He claimed students no longer read American classics such as “Tom Sawyer” and “Huckleberry Finn” because of the “N-word.” He asked the school board: “Is the N-word worse than the F-word?”
It turns out that the school district that racist-and-professed-Christian Richard Jones does in fact teach “Huckleberry Finn”, but no matter. The point stands—Jones feels seriously deprived of the word “nigger” and will be damned if other people get to use the word “fuck” while he’s suffering such deprivation. (Hat tip.)
On the subject of books: One book club is done, another begins. It was requested that we mix in some more fiction, and everyone keeps telling me that Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is a grown-up Harry Potter, and we all know how well Harry Potter goes over here. So that’s the next selection, and the discussion date will be October 1st.
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I have objections to anyone reading Dave Eggers that have nothing to do with the word “fuck”.
Loved “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrel”.
Amanda- Sorry to post off topic but you need to see this story: Storage Firm Shakes Up Pro-Lifers
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/
JS and Mr. N is wonderful; Mr.s F has bought several copies for friends and family. It shares a frustrating attribute with Harry Potter, but I’d rather not spoil the book, so I’ll mention it later.
Well, another book club I’ll probably sit out. That’s ok. I would still like to recommend Juliet Schor’s Born to Buy, though (If I actually had the money, I’d sent it to you…actually, Amanda, if you email me your address, I may have a spare desk copy sitting around that I could sent you.) I have a feeling it would be well received, and provide a lot of interesting topics for people to discusss. Issues of consumption, culture, and children/parenting all combined could make for some wonderful discussion topics.
I’m serious about emailing me your address; I’ll get you a copy.
I read all the American classics in 11th grade, which is generally American Lit year (12th grade being English Lit, and 9-10th grade reading modern, boring books that teach you how to read the word “fuck” in a book without going OMGWTF them’s dirty words in there!)
Scarlett Letter- town slut given comuppance, shunned for years
Huck Finn-mischievous boy skips a bunch of school and treats black people like people, neighbors too shocked for words
That one by Edith Warton where the farmer finds one moment of fleeting happiness and is punished accordingly by God
The Great Gatsby: the lower classes ain’t got much, but they do have their moral superiority
Sounds like good literature to “develop the character,” and the bad words are totally out of date!
Funny high school English class story: during a poetry lecture, the teacher was stuck on how to explain the imagery of the line “do I dare to eat a peach.” Finally, recognizing that sexual imagery is a part of great literature and his kids were old enough to understand that, he unveiled the nuances of that great line by honking the air chest-height in front of him while leering “peeaaacchhheessss!”
They got it.
Kyoso,
I am so jealous. My lit teacher in HS was also my choir director…a former nun. Our show choir was not allowed to do Air Supply’s “Even the Nights Are Better” because of its sexual nature.
She could make any topic uninteresting…and did. I ended up having to rediscover literature on my own, and on the side, during my undergrad days because I’d been so deprived by that hideous woman.
Oh, that was a freind’s teacher, not mine. Although my 12th grade English teacher was pretty cool. I had a nervous breakdown over Heart of Darkness that he encouraged to the class’ amusement. I was so angry about that chapter that goes on and on about how they’re stuck until they get some rivets, then you turn the page and they’re halfway down the river with nary a mention of rivets again. For the rest of the year, just saying the word ‘rivets’ was enough to send me in a sputtering rage. He managed to work them into the strangest places.
This is one of those areas where I know that my rural education limited me. I had to take my second year of Spanish as an independent study class. When we finally got pre-calculus available, we had to get on a bus before first period (and leave before first period was over) to go to another town. Although I will admit that technically, I’m fairly strong in terms of general education, we never got to do any cool shit. I read about the stuff all these AP kids got to study, and, well, going to a rural school with a graduating class of 39 and a very conservatiive population isn’t something I’d really wish on inquisitive people.
I know that’s part of the reason I have such poor study skills today (while finishing a PhD). I never needed them.
I wonder if he quite gets the point that they sling the N-bomb around in Huck Finn because that’s how people talked back then, not because Mark Twain was on a hatefest against black people?
Not that Samuel Clemens was a saint; he visited what is now Israel and remarked on what an empty wasteland it was, completely disregarding the people who were actually living there (and was corrected on this count by a contemporary later). But at least he was trying.
