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Does anyone know a magazine that has liberal doses of erudite literary vocabulary (i.e., not necessarily jargon) like I see on Wordsmith? I'd like to buy a subscription to one or more magazines and mark them up to study the words and how they're used in context. I'm just having trouble finding a good magazine; so far, I've identified American Spectator as a good possibility, but there must be others. Or perhaps someone could direct me to an author whose books I could purchase.
Any help would be appreciated,
I can be reached at
jotham73 at hotmail.com
Last edited by jotham; 12/07/07 05:02 AM.
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I don't have any subscriptions like that for myself; however, I've had recommendations from other people whose opinions I value:
The Economist
The New Yorker
The Atlantic Monthly
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Carpal Tunnel
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welcome, jot! I don't know about magazines, but Arts & Letters Daily is a wonderful online source.
formerly known as etaoin...
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I don't have any subscriptions like that for myself; however, I've had recommendations from other people whose opinions I value:
The Economist
The New Yorker
The Atlantic Monthly Yes, I'm familiar with those journals and they are very fine. I especially like the New Yorker's pithy style. But when it comes to erudite vocabulary, I don't find the frequency to be as high. All journals have interesting vocabulary and it usually depends on the writer, but it's not altogether uncommon that in just one article of the American Spectator, for example, I can find at least six or more interesting words or usages — or at least interesting to me. I list examples in two articles below: http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12387The great Talmudic genius...led the rabbinic court writing of the divorce was proceeding apace her poor cuckolded husband which conservative principle would be subverted by such solidarity has run afoul of free-market orthodoxy targeted the Republican Party as a generic counterforceinimical to their cause being treated as the bogeymanThis type of behavior wreaks havoc with an image of ideological constancyThe company sells widgets to the public unions emerged from the catalyst of socialism and are still intoxicated by its matrixwith its attendant potential for thuggery that should eventually ramify to the benefit of the inventors of the product They are not acting like royalty, only scrounging for royalties http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=12398the Republican Party is dredging up the specter of "HillaryCare" the stillborn beast Clinton unveiled government can harness private-sector competition Give Hillary credit for her political wiles. she is positioned to hoist Republicans by their own petard. regulations that hobble the health-care industry ill-conceived tax laws And they've unwittingly created a monster these principles cannot be engineered by a government bureaucracy. Any program that codifies health care as a public good To prevent this bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine from collapsing, legislators invariably resort to price controls, a market mired in bureaucracy Piecemeal government interventions into the market...must be dismantled Does anyone else know of other journals that are similarly filled with interesting words and usages?
Last edited by jotham; 12/07/07 04:50 PM.
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Thanks for that excellent site. I notice a list of magazines on the left side. I've looked at perhaps half of those, so I'll try to analyze the others. Cheers...
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If the political slant is not a big concern, Mother Jones ( http://www.motherjones.com/ ) might be of interest.
tempus edax rerum
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jot: Welcome. I admire your determination to learn. Were I as resolute in my earlier years I could have been a better writer. I love Japan, having lived there some 6 years. I am dalehieman@verizon.net
dalehileman
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If political slant is not a concern, how about National Review or The New Republic?
Or, politics aside(?), The New York Review of Books.
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Browse the dictionary with a pencil.
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Browse the dictionary with a pencil. Ha, good one. I need context, preferably in a paragraph — and in a format that isn't unwieldy so I can carry it around and study on the subway without looking silly. If political slant is not a concern, how about National Review or The New Republic?
Or, politics aside(?), The New York Review of Books. was actually second on my list. I found The New Republic and Mother Jones average for vocabulary. Thanks for the suggestion on The New York Review of Books; it seems a good option and comparable to National Review. I also discovered a magazine that beats them all — The New Criterion, some of whose writers employ ample vocabulary. Here's a sample: http://newcriterion.com:81/archives/26/12/laphams-latest-folly/The notebooks of the English aesthete...are a trove of amusing aperçus, anecdotes, and apothegms. This 7,500-word philippic appeared in...Harper’s...with a brief hiatus... ...not the heat of its invective...but its mendacity. Mr. Lapham intoned... ...neglected to take the elementary precaution of publishing his piece Confronted with his dereliction, Mr. Lapham waxed petulantMr. Lapham’s cavalier disregard for historical fact... ...it is ironical (not to say contemptibly risible) ...magazine ostensibly dedicated to history...requires a disinterested respect for the truth It is lavishly produced ...consists mostly of promiscuous gleanings from the past The sophomoric identifications provide a good index The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentationHis command of inconsequentiality has elicited comment Along with his patrician drawing-room leftism Mr. Lapham’s logic is errantMr. Lapham’s incontinent logic is disorienting...it stymies forthright discussion ...addiction...to the ephemeral, bequeaths us an intellectual poverty But by swaddling that important commonplace with his baroque, politically tendentious verbiage...disaster of historical nescience...a symptom of the cultural cataclysm it pretends to diagnose
Last edited by jotham; 12/10/07 06:22 PM.
