(This is an edited version of a talk given at Ottawa’s Friday Lunch and Discussion Club, on Nov. 15, 2024)
The story is told by his son Dylan of a memorable exchange between Dylan’s father, the Canadian writer William Bell, famous for his novel Forbidden City, and Dylan’s sister Megan.
Megan had been reprimanded for some unspecified childish misdemeanour or other, and had retaliated by sending her dad a note which read, “I hat you.” Her father’s response was to give her a note on which he had written, “I glove you.” This is a fine example of what the French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), the author of Madame Bovary, called le mot juste, by which he meant the use of “the exact word” or phrase that best conveys the writer’s or speaker’s thought in a particular context, and does so memorably. The word “glove” underlined here, like all other examples of other mots justes cited, italicized and underlined throughout this essay, is apt, not only because Dad’s reply is implicitly one of humorous understanding and fatherly forgiveness, desirable qualities in a loving parent, one of whose functions is, after all, not only to correct misspelling, but more importantly, to protect his children from harm or cold, as a glove does one’s fingers, but also because as a writer and English teacher himself, William Bell has made use of a clothing pun, which makes the gentle joke memorable. What effect the reply had on Megan is unknown.
The website Vocabulary contains another example of the mot juste. An anonymous contributor tells us: “My son has always prided himself on employing le mot juste, ever since he was two and announced proudly that he was too selfish to give me a lick of his ice cream.” The use of such a word by a precocious two-year-old to characterize his reason for choosing not to share is remarkable for the lad’s own unapologetic self-knowledge, memorable for this alone.
Some jokes rely for their impact on their placement of the mot juste at the end of a sentence. Ronald Reagan’s famous jest about bureaucracy is one of these. Taxpayers, he says, are in fear of the visitor who says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” The joke lies in the assumption that whatever claims governments make about their abilities, they manifestly fail all too often to provide needed assistance. As a child, I was intrigued by the grim humour in an illustration of a medieval woodcut in a school history book in which a man with a long spoon in his hand was pictured sharing a bowl of soup with an evil-looking companion. The caption read, “If you dine with the devil, be sure to use a long spoon.” Make sure you keep your distance from those who cannot be trusted. The mother of a pupil of mine once gave me a plaque with a memorable double entendre now hanging on our library wall downstairs. It reads, “Robinson Crusoe is the only man who got his work done by Friday.” Friday, Crusoe’s companion, is so named because he arrived on their desert island on that day.
