Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Writing Blogs -> Writing Tools

Legal Writing

: Writing Tools

Writer, Heal Myself

By Roy Peter Clark

A phrase from my last column has earned me a bit of attention and feedback. In an essay on the use and abuse of the word "crusade," I referred to Osama Bin Laden as "that spelunking meshuggeneh."  I coined this phrase not long after I advised writers not to show off, but to "murder your darlings."

Am I now another great American hypocrite, incapable of tracking my own path?

The answer is: I DO NOT CARE. I so love "spelunking meshuggeneh" that I care not whether readers ignore it or critics abhor it. Moreover, I profess that such self-love is not literary onanism, but an essential form of self-respect, a writerly requirement. You can't please others if you fail to please yourself.

I could, for example, have simplified my jelly donut phrase to "that cave-dwelling madman." Not a single reader would be confused. But "cave-dwelling" seemed too soft, and "madman" too common. "Spelunking" is one of my favorite words, and I rarely miss a chance to use it. Derived from the Greek and Latin word for "cave," a spelunker "explores caves as a hobby." The word, I believe, reduces Bin Laden, makes his circumstances more claustrophobic, and adds that wicked middle syllable "lunk" -- which just reminds me of "lunk head."

Even better, for me, was "meshuggeneh," a great Yiddish word, meaning "a crazy person," but in a Mel Brooks rather than Sigmund Freud kind of way. It may be the most unlikely word ever to abut "spelunking," and it exacts, as a Jewish epithet, poetic justice against one of the evil leaders who would just as soon wipe a certain group of people from the face of the earth.

I cannot ignore the tests of comprehensibility. I've often said that writers have a duty to readers to define strange words or make them clear from context. I may be self-indulgent, but I'm not naive. I can't envision a caravan of readers marching to the dictionary to get my meaning. I guess it's fair to say that I'm willing to sacrifice those readers to give others a blast of delight, including the one who told me that, upon meeting the phrase, she "giggled with glee."

So I'm leaving it up to you. Am I a word hypocrite? What do you think of "spelunking meshuggeneh?" Stunningly brilliant? Pathetically self-indulgent? Jumping the shark into the frying pan? Let us know.

Full post as published by Writing Tools on September 26, 2007 (boomark / email).