"Methamphetamine prose"

[Wilson Gray]

Back in the '70's I read an article about speed that contained an
anecdote something like this:

Instead of working on 25-page paper due at eight o'clock the next
morning, guy is getting down with his old lady. Suddenly, he remembers
about the paper and freaks. But, it's already after midnight: no time
even to pull an all-nighter. Girlfriend, who pictures herself as
overweight, suggests that he drop one of her coincidentally
methamphetamine-based diet pills. By six the next morning, as he
begins to come down, he notices that he has successfully completed
more than 400 pages. Unfortunately, a quick scan reveals that the
whole paper is nothing but gibberish.

Perhaps Keller had read or heard about the same article.

-Wilson

On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 8:45 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: "Methamphetamine prose"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 4:56 PM -0400 5/4/10, Dan Goncharoff wrote:
>>"The Powers That Be" depended on many scores of interviews, and it is a
>>propulsive read (or an exhausting one, depending on how you feel about
>>Halberstam's methamphetamine prose).
>
> designed for speed reading
>
> LH
>
>>
>>from Bill Keller's review of Alan Brinkley's The Publisher in the
>>NYTimes Book Review, published April 22, 2010
>>
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>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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