Chapter One How did a guy like me end up in a place like this? Excellent question. It's the very question that ran through my mind on my first day on the job, and for many weeks hence. How the hell did I get a job at the offices of Samuelson Company, the oldest and most revered name in American dictionaries? In the end, this might strike you as the greater mystery--greater than the one I'd later find in the company's dusty files: How does a clod like me end up in training to be a lexicographer? Now that you've paused to look up lexicographer, are you impressed? Are you imagining lexicographers as a council of cloaked, wizened men rubbing their snowy-white beards while they consult their dusty folios? I'm afraid you might have to adjust your thinking just a little. Imagine instead a guy right out of college--a guy who says yup, and watches too much Conan O'Brien. Imagine this guy sitting in a cubicle, shuffling through little bits of magazine articles, hoping for words like boink and tatas to cross his desk and spice up his afternoons. Don't get me wrong. When I first got the job, I was pretty excited. I'd been starting to doubt my employability, since I'd majored in philosophy. Admittedly, I'd applied for publishing jobs on a whim, having heard some English majors talk about it. No one at the big New York companies bit at my résumé, but someone at Samuelson must have liked all the A's on my transcript in heady-seeming topics like Kant and Kierkegaard, and they called me just in time--just as I was starting to thumb through pamphlets about the Peace Corps and teaching English in Japan. My interview was with one Dan Wood, a pale, bearded middle-aged guy who didn't really seem to know how to conduct an interview. He mostly just described the defining process quietly, peering at me occasionally as if trying to gauge my reaction. I guess I didn't make any funny faces, because two days later Dan called me to offer the job. Claxton, Massachusetts, was a far cry from Manhattan, but I wasn't in a position to complain. In fact, I was pretty pleased with myself. The shitty location at least allowed me to get a nice big apartment--on the second floor of a run-down Victorian house near downtown Claxton. Once I'd moved all my stuff out of my parents' house and bought a few cheap pieces of furniture on credit, I had a week left to prepare for my first day on the job. I bought a couple of corduroy sport jackets with elbow patches. I wondered what kind of sharp-witted young ladies I'd meet at the office, and what topics we might discuss by the company coffee machine. I read and reread Strunk and White's Elements of Style. I worried about sounding like an ignoramus. Dan Wood met me downstairs on the first day, and led me up to the editorial office and its expanse of cubicles. After parking me at my new cubicle, he set a dictionary in front of me. "I'd like you to read the front matter." He lowered his voice as if the request embarrassed him. "That's the section at the beginning of the book. The front matter explains most of the conventions of how our dictionaries are organized. Why senses and variants are ordered as they are, what sort of abbreviations are used, and so on. It's a tradition for our brand-new editors--reading the front matter on the first day." He paused, watching me open my dictionary to the first page. "Alrighty," I said. I was trying to convey some of the enthusiasm I hadn't had an opportunity to display in the interview. "Great." The corners of Dan's mouth twitched a little. "Yes. You might find parts of it surprisingly engaging." I nodded, feeling somehow I'd already said too much. Dan gave an enc Excerpted from The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
