first celebrating my precious and semiprecious finds. Words are uniquely human, the silk of our so-called civilization, and worthy now and then of prolonged scrutiny as we blink at thousands of years (sometimes) compressed into one or two syllables, each one an emblem utterable in a breath,” he writes in the introduction.

West peppers his review of these words with a dizzying array of allusions, from Kierkegaard and Camus to Mr. Knott in Beckett’s Watt to the Marquis Muzio Frangipani, to the stand-up comedian Kathy Griffin, to the movie Zoot Suit. While reading the book, I yearned for the Internet’s hyperlinks to further plumb these references. However, this book is surely full of enough depth to warrant visit after visit. Indeed, the best way to enjoy reading this book is perhaps to take it one word at a time, savoring the richness of each offering, much as you would with each sip of a fine wine.

Especially tantalizing are his rants on the words poetry and fiction.

All in all, this book is original and thrilling. Paul West is a writer with great powers and quite delirious over words. If you enjoy this book, you also might want to try his bestselling Words for a Deaf Daughter, equally riveting in a different way.

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