Horizon

Every father has his favorite exemplum of the richness of the paucity of his childhood.

No curmudgeon worthy of the distinction would write that sentence. It lacks bite. Not even a hint of a snarl. And it's confusing.

You know, I'm also completely deflated by the sentence. A good curmudgeon has a fair amount of pomposity going for him, but when you couple his misuse of paucity with the overreach of exemplum, the whole sentence just falls apart.

Huh. I like Chabon's writing for the exact reason Bobby doesn't -- the rich neo-retro wording and content. Comic books. Legos. Talked about as if they are relics of the past, in language we associate with the 1940s or 1950s.

When was the last time you've seen "phosphor screen" or even "black and white sets" to describe TVs? And how often do you hear words like "fabulous" and "giddy" taken seriously?

Oh, I liked the subject. And I thought the first paragraph a good lead-in; and that the closing two sentences were near perfect.

I wondered if the phosphor screen was a necessary flourish.

When I picture a television set, the screen is black and white. This doesn't necessarily date me because color television did exist when I was a lad, just before the Civil War. My mother insisted that color tv was a waste of money. I think she may have been onto something.

"Phospor screen" is a nice rhetorical flourish, but like "paucity" its use here makes me wonder if Chabon is grabbing at vocabulary he doesn't really understand.

I've used what I'd consider a phosphor screen exactly once: when the Mudd computer lab in college was auctioning off the electronic contents of varous basements and closets around campus. There was an old free-standing Tectronix 4010 terminal there which I got fired up enough to type some letters on the screen. Each letter appeared as a flash of bright-green light, which then faded a bit as the storage tube took over. It was a lot like the Phosphor screen saver, except that it didn't scroll. I also remember that the double quote was located above the 2 key.

"Phospor screen" is a nice rhetorical flourish, but like "paucity" its use here makes me wonder if Chabon is grabbing at vocabulary he doesn't really understand.

God forbid he might use a little license. No one's done that before.

License is fine if you know that's what you're engaging in. Which is the thing we can't tell about Chabon.

I suppose he might be inventing a new usage for paucity.