Kyso - Ethan Frome. Never read it, but I loved The Age of Innocence. Daniel Day Lewis was wretched in the film. Deeply emotional introverts don’t always have to come off like milksops, which DDL did.
Amanda - FYI, I’m not sure who’s telling you that Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is like an adult Harry Potter, but it’s not. I just finished reading it before I picked up Potter #7 so this is a very recent read. JSMN is essentially three stories, one taking place with Mr. Norrell, another taking place with Jonathan Strange, and another taking place with a sadistic fairy whose presence is the glue and final foment of the book. Despite some interest in Mr. Strange, neither of the primary male characters is meant to be sympathized with. Potter deals with good vs. evil nuance in ways readers can identify with easily. JSMN deals with good vs. evil nuance in long, drawn out lessons about how stuff you do comes back to haunt you. The tone of the book is completely different and there are footnotes that last multiple pages, where Clarke has gone off on a mini-tale supporting some minor point of the story, that in itself is a whole separate story.
I enjoyed it, but I was about 200 pages from the end before I realized where it was finally going. There are no clear parallels between Potter and JSMN characters. Really, I think the books (for both being part of the fantasy genre) are quite different. IMO.
The controversy over the use of “nigger” in Huckleberry Finn used to leave me undecided, until I came across an absolutely shocking essay of Twain’s called “The Noble Red Man,” one of the most vicious pieces of racism I’ve ever read. In it, he calls Indians “the scum of the Earth” and sneers at them for having nothing left to eat but grasshoppers. (The link provides only about half the essay. Trust me, it gets worse.)
Some Twain apologists have tried to spin “The Noble Red Man” as Swiftian satire, but I don’t buy it. For one thing, there are too many other contemptuous references to Indians elsewhere in his writing. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to racism, Twain lost the benefit of the doubt with that one.
I thought JStrange & MrN was a great book. The footnotes alone were worth the read. It is a tome, real strain on the carpal tunnel, and I read the paperback.
Bitter - check this out. Food for thought.
essay
Wait, I did read The Age of Innocence, but did NOT read Ethan Frome.
Yeah. Much more clear writing it that way.
I loved Strange & Norrell, but it is a bit weird. Crooked Timber had a seminar on it some time back, with the author and several Timberites contributing posts.
Banning books? Fuck that shit, nigga!
Strange & Norrell was pretty awesome. It’s oversaid, but it really does unify some of the good parts of Rowling and Austen.
Also it’s got Wellington being an asshole, which amuses me maybe more than it should.
My English class read “Lysistrata” in 12th grade. For those who haven’t read it, it’s an ancient Greek play about how the women of Athens and Sparta agree to foreswear sex until their men agree to stop the war between their two city-states. There’s a hilarious scene in which the women are saying out loud all of the sexual acts they are agreeing not to do, and one of them was translated in our version as the “lion on a cheese grater position.”
Someone asked our teacher what that was to try to embarrass her. Our teacher, who was quite prim and proper, explained that in ancient Greece, cheese graters were shaped like irons, with a flat side and a handle on the back. The handle was often in the shape of a lion. “You would probably call it ‘doing it doggy style,’” she said with an evil grin. There were many red faces in the room after that, including the person who’d asked the question, and an awkward silence. Game, set and match to teacher.
I love Strange & Norrell. If I wrote that, I’d be happy for the rest of my life even if I never wrote another thing.
I tried Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell a few years ago, and couldn’t make it much more than 50-75 pages in. The language was turgid and overwrought, and the constant use of quasi-archaic spellings struck me as trite and gimmicky.
But could he tell you what it was about?
(Not that I consider it great literature, because it’s not: it’s a loose, baggy first sorta-novel. And loose and baggy by Eggers’ standards. But I can absolutely understand its being on a syllabus for 15/16-y-os, not just for its plot but for its stylistic tricksiness, which i’d guess is easier to explicate than in older books.)
Ah, yes, because a book about someone who has to take care of his younger brother after both of their parents die within a month isn’t going to do that at all.
Damn, he reminds me of those fundie video stores that had the manager at the back cutting out all the ‘dirty’ bits, and presumably taping them together into one big cussin’ and fuckin’ compilation.
