Fwd: one-handed quote search

[Laurence Horn]

P.S.  There appears to be a strong suspicion in some quarters that
this "euphemism" is a translation from the French (but if so, whose
French?).

L
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Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 00:02:01 -0400
To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
Subject: one-handed quote search

Can anyone help me pin down the first reference to "books you read
with one hand" or "book to be read with one hand"?  The web (same
place we read about the faux-acronymic origin of "GOLF", "POSH",
"SHIT",...) offers authoritative attributions to Borges, Henry
Miller, and Samuel Pepys, but of course without any exact cites, and
I find nothing in Bartlett's or other dictionaries of quotations
handy.  I suspect these nominations may be more along the lines of
Round Up the Usual Suspects than actual attributions.  Anything in
the YDOQ files?

Larry

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