to "reference": Kafkaesque

[Mark Mandel]

Whereas the allusion is to "Hotel California", not "The Hot l Baltimore".
Si?

m a m

On Fri, Jan 8, 2010 at 6:18 PM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:

> NPR this evening read a letter from a seemingly educated devotee pointing
> out an inaccurate cultural reference:
>
> "[So and so] referenced that Congress is becoming 'like the Hotel
> Baltimore:
> "You can check in but you can't check out."'"
>
> Right, Roach Motels. (Hmmm. The allusion becomes ever more appropriate....)
>
> But the point is that to "reference (that)" means to "say while making a
> reference."  I don't doubt that one can also "allude (that)," but I'll
> leave
> that quest to others.
>
> In a seemingly unrelated development, CNN's Rick Sanchez alluded whether
> Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's alleged habit of harassing local critics of
> his
> brand of lawnorder is "possibly Kafkaesque."
>
> Yeah, possibly, but my understanding of "Kafkaesque" doesn't to apply to
> anything Joe is likely to have done unless he's a master of the sinister,
> the futile, and the weird all three.
>
> Cf. Pam to Alvy in _Annie Hall_ (1977): "Sex with you is a Kafkaesque
> experience. I mean that as a compliment."
>
> JL
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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