The Dimwit's Dictionary
Robert Hartwell Fiske
(Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
2002 Marion Street Press
ISBN: 0966517679 Amazon's price is: $19.95
5,000 Overused Words and Phrases and Alternatives to Them.
That having been writ, writer beware! This Editor has read Robert Hartwell Fiske's feisty vade mecum, & is now even more picky & petty about how you use all those words at your disposal!
Abandon your ego upon opening The Dimwit's Dictionary for you will encounter all manner of suspect (sic) sequiturs, fallacies & nonsense that will leave you in a ditch, considering how to write.
Reading The Dimwit's Dictionary reminds me of those human potential seminars I took decades ago, along with hundreds of others in hotel conference rooms in the Bay Area, sitting on those unyielding chairs, shoulder to shoulder, dreading the scratch of the wool being pulled off my eyes, yet exhilarated to be seeing my life at last with a focus & a clarity, heretofore unknown. Reminiscent also of the first time I looked through contact lenses.
The Dimwit's Dictionary is a handy reference book for when you know you've just written a clunker, & can't think why. Is it an Infantile phrase? Or a line of Overworked words?
The Dimwit's Dictionary is not exactly a kind book -- it will shred every linguistic prop you've grown accustomed to & proud you know & use. Not that I'm proposing you reinvent the way you write, simply use this dictionary to discover how hackneyed your phrases might be. It is a litmus test to learn how originally you write, & what separates the ho-hum from the memorable; the bland from the interesting.
Perhaps that is what The Dimwit's Dictionary is all about -- writing with originality. I have many books come over my transom whose premises had promise...yet...when I began to read, I felt as if:-
a) I knew all the Ineffectual phrases, Moribund metaphors & Inescapable pairs, & they got in the way of the story.
b) I knew all the Overworked words, Infantile phrases & Torpid terms, & they didn't add a thing.
c) My mind was so numbed by all the Withered words, Wretched Redundancies & Egregious English, I couldn't be bothered to read on.
d) I couldn't understand the Quack equations, Foreign phrases & Grammatical gimmicks, or how they enhanced the story.
I do realize that taking this in-your-face book too seriously or too much to heart, or brain, an author could become dreadfully pompous!
So, in this Author's & Editor's opinion, The Dimwit's Dictionary is an invaluable grooming tool all writers need to have on their tool shelf, & refer to as you would, when passing a mirror on the way to meeting your mother-in-law, to check out how your writing reads.
Who is this Robert Hartwell Fiske, who has assumed the mantle of Editorius Maximus? He is the Editor & Publisher of The Vocabula Review www.vocabula.com, an online journal about the English language.
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