Thursday July 30 is “Paperback Book Day,” celebrating the first books published in paperback by Penguin Publishing Co. back in 1835. Many years ago (but not as far back as that) when I was in 8th grade, I received this gem of a paperback from the assistant principal of my middle school. The Left Handed Dictionary is a slim little volume filled with quotations and organized in dictionary format. The cover descriptions say it comprises:
5,000 hip definitions that once tripped gaily off the slightly forked tongues of Fred Allen, Russell Baker, H. L. Mencken, Dorothy Parker, E. B. White and others, not to mention L. L. L. himself.
Something from the slightly forked tongue of Dorothy Parker? I’m in!
The first definition is on the cover: clown (n.) : a man who acts too natural. (Some definitions do have a credit, and some are credited to “Anon.” or his son, “Anon. Jr.,” such as this one.)
Randomly looking through the book today, some of the “definitions” to share with you are:
- Advertisement: The most truthful part of a newspaper. (Thomas Jefferson, 1773)
- Busybody: a person with an interferiority complex.
- Brevity: the soul of lingerie (Dorothy Parker)
- Comedian: a guy with a good memory, who hopes no one else has. (Red Skelton)
- Comet: a fugitive from a solar system.
- Fashion: a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. (Oscar Wilde)
- Emotion: the back seat driver of the mind.
- Motion Picture: the new literature. (Cecil B. DeMille)
- Parrot: a mocking bird.
- Repartee: a duel fought with the points of jokes. (Max Eastman)
I know I did not get all of the humor in this book when I received it, and I definitely did not know all of the names listed. But it’s been a book I’ve thumbed through many times over the years, and it’s made me laugh a lot and sometimes cry.
Nationalism: an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.—Albert Einstein
At the end of this 255-page book, you’ll find “The End: a signal to start a sequel.” I wish L. L. L. had done so.
