Sunday Sundries, 222

1. AOTW: Okay, Ohio drivers--many of you, it seems, don't know the right-of-way laws out on the road. So ... here's a link to them ... review them ... then laugh at me the next time you (illegally) cut me off.

2. I finished two books this week.

     - The first was really not a book, though it was published in its own volume. It's a short story that Sylvia Plath wrote in 1952 when she was a student at Smith College. She sent it to Mademoiselle--got a rejection--fussed with it some more--gave up. Now her estate has arranged the publication of Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom.

It's a surreal kind of tale--an unwilling young woman put on a train by her parents, and pretty soon we (and she) realize this is not any ordinary train but one that appears to be heading for a very terminal destination.  Mary wants off that train before the final stop--the eponymous Ninth Kingdom--and she ends up in a conversation with another passenger, an older woman, who just may help her ...

Fun to read--and an early reminder just how talented Plath was. She committed suicide at the age of 30--what a loss to the world, to literature.

     - The second was The New Magdalen, an 1873 novel by Wilkie Collins, whose novels I've been reading, generally in the order that he published them. I read a chapter at night (most nights) before Morpheus swoops me up, up, and away.

This one takes place during and after the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). It begins on a battlefield in France. Two young women are in a cottage with some wounded French soldiers; one of the women is "fallen"--she is now a nurse; the other, a higher-class Englishwoman, who, traveling, was caught in the battle and has found refuge in the cottage.

This second woman (Grace), about to come into a comfortable life with a relative she has never seen, is killed by a shell, and the second woman (named, appropriately, Mercy) impulsively trades places with her--takes her things and prepares to pass herself off in London.

Which she does. She even has a wedding planned ...

Until, one day, Grace--who did not die in the cottage (an army surgeon saved her)--shows up in London to claim her inheritance.

Collins is a wonder. And he makes things very difficult for us. Mercy loves the older "relative" she's with--and vice versa. She has been transformed by her experience. Grace turns out to be, well, not so nice. So ... what happens?

Collins' novels often treat women with profound respect and understanding--not usual, I think, among male writers in the 1870s!

3. No movies this week--but we're still streaming, nightly, bits of shows we like: Wire in the Blood, True Detective, Fargo, After Life (which is alternately funny and wrenching, touching and disturbing).

4. Will upload this week to Kindle Direct my latest volume of doggerel--What's in a Name?--a collection I did about eponyms (words derived from the names of people--e.g., watt, atlas, etc.). More info when I've actually done it!

5. I recently realized that I published my first book review for Kirkus Reviews twenty years ago--on March 1, 1999; in about a month, if all goes as it has, I will submit review #1500 to them--at which time I will do a post here about the wonderful experiences I've had with Kirkus.

6. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary--a word that's now apparently obsolete, a word I'd like to see come back, a word that fits me in all its meanings (I'm forced to admit)

scripturiency, n.  Passion for writing; an urge to write. In early use esp.: the tendency to produce an abundance of trivial or inferior writing.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: scripturient adj., -ency suffix.

Obsolete.

1652  T. Urquhart Εκσκυβαλαυρον  196 Though scripturiency be a fault in feeble pens [etc.].

1685  H. More Cursory Refl.  1 The Disease of Scripturiency in R. B. taken notice of.

1717 Entertainer  No. 3. 18 This Bladder of Scripturiency.

?1751  J. Markland Let.  in  J. B. Nichols Illustr. Lit. Hist. 18th Cent.(1858) VIII. 537 Whenever..a scripturiency comes upon me, you shall hear more from [me].

1881 Manch. Guardian  15 Aug. 5/3 ‘Scripturiency’ appears to vary greatly in different nations. The United States claim 2,800 of these medical authors; France and her colonies, 2,600 [etc.].