"Hip" from Wolof?; Big Apple Whores (cont.); My book is published

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

"HIP" FROM WOLOF?
    
Hip: The History
By John Leland
Ecco, 405 pp., %26.95
  
http://www.villagevoice.com/vls/182/sante.shtml
EYES WIDE SHUT
BY LUC SANTE
The way of all hip, from Emerson to a billboard near you

John Leland may or may not have written the first history of hipness—I can't, 
in an admittedly casual search, find another—but it's hard to shake the 
thought that such a book might as well be its subject's obituary. It's like 
broadcasting the rituals of the lodge, or maybe spelling down all the names of the 
godhead. There are dozens of histories of bohemia, but that's not the same 
thing, although the two concepts have a large field of intersection. Bohemia 
started in Europe and spread around the world, but hip (Leland employs the word as 
both adjective and noun) is indigenously American. The word derives from the 
Wolof hepi ("to see") and hipi ("to open one's eyes"). The idea of hip emerged 
from seeds sown in Senegambia that budded in America. It has everything to do 
with race mixing, and it works both ways, comprising not just white people's 
love and theft of black style but also African American appropriations of 
European baggage: the pianoforte, the three-button suit, existentialism, Yiddish 
expressions, horn-rim glasses, the novel. And hip is occult, arcana without a 
heaven. 

        
I saw this book at the Barnes & Noble and I've been thinking about this. 
Lighter's HDAS has "origin unknown" for "hep" and "hip." It's nice that a book 
about the subject, such as this is, can go beyond scholarship and state a 
conclusion for a mass audience that's not based on evidence.
  
And the reviewers--they usually know even less.
  
I don;t subscribe to the "Wolof" theory at all. Even if I did, however, I 
would have reservations in stating this before the general public. But I guess 
that wouldn't be hip.
    
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
EBWAY.ORG & THE BIG APPLE WHORES
    
Two in one week. I'd posted about "Google Answers," but there's also this. 
The editors also write for TIME OUT NEW YORK, so there's an outside chance that, 
after a mere twelve years, "the Big Apple" story might finally appear in a 
New York magazine (NEW YORK, NEW YORKER, TIME OUT).
  
http://www.ebway.org/
   Thursday, October 14, 2004  
> How 'bout them Big Apples?
> 
It seems that with our August 27 post about the origin of the NYC nickname 
"The Big Apple" we stumbled into a longtime feud. A week ago, we got an email 
from Barry Popik, a contributor-consultant to the Oxford English Dictionary who, 
he claims, is "recognized as an expert on the origins of the terms Big Apple, 
Windy City, hot dog, and many other food terms." Popik says that our story, 
which traced the name back to an LES madame's "apples", is a hoax perpetrated 
by The Society for New York City History. Popik argues that the actual term 
came from African-American stable hands at the Fair Grounds racetrack in New 
Orleans, who referred to the big time as the "Big Apple."

Have we (and El Diario) been hoodwinked? We report (a little), you decide.

Update: EBway reader deanna writes, "The guy about the horseraces is right. 
The term really gained popularity among jazz artists coming to the the city to 
play, too -- they picked it up from the horserace fans, and when they would 
get gigs in NYC in the 1910s and '20s, they would say they were going to the Big 
Apple... they'd landed a gig in what was then the best place outside of New 
Orleans to get noticed. The appropriation of jazz slang -- note the word "cool" 
is jazz all the way -- and the appropriation of African-American slang in 
general into mainstream culture is well-documented and studied in a variety of 
linguistics texts..."

   posted by Ian at 2:10 PM     
  
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------
MY BOOK IS PUBLISHED
    
My book arrived; the book party is Tuesday. I've been depressed all week.
  
Last Saturday, I took a walking tour of Little India in Jackson Heights. I 
thought I'd do some work on "Bollywood," and all the NYPL materials were, as 
usual, off site. Wednesday, after work, I headed to the Science, Industry, and 
Business library (open until 8 p.m.) and ordered the books. Thursday and Friday 
should have been plenty of time to get them, and I'd read them on Saturday.
  