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what I find very interesting is that many of your highlighted words seem quite ordinary to me, though there are some real doozies in there... The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentation heh.
formerly known as etaoin...
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The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentation
That is tautological, IMO.
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Here's a book, jothan, that might make you acceptably erudite if you think that you should really bother... Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism by John Updike New York Times Book Review (in part)"...I am myself familiar with the reviewing cliché, from both ends of the business, so I say deliberately that Updike’s scope is rather breathtaking (from Isaac Babel straight to James Thurber on successive pages), and I add that he seems almost incapable of writing badly. When I do not know the subject well — as in his finely illustrated art reviews of Bruegel [Hi, BranShea :)], Dürer and Goya — I learn much from what Updike has to impart. When he considers an author I love, like Proust or Czeslaw Milosz, I often find myself appreciating familiar things in a new way. I enjoy the little feuilletons he appends, for example on the 10 greatest moments of the American libido. And I admire the way he can construct a classical sentence that makes an abrupt, useful turn to the American demotic: “Having patiently read both versions” of Philip Larkin’s “Collected Poems,” “this reviewer believes that the second, chastened version, confining itself to the four trade volumes Larkin supervised and the uncollected poems ‘published in other places,’ does give the verse itself a better shake.” This appears in one of the best long treatments of Larkin’s poetry I have ever read. Those of us who adore this work have a tendency to feel personally addressed by it and to resent any other commentators as interlopers. Updike seems almost to know what we are thinking. It’s of interest, also, that his own vestigial Christianity — or do I mean surviving attachment to Christianity? — proves on other pages to be not dissimilar to Larkin’s own synthesis, in “Aubade” and in “Church Going,” of a bleak materialism fused with an admiration for the liturgy and the architecture. ..." On second thought just reading the New York Times book reviews of this book should enable you to converse wildly and wrongly with the intellectual chic. 
Last edited by themilum; 12/14/07 11:54 AM.
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The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentation
That is tautological, IMO. It makes more sense if I supply the whole sentence: The pretentiousness adumbrated in that list emerges with febrile ostentation in “The Gulf of Time,” Mr. Lapham’s lengthy “Preamble.” It doesn't exactly deserve the label tautological because the pretentiousness in the list is, apparently, only adumbrated; that in the preamble, on the contrary, is febrile.
Last edited by jotham; 12/14/07 12:50 PM.
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Here's a book, jothan, that might make you acceptably erudite if you think that you should really bother...
Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism by John Updike
New York Times Book Review (in part) Thanks for the suggestion; I'll look into that. I noticed John Updike wrote one of the articles displayed on The New York Review of Books website. On second thought just reading the New York Times book reviews of this book should enable you to converse wildly and wrongly with the intellectual chic. Well, the subject matter shouldn't matter too much; just as long as the vocabulary is handled effectively: I learn from their writing technique rather than their ideology. The problem with studying mere lists or the dictionary is I'm not creative enough to think of appropriate contexts to use them. I'd like these words to be right at my fingertips so they can be effortlessly and spontaneously employed when auspicious occasions arise.
Last edited by jotham; 12/15/07 05:22 AM.
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Due Considerations: Essays and Criticism by John Updike Thanks for the title, themilum. I really want to see how Updike revieuws Breugel. For the subject matter and for the writing technique. (Our library may have it.)
Last edited by BranShea; 12/14/07 07:09 PM.
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It makes more sense if I supply the whole sentence:
You're right. That's okay. Hence, contextomy is bad.
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Here's an interesting article in The Guardian: http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2227650,00.htmlFrom albedo to zugunruhe
How often do you bother looking up an unfamiliar word? Should writers make us reach for our dictionaries? Four years ago, James Meek vowed to learn every alien word he encountered, and discovered poetry in obscurity.
Last edited by jotham; 12/21/07 09:25 AM.
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If for every word you do not completely understand you would reach for your dictionary, there would be little enjoyment in reading a book in a foreign language. Only when an unknown word is the key to understanding the content, the dictionary is needed. To make side notes of intriguing unknown words and look them up afterwards is fun.
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