Dictionopolis and the Word Marketplace

Quick. Define love.

Still trying? It’s hard, right? The author David Levithan understood that when he wrote “The Lover’s Dictionary.”

The inside flap of the book jacket says, “How does one talk about love? Do we even have the right words to describe something that can be both utterly mundane and completely transcendent, pulling us out of our everyday lives and making us feel a part of something greater than ourselves?”

Hard to define in one sentence or even one paragraph, Levithan illustrated the definition of a love-relationship in dictionary form.

Using every letter of the alphabet, the author takes readers on a journey through a relationship, dropping poignant tidbits that serve as windows to the emotional connectivity and separation of love.

The entries were hard-hitting in their intensity. Reading some of them was like hearing the first line of “I Will Always Love You,” performed by both Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton, or seeing someone cry because of the love they feel for someone else. It was because of the aching intensity and the frank emotion, succinctly emptied onto the page.

These two entries from “The Lover’s Dictionary,” identify a wildly different aspect of the relationship between the two lovers.

“belittle, v. No, I don’t listen to the weather in the morning. No, I don’t keep track of what I spend. No, it hadn’t occurred to me that the Q train would have been that much faster. But every time you give me that look, it doesn’t make me want to live up to your standards.”

In the entry for “brash,” the narrator’s lover asks him to spend the night: “I loved the notion that the night was mine to spend, and I immediately decided to spend it on you.”

It’s harder to write short than it is to write long, I find. Being able to do so, to avoid the tendency to over-explain, yielded these glimpses into a deeply personal relationship that also describes common themes: pride, envy, all-encompassing adoration.

My friend said she couldn’t handle the way the entries weren’t chronological. But the way we recall relationships isn’t chronological. Sometimes we remember what happened most recently, then our thoughts jump back to the beginning, then float over the middle for a while. It’s the power in the encounter that dictates what place it has in the lines of your mind.

And because the entries aren’t chronological, it throws us into the relationship too -- the way that sometimes, we fail to see the big picture when it comes to the one we love. We can’t see the forest through the trees and because we’re privy to the relationship’s unfolding and folding, the narrator’s emotions feel real and become ours. Maybe they always were ours. Have been ours. Will be ours in the future.

“The Lover’s Dictionary” is cathartic and nourishing. The language is passionate, dissonant, bitter and beautiful. The book had the same effect as sitting with a friend does, and hearing them say “I’ve felt the exact same way.”

© Coffee Fairy