Anyway, Jonathan Strange, good book.
I’m not sure I’d call Clarke another Rowling. Clarke is more like Tolkien; rich and subtle for those willing to follow her complex map, but kind of an acquired taste.
The only other author I’ve read who has Rowling’s tone of wry whimsey is Judith Merkle Riley. Her big hit was A Vision of Light which kicks off her Margaret of Asbury trilogy.
Yeah, I know; a book about a female faith healer in the 14th century? Sounds dull and preachy, and in many other authors’ hands it would be. But even though Margaret goes through two forced marriages, an attempted rape, the Black Plague, an ordeal by fire, and a trial by the bishop* she keeps a wry sense of humor and a surprisingly feminist outlook.
*She had invented “steel fingers” (forceps) to help women in childbirth, for which she is castigated by the Bishop and threatened with burning at the stake. The mideval church had its priorities, after all, and helping women survive childbirth wasn’t one of them. Especially if a mere woman invented such a tool.
Twain wrote some f*kec up stuff at the same time he was one of the signatories against the exploitation of Africans in the Belgian (really King Leopold’s piggy bank) Congo.
A complex man and Huck Finn is still (imo) a great book.
JS and Mr N. is only like Harry Potter insofar as they’re both about magic, but more different mundane treatments would be hard to find.
I second the recommendation that people take a look over at the Crooked Timber discussion. It’s easily accessible from the front page.
hmm, so much for euphemism.
You know what I meant.
That one by Edith Warton where the farmer finds one moment of fleeting happiness and is punished accordingly by God.
Ah, yes. Ethan Frome. The one assigned reading book in high school that made me contemplate suicide after reading it.
SPOILER: They don’t die at the end. Because death would be a sweet escape from the living hell they are doomed to be trapped in for the rest of their lives for having an adulterous affair.
Great choice with JS&MN. Not only is it the grown-up Harry Potter, it’s got some of the best prose I’ve read in a long, long time.
Considering the different opinions herein, perhaps Huckleberry Finn ought to be your next book club selection.
Woot! Strange and Norrell! It solved my raging dissapointment problems with HP.
Dear BitterScribe and Deep6;
I first read Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a college US history class, and I’m glad I did; I had no idea what a good book it would be. Assuming anyone interested in arguing about Twain would have some knowledge of the plot and characters (ridiculous of course; I didn’t, but time is fleeting…) I refer to the character Augustine St. Clair, the “kindly” master (before he drops dead and his wife raffles the slaves off to Simon Legree). Stowe makes him one of the most intelligent and clear-sighted characters–and a tragic figure, for he sees clearly what is wrong and otherwise objectionable about the slavery system, but feels powerless to do otherwise than be an indulgent (and therefore unprofitable) master. But he knows his criticisms are correct and his rationalizations are inadequate; more drastic action is called for; he sees this, but cannot stir himself to such a radical break with the society he is so comfortable in, and all his kindly impulses amount, to the slaves, to nothing more than an eye in the storm.
St. Clair, in his interests and turns of speech, very strongly prefigures, at least IMHO, the voice of Mark Twain. So, I see in Twain similar strengths, and similar flaws, to those Stowe outlines for us in her character. Like St. Clair, Twain falls between the stools–he has a clear and astringent vision of the nature of his society, but he does not bring himself to recommend a truly radical solution, probably because he can see no attainable goal.
I’d be ready to stipulate that Twain was indeed blind to the equal humanity of Native Americans, being as he was committed to the Anglo-American society which was after all founded on the biggest land grab in history.
OTOH, the essay you cited, BitterScribe, is not only denouncing the real Native Americans, but also the puffery of the dominant mythology of the Noble Red Man–fantasies of noble savages that crop up in the American tradition just as soon as the real Indians seem safely defeated, banished, and irrelevant. If John Wayne is famous for the line “The only good Indian is a dead Indian”–why, in our culture, as soon as Indians are dead, they become Good. In countless ways, we create and perpetuate the myth of the Noble Savage Red Men because we then appropriate their “nobility,” “simplicity,” and of course–their land–as our own. (For instance, in the “capitivity narratives” I once audited Natasha studying at Mills College, it seemed evident to me that accounts of people adopted to Native tribes, such as that of Mary Jemison among the Seneca, often established title of particular settler families which intermarried, thus creating the impression that the Americans had absorbed and assimilated the Native peoples–and with them, of course, legitimized the larger community’s title to the land!)
