Issue #29/54, December 17 - 29, 1998  

by Matt Taibbi

Malapropism n [Mrs. Malaprop, character noted for her misuse of words in R.B. Sheridan's comedy The Rivals (1775)] 1. A humorous misapplication of a word; specif: use of a word sounding somewhat like the one intended but ludicrously wrong in the context; 2. an example of malapropism (as in "an allegory on the banks of the Nile")
                     [from Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary]

Just when I thought living in the US couldn't be any worse, I made the mistake of signing on to Johnson's Russia List to try to reconnect with the Motherland--and life in the States quickly got worse. Entry #5 on the first list I downloaded was a mystical cyber-postcard from Vijay Maheshewari, who had re-materialized in human form just long enough to send news of himself from his new perch high above in ex-freelancer Valhalla. The note read:

"Hi David: There have been some changes in my life. Your former infrequent freelance contributor who used to write for Business Week, the oil mag, Newsweek etc. is now the editor-in-chief of Russian Playboy. If any of your contributors have questions about Playboy, they can e-mail me at playboy@imedia.ru.

Best,
Vijay Maheshwari
editor-in-chief Russian Playboy"

I sent this note to a friend of mine named Mike Lubin, who is an FBI criminal behaviorist, and asked him to analyze it. I told him that it was discovered among the personal effects of an accused church arsonist in Manassas, Georgia. The suspect's real name was David, I said, but he had a mysterious alter ego he called "Vijay Maheshewari" who wrote letters to David on post-it notes and left them lying around wherever he went. The note about the mythical promotion to Playboy was just one of about two-thousand found in his trailer, I said. I asked Mike for a thumbnail handwriting and textual analysis, and this is what he came up with:

"We're dealing with a single male, aged 21-35, long engaged in a pitched psychological battle against a terrifying matrix of professional and/or sexual insecurities. The switch in predicate from the first person in sentence one ('some changes in my life') to the third person in sentence two ('is now the editor-in-chief') is a typical of the interior monologue of borderline bipolar personalities, lost as they are in a nightmare world of grandiose delusions on the one hand, and paralyzing doubts about their status in the real world on the other… Note also the disturbing repetition of the word 'Playboy,' the subject announces his promotion to the editor's position in the body of the letter, and then, just a sentence later, makes sure to repeat his title in full after his name. Overall, the word is mentioned four times in the space of three sentences. This is, again, indicative of grave inner doubts on the part of the subject about his own abilities. We can expect this type of person to exhibit all the paranoid, semi-aggressive tendencies of the terminally insecure personality; repeated (and usually unsuccessful) sexual overtures to total strangers in public places, the conspicuous growth of unseemly facial hair, poor personal hygiene, flamboyant dress, small acts of vandalism, cruelty to animals, kleptomania, and frequent nighttime loitering at bus/train terminals or in public rest rooms."

I didn't need my FBI friend to tell me there was serious cause for alarm here. If Vijay Maheshewari can be named editor of Russian Playboy, something must be seriously wrong with the world. The guy can barely speak English, let alone Russian. Moreover, he's about the farthest thing from a "playboy" Moscow's ever seen. There are wax statues that get laid more often than Vijay. As we noted before in this paper, the mere presence of the guy is enough to drop the gross receipts of any bar in town for any night by about 7%. He just clears the room of all eligible women. I know--I've been out with him. They run screaming. Why? For one thing, Vijay's a funny-looking guy--short, pudgy and dark, with stubby fingers and obscene muttonchop sideburns; he's been known to frost his hair and wear eye shadow. He also actually uses lines like "Wait a minute--I know you, don't I? Haven't we met before?" When he gets a woman in his sights, he moves right up close and gets within about eight inches of her face, in a strong point-guard defensive stance, not allowing her to move laterally. She ends up pressed against the wall, looking for a friend or an escape route, while Vijay, drink in hand, moves closer and closer, eventually propping his hand up against the wall, trapping her under his armpit and hypnotically whispering nonstop in semi-coherent Russian. They find a way out, they always do, but it takes time. And this guy is now editing the Russian version of our gender's storied "Magazine for Men." It makes me ashamed to be male.

Vijay's status as the nadir of sexual degradation for women in Moscow is so well established that the eXile once fired one of its female columnists for reaching it. When word got around to us that a sometimes-Tribune reporter and eXile contributor had gotten drunk and given Vijay a blowjob, we immediately summoned her in to our offices for a talk. Peering into her mouth for signs of telltale black curlicue pubes, we told her that, like any organization, we had standards. If it was true that she'd sunk so low as to suck off Moscow's biggest bottom-feeder, we'd have no choice but to fire her-unless she apologized in print. She hesitated, but finally confessed to having done the deed. She then deliberated for three days over whether or not to write a column apologizing for what she'd done. In the end, she declined, and left the country in disgrace a few weeks later.

