Is this the best job application to have ever been written in the English language?

As regular readers of this column know, I am besotted with words; it’s fair to say that I love them. But even I could not have expressed my love for words as well as a young job-seeker called Robert Pirosh did in 1934, when he headed to Hollywood looking for a new career as a screenwriter. Pirosh was working in advertising in York and had no connections in the American film industry. But he collected the names and addresses of as many directors, producers and studio executives as he could find, and sent them this brilliant letter:

“Dear Sir,

“I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. I like solemn, angular, creaky words, such as straitlaced, cantankerous, pecunious, valedictory. I like spurious, black-is-white words, such as mortician, liquidate, tonsorial, demi-monde. I like suave “V” words, such as Svengali, svelte, bravura, verve. I like crunchy, brittle, crackly words, such as splinter, grapple, jostle, crusty. I like sullen, crabbed, scowling words, such as skulk, glower, scabby, churl. I like Oh-Heavens, my-gracious, land’s-sake words, such as tricksy, tucker, genteel, horrid. I like elegant, flowery words, such as estivate, peregrinate, elysium, halcyon. I like wormy, squirmy, mealy words, such as crawl, blubber, squeal, drip. I like sniggly, chuckling words, such as cowlick, gurgle, bubble and burp.

“I like the word screenwriter better than copywriter, so I decided to quit my job in a New York advertising agency and try my luck in Hollywood, but before taking the plunge I went to Europe for a year of study, contemplation and horsing around.

“I have just returned and I still like words.

“May I have a few with you?”

Many would concede that no better job application has ever been written in the English language, and I would add, no better paean to the marvels and joys of words either. The letter worked. Pirosh landed three job interviews, one of which led to a job as a junior writer at Metro Goldwyn Mayer studios, the fabled MGM. His career soared; in 1949, screenwriter Robert Pirosh won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for his work on the war film, Battleground. A few months after the Oscar, he also won a Golden Globe award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. These were opportunities he might never have landed if he had not loved words enough to craft such a brilliant letter.

But what about the words he used in his letter? Many of them might escape comprehension, so this column, in tribute to Pirosh, offers a cheat-sheet to the several unusual or difficult words he cited, just in case you fall in love with them too! (I am omitting those words I expect most readers to be familiar with already.)

In order of appearance: “turpitude” describes wicked or depraved behaviour or character; it is common to speak of someone being guilty of moral turpitude. Glutinous simply means “sticky” and pecunious is a fancy way of saying “wealthy”; there’s no good reason to use either when such easy alternatives exist. On the other hand, “tonsorial” is an unusual word for the work of a barber: it means “giving shaves and haircuts”. The “demi-monde” refers to a group of people on the fringes of respectable society; prostitutes, for instance, though the term is also used these days for anyone whose activities you don’t particularly approve of, like arms merchants or moneylenders. A Svengali, based on a fictional character, is a person who exercises a controlling or mesmeric and usually sinister influence on another. A person or thing is described as “scabby” when it is very unpleasant or unappealing. A churl is a rude and mean-spirited person; someone who’s tricksy is playful or mischievous. To estivate is to spend a hot or dry period in a prolonged state of torpor or dormancy; to peregrinate is to travel or wander from place to place. Elysium is paradise, the abode of the blessed. Your halcyon days were a period in the past that was idyllically happy and peaceful.

And then Pirosh threw in a curveball: a word that doesn’t exist, “sniggly”. To sniggle is to fish for eels by thrusting a baited hook into their hiding places, but he simply made up “sniggly”. Word-lovers do that: they invent some too!

wknd@khaleejtimes.com

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