So even if it is true that Twain was uncritical and savage in his own contempt for the native peoples, his essay must all the more be seen mainly as an attack on American values, since he would hardly care what the Indians may have thought of his characterization of them.
But the site you cited, BitterScribe, itself suggests that by the time Twain wrote Following the Equator (1897)
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/HNS/Indians/following.html
he had developed a more nuanced recognition of the arrogance and brutality of “white civilization” as it related to native peoples. (It always helps to learn to recognize savagery in one’s own society, by first learning to observe it overseas or in the distant past, where one’s lack of stake allows clearer vision–the trick is then to recognize the same patterns in the society one is committed to living in and has been educated to accept by ideology fostered in one’s very childhood.)
After describing how an Australian settler disposed of some Aborigines by tricking them into eating pudding laced with arsenic, Twain says
And he concludes the chapter:
So as always–glass half empty or half full? Twain is no moral superhero; nor was Harriet Beecher Stowe, for that matter. Like anyone else, they are embedded in the society they lived in and can offer only a particular viewpoint; what their generations did about it, and what we do, are shaped by what is possible.
I loved Strange and Norrell! Sorely tempted to opine at length about it now rather than waiting ’til October, but will try.
Ethan Frome: Of all the Wharton novels to assign, this seems the dullest. I suppose it’s chosen because it’s short and obvious. But it does come across as moralizing in a way that Wharton’s stuff usually doesn’t.
I was lucky enough to attend a private school in VA where my AP English class had maybe 18 students. The teacher spent the first two weeks getting to know the students a bit and then hand picked for each of us a book to do our first term paper on. It was pretty impressive, because as I recall, every student really enjoyed the books they were assigned. I was given Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse which to this day, is one of my favorite books.
No one minded the four letter words (teehee) and we all got something out of it. Amazing what a little education can do…
All this about Huck Finn . . I’m currently reading Tom Sawyer to my 8 year-old boy. If he’s not bored out of his mind, he’s utterly confused by the prose. I’m having to stop every page and explain what’s happening.
Fuck.
mnemosyne:
You see, you’re not approaching it from the right point of view - my American English teacher was notoriously weird. He gave John Astin a run for his money, particularly when both were in Gomez Addams mode. We approached Ethan Fromme after studying Gothic horror and tragedy, so he was all about taking gleeful delight in Wharton’s ability to drag out pitiful wretchedness and ennui while slowly torturing her characters. ‘Gomez’ loved it, especially how dull and dreary the prose was, because not only was Wharton torturing her characters but the readers. Exquisite misery!
And the affair? Nothing more than a kiss. One. Single. Kiss.
Of course, it must be remembered that Samuel Clemans treated Madame Guinan with perfect respect and obvious equality in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
idiosyncratic:
Tom Sawyer sucks and I write this as a great fan of Twain.
He’s not a children’s author, nor is Wharton. The misguided idea that reading the cut-down, inferior works of excellent writers has probably turned more students away from reading than anything else, including tv.
Dana, pay attention. Sam Clemens was always a progressive friend of African-Americans. At any rate he was by the time he published Tom Sawyer, and I dimly recall that like Teddy Roosevelt, he got into trouble with mainstream white society from time to time by being a courteous and respectful host to African-Americans in his own home, as well as advocating for them in print.
The argument is about how bigoted and harmful he was re Native Americans. I know you have a hard time recognizing how systematically racist US society always has been and is; I guess it’s a rather advanced lesson to take note of the nuanced flavors it comes in.
It seems to me that his attitudes toward native peoples in general were probably revolutionized by his anti-imperialist scrutiny of our little adventures in the Philippines and Carribean during and after the Spanish-American War. I leave it to better-read scholars than me to judge how much this may have carried over to his old attitudes re the Indians.
Speaking of nuns and HS lit, my senior year English teacher just so happened to be a nun. She was a somewhat serious sort and found that playing by the rules was important, but it became very obvious that she had rules for goofing off and the like–at least, obvious to me. She was quite deadpan, admittedly confusing some of my classmates, which created for hilarity of the highest order when she decided to read A Modest Proposal to the class.
