Happy Birthday, Gelett
Today in Boston in 1866 (Frank) Gelett Burgess was born.
He wrote more than 35 books of fiction and nonfiction, including Lady Méchante or Life As It Should Be (which is funny), as well as several plays, and he coined the word "blurb". But he is best known for this (which has a title I never knew till today):
Purple Cow: Reflections on a Mythic Beast Who's Quite Remarkable, at LeastThis poem haunted his life , eventually causing him to write this little sequel:
I never Saw a Purple Cow;
I never Hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I'd rather See than Be One.
Confession: and a Portrait Too, Upon a Background that I Rue
Ah, yes, I wrote the Purple Cow;
I'm sorry now I wrote it;
But I can tell you, Anyhow,
I'll Kill you if you Quote it.
(But he's dead, so I'm not afraid.)
2 Comments:
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At 3:31 PM, January 30, 2009
Barry Leiba had this to say...
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At 10:15 PM, January 31, 2009
Anonymous had this to say...
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<-- Older Post ^ Home Newer Post -->Ha, and I'd always thought the "purple cow" rhyme was Ogden Nash's.
I wish I'd known about this poem when I wrote my dissertation. I'd've quoted it in Chapter 5. See, here's the deal: Some semanticists argue that predicate nominatives have the semantic type of sets of individuals, whereas direct objects (simplifying a bit) have the semantic type of individuals, not sets of individuals. Here, we have a single token, one, that is both a predicate nominative and a direct object, and therefore has to have both semantic types at once, something that theoretically doesn't happen.
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