Charlie

You Sexy Dictionary, You

Someone came to us with the claim that a writer has managed to make the dictionary sexy. And, indeed, she has. Writer Emily Arsenault, who will be at Blue Bicycle Books this Saturday from 1-3pm, had us at “ass.” Here, she gives CHARLIE an exclusive glimpse into her clever new book…

As a young lexicographer, the first word I ever worked on was ass.

Twenty-two and fresh out of college, I had no clue what to do with my life. But somehow, that old New England institution, the Merriam-Webster dictionary company, hired me as an assistant editor.

And there I was, with a stack of citations for ass. The word wasn’t assigned to me specifically, but when I ceremoniously signed out my first words, the ass-assembly line box was next in line. The citations, typed onto small white slips of paper, were drawn from magazines, newspapers, and books. I was to compare them against the current definition for the word (if there was one) to determine if something new should be added to a dictionary.

Naturally, I had several questions. So I sheepishly visited my boss, struggling to keep a straight face as we discussed ass in hushed tones in his corner cubicle. Ass-this. Ass-that. Most of the new cites referred to the whole person (“Get your ass over here!”). But someone had already added that sense to the definition. I wasn’t to break any new ground here. And so, sadly, I moved on to the next word.

After ass, I eagerly tackled assacu, assagai, assail … Over time, I worked on several other interesting words: honky-tonk, bling bling, bubble wrap, McJob, boner, beauty queen. Yet at some point, the novelty wore off, and I began to find the silence of the editorial office difficult to take. My coworkers were not unfriendly—the work we did simply didn’t require a great deal of discussion.

The solitude often gave way to daydreaming. I’d come across old handwritten citations and wonder about the people who wrote them. Who were they? Were they ever driven a bit crazy by the silence, as I often was? I imagined office romances being conducted on paper, the evidence stashed in the dictionary files. Or perhaps I’d stumble upon something scandalous—even dangerous—hidden from days past.

It wasn’t until years later, long after I’d left the job, that I considered writing about dictionary intrigue. My husband and I were Peace Corps volunteers in a South African village, midway between the original De Beers diamond mine and the Kalahari desert. To pass the long nights in our mud-brick house, we decided to write books. He worked on a sci-fi novel (still unfinished), while I began my “dictionary mystery.”

When I read the edited scenes now, they bring me back to the very incongruous places in which they were first written—on a mud stoop while a wide-eyed little girl plays with my exotically straight blond hair; under a leaky tin roof in a thunderous downpour; or sitting on a rock by the roadside, hoping a koombi taxi will arrive to save me from the long, hot walk home. No such details found their way into final version of The Broken Teaglass—I edited out a lengthy cockfight scene and several goat metaphors—but for me this book will always be two stories in one.

Brokenteaglass.com