No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally wallace would invent it: ‘greebles’ meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; ‘twanger’ was the word for something whose name you didn’t know or couldn’t remember. She loved the word ‘fantods,’ meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of ‘the howling fantods,’ this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace’s work.
Brain Pickings
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