That's a true story. If you don't believe it, ask around. I wish I could say that professional jealousy is propelling me to write this column. At least then I could file Vijay's promotion away as just more evidence of my own failures as a human being. But I'm not jealous of Vijay. I'd rather be torn apart by alligators than spend even a minute in his flabby body. Instead, I'm genuinely astonished that such a person could be named editor of a major magazine and--to boot--contribute to The New York Times, as he's been doing lately. It's the kind of thing that makes me question my belief in a rational model of the universe. Vijay is, quite simply, a near-illiterate, generally incapable of completing a paragraph without serious grammatical errors. I don't know how to explain his recent appearances in The New York Times, except by way of a general decline in the paper's literary standards--a phenomenon which I'm definitely not the first to observe. New Republic critic John Simon, in an essay he wrote for a new book called Dumbing Down, cited the quality of writing in today's NYT as evidence of America's cultural demise:

"Take The New York Times, which is now so full of bad English that, if you have a sensitive stomach, it is unsafe to read at breakfast. I cannot give you a comprehensive overview of the situation; a few salient examples will have to suffice. Let's start with the caption under the picture of an East Village Indian restaurant whose effuvia polluted the air of the block. According to that caption, the desideratum was 'a more higher awning'."

The only problem with Simon's criticism, as far as I can see, was that he used the word "effuvia" in public. This is the kind of thing overeducated writers do which encourage envious undereducated writers like Vijay to indulge in horrific malapropisms. Vijay's distinctive trait as a writer is his insistence on picking words previously unknown to him out of a thesaurus and committing them instantly to print, a tactic that results in frequent and jarring misusages. A recent article he wrote for The New York Times entitled "Nightlife Continues After the Iceberg" (an article which, Vijay noted unnecessarily in another letter to David Johnson, "ran front page [sic] of the Sunday Styles Section") was full of such instances. For example:

"The mighty banks whose gleaming ziggurats dominate the Moscow skyline are half-empty."

Webster's defines a "ziggurat" as "an ancient Babylonian temple tower consisting of a lofty pyramidal structure built in successive stages with outside staircases and shrines at the top." I was not able to find a modern or colloquial usage definition for the word. Given that, we have to assume Vijay means there are ziggurat-like structures in Moscow. If there are, where are they? MENATEP, Bank Rossiyskiy Kredit, Sberbank... none of the banks I know have anything resembling a ziggurat for a headquarters.

I'd give Vijay a break, except that I'm absolutely certain that until he sat down to write that piece, he didn't know what a ziggurat was. That word entered Vijay's temporary lexicon sometime in December, 1998, I guarantee you that. This is not what writing is all about: you don't scan thesauruses for words you don't know, with the intent to use them. You scan thesauruses in order to recall words you do know, and then you use those words authoritatively and correctly. This is why it is called a "command of language." In the writing business, one doesn't temporarily appropriate words; one permanently absorbs them through reading, and uses them later at will. The New York Times editors should know that, but for some reason they're letting dabblers like Vijay through now.

Here's another Maheshwari linguistic gaffe from the same piece:

"Young women in tight-fitting designer clothes shook their Wella-conditioned hair all around him, to the beat of stomach-twirling acid jazz in the intimate lounge-sized club."

Forget for a moment that Wella is a cheap Duane Reade conditioner and has no business being used as evidence of extravagance. More importantly, just what the hell does "stomach-twirling" mean? Vijay doesn't want to say "stomach-twirling," because that isn't quite what he means, but he doesn't say what he does mean either, because he isn't quite sure what that is. The result is "stomach-twirling," which, as far as I can tell, doesn't mean anything at all. I mean, if my stomach twirled, I'd want to throw up. I'm pretty sure that's not what Vijay was trying to convey. Mrs. Malaprop couldn't have done better.

Look, I'm running out of space in this column, so I'll cut to the chase: I'm so astonished that The New York Times would continue to give Vijay Maheshewari a byline that I've decided to offer, as a publicity stunt, a reward to any reader who finds a Maheshewari malapropism in print. I will also offer a reward to anyone, including New York Times and Playboy staffers, who turns over to the eXile offices any unedited Vijay Maheshewari text. Malapropism winners will receive free eXile T-shirts; anyone who delivers unedited Vijay text wins a free dinner for two on me. Help the cause. Write today. Unless you want your children misusing words like "lissome" and "prie-dieu" because The New York Times says it's okay to, send a message to society telling them how you feel. Stop Vijay--and save America's future.