DearFluxfreins:
Ann is right that this book comes out of the Krazy Kat tradition--it also reminds me a bit of the Hyman Kaplan stories by Leo Rosten--
and as wel the adverstsing jingles and slogans of the time period--burma Shave, too--there is even a William Carlos Willaims poem from the early 20's with the lush adverstsing re pastoral haunts for susburban living--it wa s time of the big real estate booms which went bust by end of the decade
there is an older American humor traditon with the misspelling and mispronunciation of words--Artemus Ward was the most famous, writing in the 1860-70s--was one of th best known popular writers of his time period--
he played on the fact that even with the Webster's Dictionary out, the American language had not been widely standardized in its spellings and pronunciations--i wish i still had his book! you can find his pieces stlil in anthologies of american humor--just amazing!--one i recall story where the mix up comes from kids trying to understand a book on various exotic anaimals--
they are reading about a creature called the Boy Constructor--who lives in the jungles--they are trying to figure out what the heck the Boy Constructor does there--it turns out what they are reading is Boa Constrictor!--the stories are all in that vein--Mark twain also used this a lot--the use of dialects and local spellings, totally arbitrary many of them--Ring lardner did later as well--into time period of the "weegwom"--
but there is long fascination with these mixups with language and surreal plays on words--seem to "be as American as apple pie"--
after all, the _expression_ "OK" is supposed ot have come from our own President Jackson--the mighty backwoodsman--he would sign documents "OK" which he thought was short for "all correct"!--so you can see that the Boy Constructor not such a stretch in that world!
nor the weegwom for as Ann pointed out, Yiddish speaking immiigrants and neighborhoods--playijng a very large new role in American culture--this was where Mr Kaplan comes from in the Leo Rosten stories--is how he is going to night school in english Second language--i would highly recommend Mr Kaplan's version of MacBeth!
and i have seen out now the dictionary of Yiddish terms employed in the American legal system today-!
as "wol" woul write it in Winie the Pooh "bakson"! (wol being how the supposedly wise owl spells his name--)
david-baptiste
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