Remembering Jim Quinn.

Stephen Fried’s fond reminiscence of Jim Quinn (Philadelphia magazine, 10/19/2020) came out over five years ago, but I just discovered it, and since Quinn is one of my language heroes (first touted just a few weeks into the existence of LH, reinforced in 2004, 2007, and 2013) I wanted to share it with y’all. I’ll quote the language-related passages, but he led an interesting life in general, so I recommend the whole thing:

Jim Quinn was one of Philadelphia’s finest, funniest, and smartest writers — of longform journalism, essays about food and language, and poetry for the first four decades of his career, and later of fiction as well. He was also, arguably, the city’s longest-living, longest-haired, and most prolific link to the best things about the 1960s, maintaining throughout his 85 years a sense of wonder and humor, political commitment, righteous indignation, and shrugging indifference to authority. […]

Quinn could write the most gorgeous sentences. But much of the joy of his reportage was his amazing attention to details that told the story better than he could. “He describes everything, yes everything, in most specific terms since euphemism is a word he has never heard,” said the New York Times Book Review in 1972 of his first major book, Word of Mouth: A Completely New Kind of Guide to New York Restaurants. […]

In his late 20s, Quinn was convinced by friends to return to college. In 1963 he enrolled at Temple University, where he got involved in campus politics and anti-war protests. […] He was, at the time, working toward his PhD in English literature — writing a dissertation on the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, and lots of his own poetry. But editors who were fans of his food writing started reaching out with assignments. […]

That same year, Quinn published his second major book, American Tongue and Cheek: A Populist Guide to Our Language, in which he argued that English was becoming more and more democratized, and lampooned those trying to hold on to old formal usages. Critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times Book Review called the book “outrageous and delightful.” While he found some parts infuriating, he noted “as Mr. Quinn writes, ‘If this book doesn’t make you angry, it wasn’t worth writing.’”

In an interview about the book with Terri Gross on “Fresh Air” — when the show was in its local infancy, complete with call-ins — he defended words like “hopefully” that were coming into common usage despite the horror of the grammar police. He was astonished how worked up people could get about new words being accepted by the print media. “You can confess to the most horrible kind of sexual practices,” he joked, “and people will say ‘well, we have to understand that sort of thing’ [to] … show their tolerance. But say the word ‘irregardless’ and say you have no intention of dropping it from your vocabulary and they become utterly infuriated!” He preached “new words are new tools.”

He and Gross also had a funny conversation about the Philadelphia accent, which she was just learning and he was unlearning. “I can’t say ‘att-y-tude’ any more,” he explained. “But I remember we used to say ‘grat-y-tude, what a lovely at-y-tude for a ‘prost-y-tute’ to have.” Gross burst out laughing.

Among the language police Quinn criticized was William Safire, who at the time was two years into his “On Language” column for the New York Times Magazine. He not only appreciated the book by Quinn — whom he referred to as “a poet and food columnist” — but soon after reviewing it Safire invited Quinn to write the “On Language” column when he was on vacation.

“The idea that he could jump the gap from writing for alternative weeklies to writing Safire’s column for the Times, and stand in for the nation’s grammarian — amazing,” recalled bestselling author Steven Levy, who worked with Quinn at the Drummer and Philadelphia. “Such a renaissance guy, and also the ultimate free agent, always moving publication to publication.” Quinn also later wrote a language column for The Nation.

I continue to recommend American Tongue and Cheek, and I’m delighted to learn he was a fan of Hugh MacDiarmid, one of my own poetic heroes (whom I also touted back in 2002). And if I ever knew he’d written the “On Language” column when Safire was on vacation, I’d forgotten.