Divagation

The last, I think, of words from Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy.  Even if his storytelling leaves a little to be desired, Auster is a master of the English language.  In this case, he wrote about a detective following after an old man released from prison.  Every day, the man took a very purposeful walk throughout New York City, but he would occasionally divagate from his route in order to pick up some worthless trash off of the ground.  Divagate means to wander, digress, or stray.  While deviate, its closest synonym, means to wander off the established path (de as in away, via as in the road), divagate might not need a set path to begin with.  The latin verb it comes from is to simply wander around.

Macadam

A eponynmous word from Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy.  A macadam is a road, or the stones in a road, made up broken stones of even size, compacted together, and “bound with tar or bitumen” according the the O.A.D.  It was invented by Scotsman John Laudon MacAdam and the standard form for paving roads pre-asphalt.  A google image search shows various examples of the paving, but it is difficult to recognize without being able to inspect closely.  Most paved and tar roads that do not use asphalt are macadam roads.

Scrofulous

Another word following the line of scorbutic that I just read in Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy. It is the adjectival form of scrofula, a desease that the Oxford American Dictionary says is related to tuberculosis and is marked by extreme glandular swelling.  Like scorbutic, however, I have never seen the word used in the literal sense.  It seems to always be used as negative commentary on one’s moral state.

Prelapsarian

Another wonderful word from Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy.  It refers to anything before the fall of man.

Meta-

I’m reading Paul Auster’s New York Trilogy because of my love for detective novels.  I should say meta-detective novel.  In fact, every time I see anything about this book or speak to anyone about the book, the prefix “meta-” is applied somewhere.  It is a shockingly difficult prefix to get a clear definition to.  Normally, the prefix indicates change, but when used in intellectual thought, the best I’ve been able to cull is something that raises questions about the nature of the original “not-meta” word.

Intuitively, I accept Auster’s book as metanarritive, but as I sit down and try to describe why, it is harder for me to say so.  The main character is a writer (nothing special there) who has lost his identity.  First, he is Quinn, his name by birth.  Second, he has his nom de plume for his detective novels.  Third, he identifies with his detective, Max Work.  Fourth, he is mistaken for a real detective named Paul Auster, who actually is not a detective, but a writer (and possibly the book’s author himself).  Auster, the book’s author, devotes time in the novel to this disconnect between the true author of the book and the imagined author of a book (usually the narrator).  Cervantes’s Don Quixote is an example.  In our world, Cervantes is the author.  In the world of Don Quixote it was a book only discovered by Don Quixote. All of this discussion qualifies as metanarrative.

It is an odd idea that must be ritually scoffed at by anyone hoping to raise the issue without sounding like a pompous grad student.  Like using the word Kafkaesque, it might get you punched in the face to discuss meta- anything without pretending to distance yourself from the topic.