Monday, August 20, 2001

From the Annals of the Department of Redundancy Department



wood s lot points us to this review of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression, by Andrew Solomon.





Unfortunately, the passage quoted contains the following phrase which caught my eye:





"...Solomon manages to give the reader a sense of depression's shape-shifting, protean character."





Reviewer Judith Lewis is probably a fine writer. She's probably a better writer than I. But I can't help pointing out that protean means "readily assuming different shapes and forms." So we can rewrite the passage above as:





"...Solomon manages to give the reader a sense of depression's shape-shifting, many-shaped character."





Oops.



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