OK, just back from a day or two away. Been reading through vast email bag. Surprising amount of support on my Mel comments–mail about 3 to 1 in agreement. On the other hand, pretty much everybody is with Rick Brookhiser on the pronunciation of “Houyhnhnm.” I’m going to be charitable here & assume that Rick is not paying these shills, but I’m also going to go on saying “HOO-y-nums.” Every chance I get… which is to say, around once per decade.

(Perhaps it’s just a transatlantic thing, like Brits saying “Van GOTH” while Yanks say “Van GO.”** All together now: “You say HWIN-im. I say HOO-y-num…”)

**Correct pronunciation–I asked an actual Dutchman once: Van [*]o[*], where the asterisk, in both occurrences, stands for a hard Germanic “ch” sound, as in “Bach.”