professorplum

I've been reading a bunch of short stories by Martin Amis lately. They're pretty good, but he uses some rather obscure words sometimes, which sort of knock me off track. I'm not the smartest guy in the world and I know my vocabulary could use a little expansion, but when someone throws "progeriac" or "inamorata" into a casual dialogue, it sort of breaks the rhythm of the story. I can almost always figure it out from context clues, and I pride myself on my ability to deduce meanings by breaking a word down into its roots, but not knowing the words isn't really what bugs me. I mean, I love learning new words. It's just that a few of the words Amis uses make his writing seem somewhat affected. I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb. I've got a lot of learning to do.

Aside from the weird words that temporarily confused me, he did use a bit of slang that I enjoyed. Instead of "circumcised" or "uncircumcised", he used the words "roundhead" and "cavalier", respectively. I know what they mean in reference to the English civil war, but I've never heard them used that way before. Maybe it's common over in England, or maybe Amis is just that clever. Either way, I thought it was funny.

That is all.