Yesterday, I made the trek to the NYPL. My books weren't there. "You made the 
request when?" I was asked. There was no trace of my off-site request. I 
would have to request the books again. That's how it's been.
  
Barry Popik! I'm Barry Popik! This happens to me every single goddamn time! 
Is there some problem? Every single thing I do my entire life is like this! 
Soylent Green is made of people! People!!!!!!!!!
  
Which brings me again to my new book. I can't say what the book is because 
ADS-L archives are Google-searchable.
  
Let's start off with "hot dog." It's written by the expected person. Written 
poorly. My name is never cited, but Gerald Cohen's is. Also cited is David K. 
Barnhart and Allan A. Metcalf's AMERICA IN SO MANY WORDS, because you'd want 
to receive my "hot dog" work second-hand. 
    
Let's check "corn dog." (Corn is on the cover of the book.)  "And it is no 
coincidence that the corn dog (invented as the 'cozydog' in Springfield, 
Illinois, in 1947) and cornflakes (by Kellogg's in Battle Creek, Michigan, in 1902) 
both originated in the Midwest,..." I'd posted here in February 2003 that "corn 
flakes" was cited from the 1890s. In November 2002, I'd posted "corn dog" 
from 1939. In April 2003, I'd posted "corn dog" from 1929. In November 2003, I'd 
posted "corn dog" hitting  Los Angeles in 1940.
  
Let's check "gyro." I had made a special trip to Chicago for this. Nope, not t
here.
  
Let's check "Danish pastry." I'd traced this to a Danish baker in New York 
City, but no one will ever know.
  
Let's check "slang." The entry is by Tom Dalzell and several AMERICAN SPEECH 
articles are cited. No dates are attached to most of the slang. "86"--perhaps 
the greatest slang term of this type--is not mentioned. My work on Michael 
Casey and the Bowery origin of food slang ("Adam and Eve on a Raft") is not 
mentioned. Despite this, Dalzell's "slang" article is still one of the best written 
in the book.
  
Let's check "smoothie." I did tremendous work on this, but there's no entry. 
Just one line! "Smoothies, thick drinks consisting of fresh fruit blended with 
milk, yogurt, or ice cream, became popular in the 1980s." ONE LINE! Not even 
a good one line.
  
Let's check "Sicilian pizza," of which I'd recently posted and should make 
another post with an earlier cite. It's not here under "pizza."
  
Let's check "ice cream." This entry had better be good--"ice cream" is 
important. Let's start with "sundae":
    
"The invention of the ice cream sundae is also the stuff of legend. One 
version has it that preachers thought it was sinful to si[p sodas on Sundays, which 
led an enterprising soda jerk to invent the sundae. Another says it was 
invented when someone ran out of soda water. The sundae was hugely popular, and 
other ice cream innovations followed."
  
That's it. No names. No places. No dates.
  
Let's check "iced tea." It's in a section about the 1904 St. Louis World's 
Fair: "Visitors are more conventional food than at other fairs but were first 
introduced to iced tea, Eskay's healthy baby foods, sliced bread, and, 
purportedly, hot dogs and hamburgers." But in the section on "tea," there's this: "Iced 
tea was also available in the 1870s in hotels and railroads."  My important 
find in the 1857 SATURDAY EVENING POST is never mentioned.
  
Let's check "Long Island Iced Tea." It isn't here!
  
The cocktail sections were written by Dale DeGroff, who quotes the same usual 
sources and does no original research.
  
Let's check "coffee." Surely, my book would have some of my work on 
"cappuccino" in America, tracing the historical sites in San Francisco and New York 
(Caffe Regio on MacDougall Street). "Cappuccino" is not even in the index!
  
So it goes, on term after term of American food and drink.
  
On Friday, I brought the book to work. Everybody was impressed. Yeah, the 
binding is fabulous.
  
And I'm thinking, why am I still doing parking tickets for a living? Why is 
this even a book and not an electronically searchable format? Why am I not 
writing a dictionary and blasting all of this apart?
   
Why do I live another day? To get plagiarized by Chicago? To tell people 
twice a week that the Big Apple doesn't come from whores? Is that it?