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Authors: Nicholas Royle

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But next thing he is framing snatches of Clarence, speaking of ten thousand men that fishes gnawed upon, wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, his internal marination, lengthening after life, in search of the empty, vast, and wand’ring air.

Gently I ask him what he’s talking about, but he’s hopped into blurred song, and I am inclined to think this is his way of acting off the slightly ‘possessed’ sense that he claims his theory has given him:

It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring, I see the doctor, I see the doctor and couldn’t get up in the morning, it’s roaring, marauding, we went to bed and deformed the head, of hearing and hoarding, who’s moaning, who’s speaking, it’s raining, it’s pouring, it’s howling, it’s calling, the moon rings, the moon sings, it’s paining, it’s spawning, wedged your head and went to bed, it’s feigning, it’s shoring, you hear the words are calling, cawing, they’re gnawing, and can’t get up in the can’t get up in the staining, it’s boring, she’s reigning, he’s fawning, I hear your voice, I know you’re dead, and can’t get up in the morning the morning the morning.

Such is the range of his more lyrical and impassioned traits. There’s nothing out of the ordinary here, I think. No, the horrifying conviction comes when he tells me about some writing project he’s begun elaborating and proceeds to read it aloud to me over the phone. It is a work
of lexicography devoted to the buried life of anagrams and homophones, each word with its own idiosyncratic definition, a dictionaray, yes, as he is pleased to declare: the world’s first English dictionaray. It would be a verbal laboratory, a dictionary testamentary to the way the ray leaves its mark in everyday language, a vocabulary that might constitute a new species of bestiary, and generate an altogether other estuary English. He remarks that it is practically impossible to complete, particularly on account of the peculiarity of the adverb form in English, interminably stirring up as it does new terrain. And then he begins. With each new letter of the alphabet he pauses momentarily, then proceeds to the next series of words, giving each entry equal measure, enunciating throughout with customary care and scrupulosity (no doubt, it occurs to me, also his father’s). He reads it, in short, precisely in the manner of a poem. It takes me a while to get a grasp of what is going on:

Airy

Awry

Anniversary

Anteriority

Arraign

Arrange

Actuary

Afraid

Allegory

Amatory

Arty

Abrasion

Aurally

Absurdity

Already

Astronomy

Astrophysics

Arbitrary

Acrylic

Antiquary

Archetype

Archetypal

Apparatus

Alteration

Alterity

Abruptly

Army

Attractively

Admirably

Articulately

Apparently

Angry

Aleatory

Archaeology

Archery

Astray

Adversary

Ashtray

Aviary

Adoration

Anticipatory

Apothecary

Approvingly

Alary

Adultery

Adulterate

Asseveration

Accordingly

Accurately

Accelerate

Anywhere

Brae

Beray

Brain

Bleary

Binary

Betray

Berate

Brassy

Brazen

Braised

Barbarity

Break

Breakdown

Brake

Boundary

Braid

Bray

Brave

Balustrade

Battery

Brutality

Barely

Brace

Barley

Broadly

Beret

Bibliography

Biography

Bastardy

Brandy

Barmy

Bakery

Braille

Bestiary

Bizarrely

Brainy

Birthday

Bystander

Crafty

Centenary

Charade

Crystal

Chrysalis

Coronary

Carry

Combinatory

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