Friday, November 27, 2015

Louis Menand, how could you?

I was thoroughly enjoying Louis Menand's "The Elvic Oracle", his review of Peter Guralnick's Sam Phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, but then I came to this parenthetical:
(Becoming friendly with d.j.s who played the kind of music you recorded was basic industry practice. Leonard Chess, of Chess Records, used to have a trunk full of alligator shoes when he drove around visiting local d.j.s. He’d ask for their shoe size and gift them a pair.)
I've Italicized "gift" in the quotation because, as I've noted before, "gift" as a verb is unnecessary, as "give", which has no more letters, is already available, and using "gifted" as the past tense of "gift" causes confusion with "gifted" as a commonly used adjective.

In any event, thanks to Menand's review, I'm looking forward to reading Guralnick's book and reviewing it here.

No comments:

Post a Comment