Happenstance

In my last, I mentioned “happenstance”. Is it in the OED? Certainly, and supported as always by illustrative quotations, one of which reads as follows:

1990 T. McEwen McX (1991) iii. 105 Here is music, written bold in your system by fence crows. Only a happenstance but proof that music comes and goes.

So I looked up Todd McEwen. He’s quoted as a source 17 times, not to be compared with Shakespeare, quoted 32,956 times, of which 1476 provide first written evidence of the word’s coinage. But still, the OED thinks McEwen’s books worth scanning & processing, so I was curious.

The titles were intriguing: McX, a satire about Scotland, Who Sleeps with Katz, ditto about New York. I like the sound of them, the style, the subject-matter. Throwing caution to the winds, I ordered them in the middle of the night, from my tablet, cheap used copies, one in hardback. I’ll let you know.

This is from a review he wrote of a book by Gunter Grass

Gunter Grass, who died in 2015, made himself write or draw something every day in his last months. These written and visual memoranda show us what it will be like when we start inarguably to dwindle. He has much advice for those in this situation, but what he suggests might be taken up by us all in light of recent geopolitical cataclysms. Reread favourite books. Write long letters to friends who have passed on. Deliver indignant diatribes. Why not? We might as well assert or reassert any meaningful thing about ourselves, given that merely existing over the next few years looks like being pretty tricky.