Stan Kelly-Bootle writes "All was going smoothly, rationally, and admiringly [in Pete Hamill's review] until I encountered: 'those ugly words that come out of sociology or the Beltway ("proactive," "impact" as a verb, too many others)'.Subjective feelings that a word or usage is ‘ugly’ should never be extended to objective assertions that that word or usage is somehow inherently nasty and despicable. What on earth is ugly about proactive?...It has the merit of crisply describing situations where we have no simpler synonyms. Ditto: Reactive and RADIOactive. Stan Kelly-Bootle."

 

JM: After Nab-L's polymath of polymaths vented out his anger, even Nabokov wasn't spared since, for Stan K-B, although "you may agree with Nabokov that the word sex is inappropriately ugly for such a beautiful activity ... but I don’t. Plexus and nexus vexeth, but sex beats coitus any restless night." 

 

I beg to disagree with the master, at least in parts. In the first place because, since "sex" is hardly equal to "coitus" (which, originally, should also indicate "cooked," as found in the Portuguese "biscoito", ie, "cookie", derived from the ancient custom of mingling bread crumbs and sugar to bake them again, for a renewed degustation), it shouldn't compete single-handedly in such a conjunctive fray. Secondly, because it wasn't Nabokov who wrote that sonorous complaint, but pitiful V, Sebastian Knight's half-brother: "the very sound of the word 'sex' with its hissing vulgarity and the 'ks, ks' catcall at the end, seems so inane to me that I cannot help doubting whether there is any real idea behind the word, Indeed, I believe that granting 'sex' a special situation when tackling a human problem, or worse still, letting the 'sexual idea', if such a thing exists, pervade and 'explain' all the rest is a grave error of reasoning. 'The breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea, from its moon to its serpent; but a pool in the cup of a rock and the diamond-rippled road to Cathay are both water,' (The Back of the Moon.)"