The Book of Nonexistent Words

Stefano Massini, Richard Dixon, Richard Dixon

• Publisher: HarperVia
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780063004795
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Essays
• Index: Literature

The internationally acclaimed author harnesses his brilliant imagination and masterful storytelling ability to create a catalog of new words inspired by stories of real people in this wondrous book reminiscent of Italo Calvino's mesmerizing Invisible Cities.

How many times have words not been enough?

How many complex feelings don't have a corresponding noun that properly describes them?

How many times has language left us like an archer without arrows in the labyrinth of our emotions?

Award-winning author Stefano Massini, a master of expression, made a discovery that shot new life into his writing practice. To his surprise he found that the ancient rules of language were not quite as restrictive as he had long envisioned them to be. With so many emotions and states of mind missing modern descriptors and definitions, Massini stumbled across a simple but artistry-altering idea. Instead of compromising honest expression through perfunctory verbiage, he decided language was, if anything, a flowing palette of colors he could use to paint all things. Words are meant to be invented.

To reconfirm his belief in the magic of words, Massini returned to the wondrous mechanism that has fed dictionaries from time immemorial. If he could not find the precise word he wanted, he created one. In this delightful compendium, he introduces his personal vocabulary; every chapter mentions a new word that comes from a story about a real person, from Louis XIV to an American gangster.

The Book of Nonexistent Words is a beautifully illustrated collection of linguistic origin stories wrought from the mind of an internationally renowned storytelling icon. Massini effectively liberates our human capacity for using language creatively and shows how we can embrace storytelling to fine tune our way of being in the world. Massini encourages us to be imaginative; if the language in the dictionary cannot adequately match the reality of the here and now, we must create new words that ring true.

Translated from the Italian by Richard Dixon

Dottism

I REGRET I’M TOO YOUNG TO HAVE HAD THE chance to meet that genius Dorothy Parker, sometimes known as Dottie. Whenever I am faced with prejudice, I always feel Dottie is needed to destroy it. Her wit was remarkably caustic, capable of dissolving any preconceptions. Perhaps Dottie grew up surrounded by so much dogmatism that life itself had taught her to stand up for herself. Born at the end of the nineteenth century into a Jewish family (by the name of Rothschild), she was brought up by a Protestant stepmother who then packed her off to a Catholic convent. Cruel fate then brought her a rapid series of catastrophes that would have floored even the unbeatable Achilles: her father and stepmother died young, in quick succession, then her beloved uncle, who had adopted her, decided to treat himself to a transatlantic voyage on the Titanic. In short, the young girl grew up with a fierce and irresistible black humor. Death had dogged her from childhood, and she was keenly aware how important it was to laugh at it. Always. Which is why she became the most diabolical scribe in 1930s New York. Her readers knew not only that Dottie was afraid of nothing and of nobody but also that she did not fear even her own torments, going as far as to write and joke about her attempts at suicide. She was ready to shoot at any target: the fashion for psychoanalysis, her drift into alcoholism, her disastrous marriages with controlling or bisexual husbands. It seemed as though Mrs. Parker was invulnerable in the face of life’s calamities and as if the gods of Olympus had ganged up to send her every sort of disaster for the pleasure of seeing whether she would laugh that one off too. One day, in 1938, someone asked her if she was happy: she was rich, respected, powerful, worked in Hollywood, had received an Oscar for screenwriting, and was fought over by the leading US newspapers. So? What did she lack? Dottie was about to launch one of her withering, quick-fire responses. She fixed the journalist in the eye, and said: “A happy woman is always rather less happy than a happy man: I’m that one step short, and it’s going to be a pushover.”

Exactly: that one step.

Let’s go back in time, by precisely a century, to Europe, to track down Henriette d’Angeville, another personality that Dottie would certainly have liked.

It’s late summer of 1838. On July 21, Ferdinand II, king of the Two Sicilies, had outlawed dueling between gentlemen. He was unaware that meanwhile, at the foot of Mont Blanc, one of the most pitiless duels of the century was about to begin. This time, however, it was not between two gentlemen but a challenge to the last drop of blood (or rather, the last rock) between a whole community and an amiable noblewoman of remarkable stamina, born forty-four years before in the stately forests of the Jura.

That night in early September, by lantern light, while a steady wind heralded the arrival of fall, a colorful crowd—unusual for that hour—watched preparations for yet another expedition to the summit. Six guides were kissing their wives and children goodbye, warning the more boisterous in the crowd not to upset the horses, nor to set fire to their barns. To one side of the gathering, Comtesse Henriette was sharpening the iron tips of her ice axes with a pumice stone. Something may have distracted her and she grazed her wrist with the stone, causing it to bleed. A young boy in short trousers immediately noticed the redness on her sleeve and hurried across to a well, shouting to everyone: “She’s already hurt herself! She’s already cut her arm!” They all ran back with their torches, anxious to see whether the “pioneeress” (as the innkeeper at Chamonix insisted on calling her) had sabotaged the expedition before even taking a step. Henriette pretended not to hear. With her teeth she tore a strip of cloth from her checkered skirt, bound it tightly around her wrist, and carried on sharpening the metal, as though nothing had happened. No one had failed to note her expression of pleasure when she sank her teeth into the hem of her dress, and it was clear to everyone that this was a response to the burgomaster, who two days earlier, after a sermon about dignity, had ordered her—on pain of imprisonment—to climb the glacier (“if you really wish to, if you really have to”) dressed respectably “in feminine attire.” Feminine attire? Did he expect her to reach the summit of Mont Blanc wearing a dress?