The further on she read, the more of my classmates clued in, but the horrified expressions were priceless.
To discuss gender issues in Clarke’s world you may want to read as a companion piece the short story “The Ladies of Grace Adieu” which Clarke set in the smae world.
Amazing serendipity.
I’ve Susanna’s book for a couple of years now
but ran into a total reading block (to ANY reading) and actually
intended to send it to Amanda…as resident English-major,
so that somebody at least might be reading it.
I love ‘Jonathan Strange’ for her (? Napoleonic era) English
which I suspect she does extraordinarily well.
The book is said to be the culmination of decades of little notes
taken by an (kinda pretty by the flyleaf picture) extraordinarily literate librarian person.
I love librarians anyway, so she makes me weak.
Offer…for any of the book club who might like, I will
totally donate this lovely hardbound. Some very light pencilings.
The boss has my e-mail address.
Side note about thick, heavy books like JS&MN: If you don’t mind sort of mutilating a paperback book, you can cut the spine and make it into two or three books. You can even tape homemade covers onto them, and have a jolly old time decorating them.
Of course this only works for books you don’t need to re-sell some day.
rrp, Heresiarch of Sweet Tea:
TS sucked donkey’s balls. Huck Finn, written years and years later, was a much more mature, well-planned and insightful book. It’s sad that a writer of Clemens’ caliber is remembered today chiefly for his weakest, saddest character and his least-intelligent work.
But to ban either book based on one word is asinine, of course; then again, so are the breast-beating protestations of Mr. Jones.
You know, if I believed in reincarnation, I’d think Vonnegut was Clemens come back to life.
I tried reading Roughing It in college, and I was just bored. I tried again last year, and laughed and laughed. Some of the stories are more dull than others, but his telling of his trip via stagecoach from St. Louis to Nevada is a lot of fun, as are his yarns of the many times he struck it rich only to somehow lose everything very quickly thereafter.
I also read JS & MN a couple of years ago. It’s not nearly as easy going as Harry Potter, but the footnotes are delightful. Try reading with the idea (as determined in that Crooked Timber thread) that the narrator is most likely a woman. I agree that the main characters are not very sympathetic, but some of the secondary characters are very sympathetic.
I should re-read it so I’m fresher on the details come Oct 1
Most required reading books in school never make the point they are supposed to. Some of them feel like the same book over and over again (after a while, the “depressing southern noble black man wrongly accused by stupid white people” gets overdone) - some because the teachers have to over analyze to get the weaker points of the class to understand it, ruining the book for the stronger points (for example, there were all of three of us who liked/understood 1984 out of 26).
As far as shocking language goes, I still think Catcher in the Rye is outdated. The final “fuck you” just doesn’t have the same… punch, as it used to.
Any of you read Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling?
Ah, yes. Ethan Frome. The one assigned reading book in high school that made me contemplate suicide after reading it.
Never touched it, but I can relate. Try to imagine the sadistic nature of a national curriculum that inflicted this on me as a 13 year old.
Considering the different opinions herein, perhaps Huckleberry Finn ought to be your next book club selection.
Pro-American elitist propaganda. If it had been a NZ novel, there would have been a dog on the raft, Huck would be running away from family violence, and Nigger Jim would have ended up shooting everyone, including himself.
And there would probably be bloody magpies in there somewhere.
Any of you read Island in the Sea of Time by S.M. Stirling?
Yes. Stirling is repellent in his opinions (*), close to being a wingnut, but capable of journeyman alternate history - not great, but not bad. It’s a bit like Turtledove - there’s a niche there catering to escapism which can be filled by good research and moderate writing, and they’re churning out the material to fufill it. Mild levels of individualistic milporn, moderate levels of strawliberal bashing, and mildly turgid writing at times, but well researched and reasonably well-paced.
The only *good* novel of his I’ve read is “Drakon”, which was like Predator done intelligently.
(*) And, no, I’m not talking about the opinions of his characters - I’m talking about *him*.
I suggest you look at John Birmingham’s Weapons Of Choice (aka WW 2.0) series for a better alternate history.
I read JS & MN with strong recommendations and high hopes. Perhaps it was just overhyped for me, but I was sorely disappointed.
