FN + LN

[Jonathan Lighter]

Well, there's Major Major, who eventually became Major Major Major, but when Heller refers to him, as he always does, as "Major Major," one can't tell whether it's FN + LN or R + LN.

  One imagines that O'Brien read _Catch-22_, but there's little identifiable influence of the earlier book on the later.

  JL



Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
  ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: FN + LN
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

At 6:34 AM -0700 5/29/07, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>When I was a kid, the unalterably binomial _Charlie Brown_ struck me
>as weird. Now I'm used to it, but it's still peculiar.
>
> ISTR that Tim O'Brien, in his fictions _Going After Cacciato_ and
>_The Things They Carried_, sometimes uses binomial names as some
>sort of mannerism. Will check.
>
> JL
>

Do I remember correctly (if vaguely) that one of Heller's characters
in _Catch 22_ always referred to on a FN + LN basis? (Not to be
confused with LN-only Yossarian.) If so, this would be a
continuation of the tradition, given other links between Catch-22 and
O'Brien's novels.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



---------------------------------
Get the Yahoo! toolbar and be alerted to new email wherever you're surfing.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org