The burgomaster didn’t have the courage to nod. He merely repeated the word dignity, loudly and clearly. The comtesse had seriously considered giving the whole thing up, but only for a second. Luckily she remembered the maidservant who years earlier had ventured onto the great mountain as something of a joke and, though carried on the shoulders of men, had reached the summit. That maidservant—a certain Marie—hadn’t she also worn a skirt? But it was still to be proved that a descendant of Eve could successfully climb the peak without being held in the arms of an Adam. This was the challenge, and Henriette was ready to meet it. Even in feminine attire.

Among the slate roofs, the bell tower rang out at two o’clock.

A woman from the village—a woodcutter with a pigtail, known for her manly ways—then elbowed her way in among those present, with a pitcher from which she was drinking mouthfuls of milk straight from the cow. Henriette didn’t look up; she continued sharpening the seventh of her ten ice axes while the woman used her arm to wipe her mouth, rubbing her lips from her elbow to the back of her plump hand. Then she began her address: “I’ve no care about you, but have you considered these folk, eh?” indicating the six guides whom the priest was blessing. Henriette neither moved nor showed any sign of offense, so the other woman could do no more than stamp her foot on the ground and click her tongue, as people do when they call a dog, threatening to beat it. The Amazon kept her cool: she was accustomed to scenes like this; she had climbed the highest peaks, from Mont Joly to the Jardin de Talèfre, always defying the prim looks of those who wanted to see women confined to village squares with garlands of flowers in their hair, ready to recite silly poems when their husbands and fathers returned in glory from their expeditions. Well, this time she would be the one to conquer Mont Blanc: she kept repeating it to herself, and who cared that the priest refused to bless her. The great she-bear who was waiting for an answer showed no sign of quitting and stood over her like a hawk over its prey. When Henriette had finished her task and had put the ice axes down among the ropes, she heard the woman’s voice again: “I asked you what you’ll do if you lose one of them, through this caper of yours. You might have paid them, but it’s not as though they’re yours. They’re not like you, don’t you see? They have families . . .”

Another silence. The point of discussion was always the same: in those parts they’d never seen a woman of forty-four who rejected the comfort of the hearth. Just imagine this heretical aging spinster wanting to drag men with family responsibilities to fifteen thousand feet, up among crevasses and ibex, putting even their fertility at risk (according to the doctors, at least, who were sure the expedition would make them sterile). What a shame that the comtesse—rather like our Dottie—was never short of a ready quip: she stared the sturdy woman in the eye, like a rock climber fixing a nail into the rock, and replied, “Better for you: if an avalanche carries us all off, there’ll no longer be any guides for a madwoman like me to pay. God protect the mountain from nymphs.” And she shouldered her way out to fasten her baggage. The silence had become unbearable, as though it were the last farewell to a procession of men on their way to the gallows. The guides set off along the path while Henriette, beneath her chin, tied the laces of an immense red fur that seemed made almost intentionally to look like the mane of a lion. She grabbed a torch, took a deep breath, and strode out, catching her skirt on a bush. Oh, feminine attire! She yanked the cloth, and with a battle charge she moved ahead of the guides, to her rightful place, to start the expedition.

Comtesse d’Angeville was lucky, at least, that she didn’t have to disguise herself or change her name. Some ninety years later—since progress doesn’t always produce benefit—Alfonsina Morini had to cut her hair like a man’s and drop the last vowel from her first name when she entered the Giro d’Italia as Alfonsin Morini from Castelfranco. There again, what was wrong with a woman wanting to ride in the Giro d’Italia? Alfonsina had every right to race her bike, just as Henriette had every right to climb Mont Blanc.

The fact remained that in the town of Castelfranco, like up there beneath the glacier, it was not every day that a woman pitted herself against men. Especially if her parents were farmworkers and had a lot of children. But Alfonsina was a fanatical cyclist, and always had been, from when she was very young. And she was terror-struck when one night she heard her father, Carletto, ask her mother, Gina: “That crazy daughter of yours—when will she stop pedaling and start bringing home some money?”

Carletto was right. At the age of twelve it was time for a girl to be earning a living. But from cycling, of course—how else? On the other side of the Atlantic, at that same moment, Dottie Parker was also using her wits to make a living, through her talent with a pen. Alfonsina’s talent was in her legs and nothing else. There had to be some way of earning money from cycling. And there was.