The book goes some interesting places, and I thought that both of the title characters had a lot of potential, but in the end, the payoff just wasn’t worth it. The prose is overwrought and deliberately archaic, but that actually kind of works in its favor, better setting the tone. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of Neal Stephenson’s baroque books, where it asks the reader to slog through certain parts that are thick with tedious detail for a big payoff at the end. The difference is that the baroque novels actually manage to deliver the payoff (if you’ve tried to read them and failed, you really have to persevere until Jack and Eliza become the focus, then they get interesting).
I think that the ending (no spoilers) was a complete deus ex machina, and belittled everything that came before it. I actually have a lot of fondness for authors that bite off way more than they can chew, establishing a bold and interesting setting with riveting characters and a gripping plot and then they can’t come up with an ending that does service to what they started (see the aforementioned Neal Stephenson or Dan Simmons), but I didn’t feel like JS & MN was so compelling in the reading that I could forgive a weak ending.
Your mileage may vary; other people certainly seem to love it.
I really enjoyed JS&MN. I have also read all the HP books (& believe some were better than others; that’s neither here nor there), Anyway, I commend you for starting up with JS&MN. I found the footnotes wonderfully imaginative, which I would consider its common thread with the HP series. Another common thread for me is that I found both hard to put down = long nights and tired eyes.
Nevertheless, I’ve not enjoyed much other fantasy lit and generally prefer more realism in my fiction, e.g., Richard Russo, Gail Godwin, A. Manette Ansay, to name just a few. Perhaps to contradict myself, Margaret Atwood is a sure-read, whether it’s her sci.fi.-ish stuff or the rest. Maybe I’m just a book slut. But I won’t be ashamed!
To mention something almost completely beside the point, a tragically under-read writer is T.R. Pierson. When I read his books, I sometimes laugh out loud.
Trivia: Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe were neighbors in Hartford, where he wrote Huck Finn.
Anyway, I commend you for starting up with JS&MN. I found the footnotes wonderfully imaginative, which I would consider its common thread with the HP series.
David Foster Wallace, _Infinite Jest_. Go for it.
When a friend of mine, then a cadet at West Point, now commanding a rifle platoon in Iraq, tried to organize a boycott of Stirling’s books (after Stirling had publically endorsed the murder of Muslims), Stirling responded by emailing my friend’s CO and complaining about online harassment.
Nothing came of it, but yeah, the man’s a chucklefuck. Like the man himself, his books are deeply flawed.
idiosyncratic:
Recommendations are sort of difficult when you don’t know the reader involved. If he’s at all interested in fantasy, try A Wrinkle in Time and the first of the Narnia books (dump the rest). I’m not sure how he’ll feel about a female protagonist.
What am I thinking? Get Wind in the Willows and Kim. The latter may be a little difficult, but the story-telling should pull him right along. The former is lovely and who can resist Toad? I don’t think the language is too archaic.
If you can find it, also try David and the Phoenix. I read it when I was a kid (I’m old) and liked it a lot. Come to think of it, I read a lot of fantasy as a kid.
One sort of off the wall thought, if you’re reading to him, you can do some editing, yes? Then get a copy of Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men and read the folk tale parts of it. You might want to skip the grownup fighting, bootlegging, sex stuff in between.
and to 2nd PiaToR, Stirling has good ideas, but can’t write his way out of a paper bag. The only thing in his favor is that one of the lead characters has read Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin series.
after Stirling had publically endorsed the murder of Muslims
I ran into a quote of his stating it was morally justified to mass murder Communists if they looked like getting into Parliament via a democratic vote…
I read strange or norrell this past year and the review I wrote shows the book did not rate. Save yourself the trouble and skip it’s 800 pages.
It may work for someone from England but the humor and place references went right over my head.
Better choices would be Cryptonomicon or anything by Connie Willis (Bellwether).
Trust me! You’ll will never meet anyone who has read more fiction. I read over 500 paperbacks per year for almost a decade.
bk…
That’s amazing…I am envious.
A little ‘credentialism’ DID creep in there.
[your volume fails to speak to your perspicacity..
not at all that you might not be eminently
perspicacious…OR that I had to look up ‘perspicacity’
for the 40th time speaks to my generally decent spelling abilities]