Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story about an imaginary mongoose

Wed Oct 27 15:26:16 UTC 2010

It leads me to wonder if Schauffler had heard the mongoose/apparatus story
with, perhaps, the added detail that the mongoose/apparatus was a Christmas
gift for someone. An interlocutor might then have said something like, "What
sort of a McGuffin is it?"

Worthless conjecture, but it would be nice to account for this 1925 McGuffin
as something more than complete coincidence.

JL

On Wed, Oct 27, 2010 at 11:12 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a story
>              about an imaginary mongoose
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I have checked two of the early citations (on paper and microfilm) for
> the word McGuffin (as a gift) that were found by Doug Wilson in
> snippet form.
>
> The word appears in an article by Robert Haven Schauffler that is
> described as a "daydream about some words we need in English." The
> initial sentence is "Despite the milion-odd entries in the latest
> dictionary, there are not nearly enough words to allow us to say what
> we mean."
>
> Cite: 1925, Peter Pantheism by Robert Haven Schauffler, Chapter:
> Unborn Words, Page 57-58, The Macmillan Company, New York. (Google
> snippet; Verified on paper)
>
> There is no end to our needs. One of them is "impreciation," to denote
> the opposite of appreciation. Another is some single word for
> "pleasantly disappointed." Might the two be telescoped into
> "pleasappointed"? I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a
> "McGuffin" is a gift that is not to be opened until Christmas.
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=elgwAAAAIAAJ&q=mcguffin#search_anchor
>
>
> Cite: 1926 March, The Writer: An Authors' Monthly Forum, The Essay:
> "Unborn Words" by Robert Haven Schauffler, Page 105, Column 2, Writer,
> Inc., Boston, Massachusetts. (Google snippet; Verified on microfilm)
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=tCQ5AAAAMAAJ&q=mcguffin#search_anchor
>
> The text surrounding McGuffin is the same in this reference. A note at
> the beginning of the article "Unborn Words" states:
>
> FROM PETER PANTHEISM, (THE MACMILLAN CO., 1924)
> COPYRIGHT 1925 BY ROBERT HAVEN SHAUFFLER
>
> However, the 1924 date above appears to be inaccurate since direct
> examination of the book Peter Pantheism reveals a publication date of
> 1925 and a copyright date of 1925.
>
> Previously, Stephen Goranson checked a citation in The Century
> Magazine. All three of these early cites for McGuffin as a gift point
> to the same essay by Robert Haven Schauffler that was reprinted in
> multiple locations.
>
> Garson
>
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2010 at 9:34 AM, Stephen Goranson <goranson at duke.edu>
> wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Stephen Goranson <goranson at DUKE.EDU>
> > Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a
> story
> >              about an imaginary mongoose
> >
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > The following use of M'Guffin and McGuffin may be irrelevant--so a
> McGuffin?-- but in case no/yes:
> > "Rienzi M'Guffin's Plot,"  Tid-Bits: An Illustrated Weekly For These
> Times [New York] v. 2 March 5, 1887, though listed as Time [London] [n.s.]
> vol. 6 (1887) p. 3. McGuffin erases the record of his Nov. birthdate, to
> replace it with Christmas, in order to save money on presents. Available at
> Hathi Trust:
> >
> >
> http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?seq=25&num=16&view=image&id=mdp.39015022671377&q1=%22rienzi+mcguffin%22&size=175
> >
> > Stephen
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Stephen Goranson [goranson at DUKE.EDU]
> > Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 4:44 AM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a
>            story              about an imaginary mongoose
> >
> > Interesting. Thanks. FWIW, the same sentence--I forget who was the
> creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift that is not to be opened
> until Christmas--appears in Robert Haven Schauffler, "Some Words We Need,"
> The Century Magazine, vol. 109 no. 5, March 1925 [the vol. is 1924-1925; GB
> no preview gives the 1924 date] 671-8 here 677, confirmed on paper.
> >
> > Stephen Goranson
> > http://www.duke.edu/~goranson
> > ________________________________________
> > From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
> Garson O'Toole [adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM]
> > Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 7:37 PM
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: [ADS-L] Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a
>            story              about an imaginary mongoose
> >
> > Nice find. There is a recent slang dictionary that refers to this gift
> > sense of McGuffin when discussing the sense popularized by Hitchcock.
> >
> > Dictionary of American Slang 4th edition edited by Barbara Ann Kipfer
> > and Robert L. Chapman
> >
> > The entry for MacGuffin includes the following:
> >
> > [1930s+; first used by director Alfred Hitchcock, and perhaps
> > suggested by McGuffin, "a gift that is not to be opened until
> > Christmas," hence something tantalizing, found by 1925]
> >
> > At Amazon you can look inside one particular paperback edition of this
> > slang dictionary and see the entry for MacGuffin:
> > Collins Reference; 4 Reprint edition (August 19, 2008).
> > The page is blocked in Google Books.
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Oct 17, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Douglas G. Wilson <douglas at nb.net>
> wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at NB.NET>
> >> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a
> story
> >>              about an imaginary mongoose
> >>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >>  On 10/17/2010 8:19 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> >>> Sender:       American Dialect Society<ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter<wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> >>> Subject:      Re: Hitchcock's McGuffin story possibly derived from a
> story
> >>>                about an imaginary mongoose
> >>>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>>
> >>> Not just interesting and entertaining: brilliant!
> >>>
> >>> It isn't clear whether _Time_ got their version of the story directly
> or
> >>> indirectly from Hitchcock himself.
> >>>
> >>> Surely Hitchock, like most literate Britons, knew the difference
> between a
> >>> mongoose and a McGuffin. (Mongooses figure prominently in both Kipling
> and
> >>> Saki.) This, even more than the footnote, suggests that he'd heard the
> stor=
> >>> y
> >>> with "McGuffin" already in it, especially since in his version the
> animal o=
> >>> r
> >>> apparatus is used to catch tigers, which is beyond the capability of
> >>> mongooses.
> >> --
> >>
> >> No doubt Hitchcock's story was equivalent to the mongoose story (I've
> >> heard a few variants myself).
> >>
> >> But of course it's possible that the story actually had nothing at all
> >> to do with the origin of the term "McGuffin", but was only connected to
> >> this "McGuffin" as a retrospective guess or error (by Hitchcock or
> >> somebody else).
> >>
> >> At G-books, apparently the same passage twice, in disgusting snippet
> >> form, dated 1925 and 1926 (of course the date etc. should be checked):
> >>
> >> <<I forget who was the creator of "McGuffin," but a "McGuffin" is a gift
> >> that is not to be opened until Christmas.>>
> >>
> >> This appears to be in a light/humorous piece about newly-coined words or
> >> new words which are needed, so it's not clear (to me) whether "McGuffin"
> >> referring to a Christmas present really existed previously.
> >>
> >> Anyway, assuming this passage is what it seems to be and correctly
> >> dated, we have a candidate for the ancestral "McGuffin", surely
> >> appropriate in form and perhaps appropriate in sense also. I suppose
> >> that the necklace or document or whatever item is called for by a story
> >> plot is something which for suspense purposes is not to be revealed
> >> until a certain point ... so it's "do not reveal until the
> >> climax/denouement/whatever", a good analogy to "do not open until Xmas".
> >>
> >> Pardon me if this quotation has appeared here before; I don't see it in
> >> the archive.
> >>
> >> -- Doug Wilson
> >>
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> >>
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