She turned to religion. Not in the sense that she entered a convent—if it was unacceptable for a woman to ride a bike, it was out of the question for a nun. No, the point was that every Sunday morning she needed an excuse to get out of the house for a few hours, and what better way than to attend Holy Mass? A wickedly genial plan, worthy of Dottie Parker: in the house she fixed a picture of Pope Pius X and would spend a quarter of an hour rattling off prayers each evening before bed. A good socialist like Carletto Morini found it laughable at first; then it occurred to him that it was better to have a pious daughter than a harum-scarum on wheels, and he kept quiet. Alfonsina worked at it diligently and modeled herself on certain holy pictures to acquire a martyred expression of suffering. She spun tales about certain saints, about those who close their eyes, then open them again and everything is full of jasmine. With fancies like that, no one thought it strange for the girl to rush off to church each Sunday. She would leave the house with her veil and dark dress, after which, half a mile from home, she’d take it all off and hide it behind a shrine, useful also for begging the Almighty’s forgiveness and at the same time saying: “Lord, bless my legs. Lord, let me win.”

That’s right, Alfonsina Morini had discovered cycling competitions.

Always on Sunday mornings. “Hi. Is this where you enter the race?” she asked a giant sitting at a table on the first occasion.

“Sure. Just give me the cyclist’s name. Are you his sister?”

She shook her head: “Is there any rule that you can’t enter if you’re a girl?” And since there wasn’t, she began to compete.

Okay, fine, there was no money. But the prizes were hams, bottles of wine, whole wheels of Parmesan cheese. Wasn’t this all stuff that could always be resold at market, assuming of course that Carletto had enough to feed the Morini family? What a shame that entering competitions didn’t mean winning straightaway. She had to work hard at it, and for some while she didn’t place higher than tenth. Then she got better. And better. And better still.

The first time she won anything, it was a crate full of cherries from Vignola. To her they seemed like the most beautiful cherries in the whole of the Po Valley, in the whole world, redder even than the Bolsheviks in Russia. Her triumph, unfortunately, was won with blood—literally, since she crossed the finish line at such a speed that she lost control and crashed into the fountain in the middle of the piazza, cutting her cheek from her ear down. So when she reached the podium she was as red as a cherry—crazy Alfonsina, red Alfonsina.

And it was with this crate of cherries that she arrived back home, still soaked in sweat, with a cut across her face, in her Sunday best, with the pious gaze of Saint Agatha. But there wasn’t the usual jollity. All was silent. They sat waiting for her—a tribunal.

“How did you manage to cut your face in church?” Carletto asked, with his hands on the table, sitting among the family members like a government leader with his ministers.

“But she’s brought cherries,” added the family screwball, Uncle Maso, who was told to have the decency to shut up.

“How did you manage to cut your face in church?” Carletto repeated slowly and clearly. At this point, wasn’t it plain to Alfonsina, the pious daughter, that someone must have seen her? No, of all the ways she could have wriggled out of it, she chose the worst: “I banged my head on the tabernacle at San Damaso, and when I reopened my eyes, it was all miraculously full of cherries.” And as she said it, she forced herself to cry, as saints do in ecstasy. Dottie Parker would have approved, I’m sure.

But it didn’t work. No one moved. Carletto became Signor Morini—a transformation that generally meant the worst was to be expected. He banged his fist on the table as he did at critical moments, and there began a long Lent of abstinence from her bicycle.

But Saint Alfonsina, patron saint of cyclists, didn’t lose heart, like Saint Henriette, patron saint of mountaineers, had done a century before. Perseverance is not a female virtue for nothing.

All was perfectly clear—if her father banned her from racing, she had no choice but to find a husband, whoever he was, so long as he allowed his wife to cycle. And she began her search for a consort. Whenever she saw a boy between sixteen and twenty-one, she had just one pickup line, always the same: “Hi, my name’s Alfonsina dei Morini. Later you can tell me yours, but do you reckon a wife should be allowed to pedal a bicycle, or not?” One after another, each was crossed off her list. If anyone said yes, that was fine, but then she would add, to avoid any confusion: “My dear, I’m talking about a wife who races, who cycles in competitions, who sweats, spits, flexes her wrists, has swollen veins, grazes her knees, her chin, her hands, who...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• The Words You Don’t Have
• A: Annonism and Anchorism
• B: Biroism and Bicism
• C: Caransebic
• D: Dottism
• E: Eastmanian
• F: Faradian
• G: Gamainic and Grantairic
• H: Hearstian
• I: Innesian
• L: Liarism
• M: Mapuchize
• N: Nazinate
• O: Oatism and Olivarism
• P: Parksian and Pietersonism
• Q: Questic
• R: Rosabellian
• S: Shenshinism
• T: Tautonaic and Telegramic
• U: Unloyalism
• V: Villanism or Vecellism
• Z: Zacharian and Zeissian
• About the Author
• A Note from the Translator
• Copyright
• About the Publisher