What would John Bennet do? He’d keep it brief.
(Nick Paumgarten, “John Bennet, Enemy of the ‘Blah Blah Blah’,” The New Yorker, 7-14-22)
That’s how Nick Paumgarten starts his tribute to John Bennet, a New Yorker editor, recently deceased, who was venerated by his writers.
John Bennet came from a “hardscrabble childhood” in East Texas. He got his start at The New Yorker in 1975, as a collator, someone who copies out each reader’s edits onto a master proof.
“I got to see everybody’s style, and I got to steal everybody’s moves,” he recently told a friend.
His obit isn’t the best way to meet a paladin of style, but better so than never. I will remember John Bennet immediately for “what became known as the Impossible Sentence, which he composed, with Nancy Franklin, in the eighties, made up of words (or usages) that were effectively banned from the magazine”:
“Intrigued by the massive smarts of the balding, feisty, prestigious workaholic, Tom Wolfe promptly spat on the quality photo located above the urinal.”
Brevity is the soul of it.
(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved
EthicalDative 
The Seer and the Seen
The musketeer —> the musked; the buccaneer —> the bucked; the mountaineer —> the mounted; the privateer —> the deprived; the profiteer —> the profited; the marketeer —> the marketed; the brexiteer —> the exited; the rocketeer —> the rooked; the racketeer —> the racked.
The ‘-eer’ suffix endows the doer with a swagger of domination. The ‘-ed’ suffix drapes the done in the pale cast of screwed.
There are variants with reflux. Take ‘suck.’ The doer is the sucker. The done is the sucked or the suckered.
Or ‘lose.’ The doer is the loser and the done is the lost.
He’s still out there, good citizens. Secure the vote, foster voting, protect our elections.
Cryptic diptych.
(c) 2022 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved