A. Bouazza sent information on "amorandola"
written by Ted Mills: " for a first novel in English, the vocabulary
stretched my brain to its limit. Check out this list of words I had to look
up:
megrim, triskelion, selenographer, amorandola, Keeweenawatin, mnemogenic,
velvetina, ruelle, pauldron, salix, cardiarium, dolichocephalic, decorpitation,
noumenon, eidolon, kurorts, deoculation, yarovization."
(The
problem with Googling unknown words:
every fifth word turns out to the name of a literary journal.[ Or a rock group
or album])
The list of words
chosen by Mills does not distinguish neologisms, wordplay and real words.
The latter: "mnemogenic", "eidolon", "noumenon", "Kurorts",
"dolichocefalic"...
VN himself
described amorandola as a "neologism"while Bouazza's interpretation
seems to fit perfectly VN's critical view of amorous sentinels and
policemen playing a mandolin. His additional suggestion of
a "gondola-shaped straitjacket" is
wonderful: Googling for
Amorandola, which I always considered a portmanteau of
amor and mandolin in a gondola-shaped
straitjacket..."
A "cardiarium" must
be the equivalent for "heart-care" like a "serpentarium" for snakes or
"orchidarium" for orchids.
Deoculation
(excising the eyes) is merely descriptive, whereas "decorpitation" must
be a word-play with "decapitation" (instead of looking at a head that
is being cut off we look at the severed body) and, in my view, not really
precise: it should be "decorpation" and, in that case, we would probably
miss the wordplay...
It would be fun to
read what other interpretations to neologisms and word plays, similar in spirit
to Bouazza's gondola-shaped straig-jacket, issue from other talented
List-members. A kind of Nabokovian lexicon...