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Mickwick
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| Posted: Thu Apr 07, 2005 6:44 pm
Post subject: Wishful figment |
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Is 'wishful figment' an eggcorn of (for?) 'wish-fulfilment'?
"Frank says this is all about wishful figments. ... You know,
like it's what some little kid *wished* he could do. ..."
That is dialogue from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier and Clay. Chabon probably intended the reader to assume that
the character - who is from rough, tough Hell's Kitchen and is missing
part of an ear - has misheard Frank. I certainly did.
A few chapters later, Chabon uses 'wishful figment' in the narrative.
On the very last page, in a transcendent moment in the history
of wishful figments, the Escapist had captured Adolf Hitler and
dragged him before a world tribunal.
Chabon is a playful writer and that is probably a playful reference to
the earlier passage.
But it might not be. 'Wishful figment' makes perfect sense. It could be
that Chabon is simply saying what he wants to say in his own words, with
no echoes, conscious or otherwise, of Freud's Wunscherfüllung and the
belittling jargon of modern film- and book-critics.
There aren't very many uses of 'wishful figment' on the Net. An example:
An overpaid sportscaster, the daughter of possibly the second or
third most dangerous man in America and the collective wishful
figment of all our weakest moments?
More than half of the others are of the form, 'wishful figment of the
imagination', which is either an eggcorn-ish combination of two standard
terms (one of them tautologous) or, again, it's simply people saying
what they want to say in their own words. I can't decide.
There are no 'wishful pigments of the imagination' out there, alas.
--
Mickwick |
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Mike Lyle
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 3:12 am
Post subject: Re: Wishful figment |
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Mickwick wrote:
| Quote: | Is 'wishful figment' an eggcorn of (for?) 'wish-fulfilment'?
"Frank says this is all about wishful figments. ... You know,
like it's what some little kid *wished* he could do. ..."
That is dialogue from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier and Clay. Chabon probably intended the reader to assume that
the character - who is from rough, tough Hell's Kitchen and is
missing
part of an ear - has misheard Frank. I certainly did.
A few chapters later, Chabon uses 'wishful figment' in the narrative.
[...]
There are no 'wishful pigments of the imagination' out there, alas.
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(Sorry if I snipped badly: I'm on a boat.)
I actually think "wishful figment" a better expression than
"wish-fulfilment". I think I (or somebody here) produced examples of
"figment" without "imagination" a year or so ago; and along with
"wishful thinking" this "new" expression covers the activity very
clearly, and without the rather absurd implication that a wish is its
own fulfilment.
--
Mike. |
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Will
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2005 4:18 am
Post subject: Re: Wishful figment |
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Mickwick wrote:
[..]
| Quote: | from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier and Clay.
[...] |
Is it any good? The book, I mean. I was given it a while ago and on
weight alone it has remained close to the bottom of my "must read" pile
(though "Middlesex" managed to make it to the top).
Will. |
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Mickwick
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 5:47 am
Post subject: Re: Wishful figment |
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In alt.usage.english, Mike Lyle wrote:
| Quote: | (Sorry if I snipped badly: I'm on a boat.)
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Are you nearly there yet? Can you see the sea?
| Quote: | I actually think "wishful figment" a better expression than
"wish-fulfilment". I think I (or somebody here) produced examples of
"figment" without "imagination" a year or so ago; and along with
"wishful thinking" this "new" expression covers the activity very
clearly, and without the rather absurd implication that a wish is its
own fulfilment.
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I agree. It conveys more of "wish-fulfilment"'s usually intended meaning
than "wish-fulfilment" itself conveys. It's clear without context that a
dream or fantasy is doing the fulfilling.
--
Mickwick
Smiert Spam |
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Mickwick
Guest
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2005 5:48 am
Post subject: Re: Wishful figment |
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In alt.usage.english, Will wrote:
| Quote: | Mickwick wrote:
from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of
Kavalier and Clay.
Is it any good? The book, I mean. I was given it a while ago and on
weight alone it has remained close to the bottom of my "must read" pile
(though "Middlesex" managed to make it to the top).
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Me too. ("Middlesex"?) I was given it two Christmases ago and it's been
at the bottom of many a pile since then.
But I needed a page-turner to get me reading fiction again, tried the
first page, then the next dozen, and away it went, and me with it.
It's a page-turner. It's also a bit more than that. Lots of grotesques
and grotesque situations but also deeper characters and some nice
writing.
('Nice' in many senses, alas, some of them very old, because - excellent
though it is - this is still Modern American Fiction. Bits of it smell
of the dreaded Creative Writing course: a familiar smell but hard to
define, especially at this late hour. Overwrought, over-structured,
by-numbers, grab-the-thesaurus, Big Issues, long paragraphs ... a
certain laboured detachment. I dunno. But I have, just this second,
looked Chabon up on the Web and, lo and behold, he has a degree in
Creative Writing. So, whatever that smell is, I'm not imagining it. It
*is* a good read, though.)
--
Mickwick
Smiert Spam |
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