What’s the Good Word?

Fashion magazines are best at the gym because I can barely read full sentences when sweating and dizzy on an elliptical machine. I end up skimming the same paragraph over and over again. If someone asked (which they never would) I would say, yes, I read the weird, kind of profile of Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s wife and the definitely-a-profile of Martha Stewart, but I wouldn’t be able to tell you much about what I read because it’s all an out-of-breath blur.

That’s why when I flipped to the last page for the easier-to-digest Approval Matrix and saw two words I’d never heard before, I figured my eyes were just not focusing. But it appears that I’m not only in poor shape, my vocabulary is also suffering.

Revanchist? Anhedonic? Help!

Anhedonic turned out to be in the title of the referenced article and is a pretty great word, it turns out. So, is the essay. I had no idea I had any interest in reading a really long missive more or less about poker.

I’ve spent all morning (well, afternoon is my morning on a Sunday) reading Colson Whitehead’s “Occasional Dispatches from the Republic of Anhedonia” instead of working on whatever it is that I’m supposed to be working on.

Also, where did this Grantland appear from? All of a sudden everyone is linking and mentioning it. It’s smart, it’s sporty. Not really sure about the latter. Katie Baker’s analysis of the NYT's wedding section is always fun, even though these words “summertime, as anyone between the ages of 25 and 35 can attest, is Marriage Season.” Make nearly as little sense as revanchist to me.