We have duplicate copies of Dickens’s novels. If it exists, we would like to donate them to the What the Dickens? bookshop
My husband points out that the name What the Dickens? would be a PR disaster. For one thing, people no longer say, “What the Dickens?” For another, the average person, unless he or she is shopping at Barnes & Noble, prefers to frequent bookshops with simple names containing the word ”books.” And it is true that every independent bookshop in the state (except one) is called [Something] Books or the [Something] Bookshop.
The phrase “What the Dickens?” is obsolete in the 21st century, of course. It was not thriving in the 20th century, either. “What the Dickens are you doing?” my mother occasionally said. The phrase was a polite reprimand for any number of silly, annoying things: burning incense (it stank), wearing an Army jacket (we were citizens co-opting an army jacket as an anti-war protest tactic), or pinning a Frodo Lives! button on a good sweater.
And it turns out that the expression What the Dickens? has nothing to do with Dickens. When I looked it up in an old Webster’s dictionary I learned that “dickens” means “devil” or “demon,” and is “used in exclamations or as a mild imprecation.” It is related to the proper names, Dick and Dicken, and was first seen 1590-1600, the lexicographer believes.
One shouldn’t even capitalize Dickens. What the dickens?
More on Annotation & a Comic Note on Juvenal’s Satires
I have gently mocked the personal annotation trend and recommended keeping books pristine.
I am a notebook fan when it comes to note-taking. Today I came across an orange Moleskine notebook, which I dedicated to a variety of purposes from 2015 to 2017.
It is mostly a traditional book journal, with a few jottings and quotes. And t wrote what is probably the funniest modern annotation on Juvenal’s Satire VI (p. 40, in the Foiio Society edition). Juvenal in English is not for prudes, but his satires are more obscene in Latin, and like all Roman satirists, he is a misogynist. (The gentle Horace is even more misogynistic in his satires.) It is a genre thing. You have to accept it. Like Lenny Bruce.
Juvenal’s derision of women who fit the profile of groupies is so sharp and funny and true that I noted in response: “Monica Lewinsky.”
Juvenal writes, “Others in winter, when the theaters are closed…/ will yearningly fondle souvenirs of their favorite actor,/their tragedy king- his mask, his thyrsis, his jock-strap.”
My illegible travel writing is less successful. I observed on one trip, “It is a [something] culture.” But what kind of culture? i can make out an “s.t” Stream? Street? Steampunk? Stylish? Stodgy? Stunning?
At the time the notes meant something [Something?].
