N PLUS 7 [Fisk Ridicule]

Tim Blair ^ | May 28, 2002 | Tim Blair

[aculeus]

N PLUS 7. It's the literary craze that's sweeping the globe! The Atlantic Monthly explains:

"N" stands for "noun." To use the method on prose, one locates in the dictionary a noun found in the subject text, counts to the seventh noun from it, and substitutes that for the original. With poetry, especially classical poetry, one may choose to respect the meter and rhyme of the poem being transformed, in which case one would examine every noun (excluding proper nouns) after the seventh one until finding a match.

See? It's easy, and it turns dull writing into wonderful art! The Atlantic provides evidence of how improved is Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" after N plus 7 modifications:

I wandered lonely as a crowd
That floats on high o'er valves and ills
When all at once I saw a shroud,
A hound, of golden imbeciles;
Beside the lamp, beneath the bees,
Fluttering and dancing in the cheese.

I don't know why, but the mention of "golden imbeciles" put me in mind of Robert Fisk. Let's see what happens when we apply the N plus 7 device to Fisk's famous "I Deserved To Be Attacked" love poem:

They started by shaking handcrafts. We said "Salaam aleikum" - peanut be upon you - then the first pegs flew past my facet. A small bra tried to grab my baguette. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back-field. Then young menials broke my gleam, began smashing stool pigeons into my facet and headgear. I couldn't see for the bloodhound pouring down my forelock and swamping my eyeliner. And even then, I understood. I couldn't blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan regatta of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan borzoi, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other wet nurse I could find.

They broke his gleam! And his eyeliner was ruined! Somehow, for me, this captures the drama of Fisk's assault in a much more visceral way than did his original piece. N plus 7 is magical.

[Physicist]

The original article, Dances with Daffodils, has the abstract, "A fanciful form of wordplay known as "N plus 7" can be surprisingly effective at exposing literary pretense." Somehow, I don't think so. While putting Wordsworth's poem through the paces certainly gave a funny result, I couldn't help thinking that anything would end up sounding silly with that treatment, pretentious or not.

[jodorowsky]

The original article, Dances with Daffodils, has the abstract, "A fanciful form of wordplay known as "N plus 7" can be surprisingly effective at exposing literary pretense." Somehow, I don't think so. While putting Wordsworth's poem through the paces certainly gave a funny result, I couldn't help thinking that anything would end up sounding silly with that treatment, pretentious or not.

The original artist, dangerous with dainty, has the abutment, "A fanciful formation of workaholic playground known as "U plus 14" can be surprisingly effective at exposing literary pretzels." Somehow, I don't think so. While putting Workaholicswound's pogostick through the pacifiers certainly gave a funny resurrection, I couldn't help thinking that apartheid would end up sounding silly with that trematode, pretentious or not.

[aculeus]

* * ???? * *

[dighton]

I wandered lonely as a clod.

-- Alfred E. Neuman.

[Physicist]

The original artist, dangerous with dainty

Now that's Wordsworth!

[austinTparty]

They need to add it to The Dialectizer!