whiff-whaff/wiff-waff

From Whiff-Waff, coined by Slazenger & Sons in 1900.

Noun  (uncountable)  (archaic) Table tennis. quotations ▼

Noun  Onomatopoeia

Noun  The breathy sound of something rushing quickly; whoosh. quotations ▼

Etymology  South Lancashire dialect for nonsense, unspecified words or deeds.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/whiff-whaff   

Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter.  The delivery is meant to be blunt, ironic, laconic, or apparently unintentional.  The term deadpan first emerged early in the 20th century, as a compound word (sometimes spelled as two words) combining "dead" and "pan" (a slang term for the face).  It appeared in print as early as 1915, in an article about a former baseball player named Gene Woodburn written by his former manager Roger Bresnahan.  Bresnahan described how Woodburn used his skill as a ventriloquist to make his manager and others think they were being heckled from the stands.  Woodburn, wrote Bresnahan, "had a trick of what the actors call 'the dead pan.'  He never cracked a smile and would be the last man you would suspect was working a trick."  George M. Cohan, in a 1908 interview, had alluded to dead pans without using the actual term "deadpan". Cohan, after returning from a trip to London, told an interviewer that "the time is ripe for a manager to take over about a dozen American chorus girls and wake up the musical comedy game.  The English chorus girls are dead–their pans are cold.” The Oxford English Dictionary cites a 1928 New York Times article as having the first appearance of the term in print.  That article, a collection of film slang compiled by writer and theatrical agent Frank J. Wilstach, defines "dead pan" as "playing a role with expressionless face, as, for instance, the work of Buster Keaton."  There were several other uses of the term, in theater and in sports, between the 1915 Bresnahan article and the 1928 article in the Times.  The usage of deadpan as a verb ("to speak, act, or utter in a deadpan manner; to maintain a dead pan") is recorded at least as far back as 1942.  The English music hall comedian T. W. Barrett, working in the 1880s and 1890s, is credited with being the first to perform in a deadpan manner, standing completely still and without a smile.  Early in his vaudeville days, Buster Keaton developed his deadpan expression.  Keaton realised that audiences responded better to his stony expression than when he smiled, and he carried this style into his silent film career. The 1928 Vitaphone short film The Beau Brummels, with vaudeville comics Al Shaw and Sam Lee, was performed entirely in deadpan.  The 1980 film Airplane! was performed almost entirely in deadpan; it helped relaunch the career of one of its supporting actors, Leslie Nielsen, who transformed into a prolific deadpan comic after the film.  Actor and comedian Bill Murray is known for his deadpan delivery.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadpan   

April 25, 2023  Attempts to ban books in the United States have exploded over the past two years:  2,571 titles were targeted in 2022, compared with 223 in 2020.

These figures come from a recent report by the American Library Association, which has been tracking censorship in libraries for over 20 years.  And most of those titles, the organization found, deal with L.G.B.T.Q. themes or race.  The books that received the most challenges in 2022?  An illustrated memoir about the experience of being nonbinary.  A writer’s account of growing up queer and Black. Toni Morrison’s debut novel, “The Bluest Eye.”

 

The rise of book bans—and their politicization—has been a defining issue over the past several years.  Until fairly recently, most book removals occurred when a parent raised concerns about a title with a teacher or librarian.  Complaints were typically resolved quietly, after a school board or committee evaluated the material and determined whether it was appropriate for students.  But now, challenges to books are increasingly driven by organized efforts led by elected officials or activists groups whose actions can affect a whole district or state.

Separately, a new report from the free speech organization PEN America details this rise of censorship efforts across the United States, exploring how organized efforts or new legislation contributed to book removals.  Thank you, Muse reader! 

Long before Harper Lee and Truman Capote gained literary fame for To Kill a Mockingbird and In Cold Blood, their respective midcentury masterpieces, they were childhood friends, palling around Monroeville, Ala. just like Scout and Dill do in Lee’s fictional Maycomb.  The duo remained friends into adulthood, and their literary relationship is the stuff of legend.  Capote based a tomboy character in his first novel, Other Voices, Other Rooms, on Lee.  When Mockingbird was so well received, some derisively speculated Capote (who already had a strong literary reputation) must have helped—or even ghostwritten it, a rumor that persisted for decades.  Lee certainly helped Capote:  she was his research assistant for In Cold Blood, contributing 150 pages of notes, and was reportedly hurt to be included only in the “Acknowledgments” section of the book; they grew apart after its publication in 1965.  Sarah Begley  https://time.com/4230925/harper-lee-truman-capote-friendship/  Thank you, Muse reader!   

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com   Issue 2663  April 28, 2023