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Show 'Lorraine Nelson- A Biography " >J 2 moment during one Sunday service at North Presbyterian in Saint Paul. Plain scraps torn from his research notes or the weekly church bulletin simply would not stay put, and taping them in place seemed somehow disrespectful. Traditional tape would leave a sticky residue or-worse yet-tear the brittle yellow pages of his Sunday book. In 1968, Art's colleague, Dr. Spence Silver, had accidentally come upon a new adhesive- one which would neither dissolve nor melt, but failed to adhere permanently to surfaces. Though Dr. Silver felt certain his new bond could be useful, others at 3M had been less convinced. Useless as tits on a bull, one supervisor said. Despite ribbing from colleagues, Silver continued to look diligently for promising applications for his high-tech, low-tack glue. Until Art's bookmark, however, the doctor's serendipitous discovery hadn't found much use at the Minnesota company. For the summer of 2001, I 'temped' as a copy editor at Digital Data Source-DDS to its employees-a growing direct-mail firm in the west valley of Salt Lake City. The language of direct mail is structured on the cadence of cliche: smart buys, sweet deals, debt reduction-the percussive play an important tool in the architecture of the pitch. In this way advertisers (and their bastard child, direct mail) share a wall with poets. Although the latter are loathe to admit it, verse and hucksterism are dormers in the same dirty tenement, neighbors under one sagging roof. It should surprise no one that there vers in advertising. A good friend of mine loves the turn on names that language facilitates. What's cookin', Stu?; The check's in the mail, Bill; and (after the 2000 election) What's hangin', Chad? The name game is a serious one with a rich history: Shakespeare often turns on his own name, Will, in the sonnets, and Donne drones: "When thou hast done thou hast not done". There is, since the classical period, an interest in the cryptography of names, the secret cipher of their syllables. In Plato's Cratylus, Socrates muses on the name Tantalos-punning both talantatos (most |
