The Word's Gotten Out

Willard R. Espy's The Word's Gotten Out is somewhat hard to categorize. The subtitle is A Commonplace Book, which is a whole genre of book I haven't previously been aware of. The genre, as a whole, includes a wide variety of books that are meant to be a storage-like facility for a person's thoughts.

Espy's personal U-Haul is packed full with a seemingly random collection of thoughts, quotes, amusing anecdotes and quirky stories all jumbled together in a somehow coherent book. What struck me was that it reads like a blog, in book form - although, since it was published in 1989, it certainly predates blogging by a bit. He's compiled a journal of his life, peppered with details that, when combined, are quite compelling.

Often including discussion on words and wordplay, Espy gives a lot of thought to the construction of words, the meaning or spelling of them, the sound and weight of them. And manages to make it all interesting, instead of falling back to any sort of English teacher drone. His poems are unique plays-on-words, filled with humor and spirit; he relates personal experiences to broader themes; manages to tie the past to the present persuasively; and his thorough examination of seeming minutiae brings new relevance to things often overlooked. And while I didn't always get his references (I am, apparently, less familiar with the classics than I ought to be), I never felt as if he were writing over my head on purpose, in order to show off his knowledge. Instead, he includes helpful footnotes and provides the answers to any questions he poses during his discussions. Overall, it was entertaining, well-written, and worth the effort to find.