Brain Pain discussion

Juan Filloy first published Op Oloop privately in 1934.



Wikipedia page for Juan Filloy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Fi...


Obituary for Filloy in The Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obitu...


Feel free to use this thread to ask questions and post links to resources for Juan Filloy and Op Oloop.

Also, if you’ve written a review of the book, please post a link to share with the group.

I'm looking forward to this one. I've got a copy ordered and it's on its way. I'd heard of neither book nor author before seeing your list at the beginning of the year. The title alone deserves praise, 'Op Oloop', I can't stop saying it.

Apparently all the author's books had titles with seven characters - weird.

Jonathan wrote: "I'm looking forward to this one. I've got a copy ordered and it's on its way. I'd heard of neither book nor author before seeing your list at the beginning of the year. The title alone deserves pra..."

I'm about 100 pages in and enjoying it very much. I can see why Borges and Cortazar liked him.

Jonathan wrote: "I'm looking forward to this one. I've got a copy ordered and it's on its way..."

Ditto -- hoping it will arrive by the end of the week. Can't recall if I had it on the to-read because of Brain Pain or not, but it looks like my sorta book.

It's only a little thing but my copy has the name and title arranged as:

Op Oloop
Juan Filloy

whereas the GoodReads picture has it arranged as:

Op
Oloop
juan
filloy

which I prefer.

Here's my cover:

Jonathan wrote: "It's only a little thing but my copy has the name and title arranged as:Op OloopJuan Filloy "

Same here. The layout sparked a short-lived quest for anagrams of Op Oloop, of which I found only three (all childishly scatalogical):
Pool Poo
Poo Loop
Loo Poop

I don't like the sound of a Poo Loop!

Given that Filloy loved palindromes I would have thought some of his titles would have been palindromes.

I noticed that the translator, Lisa Dillman, used 'snuck' and 'dove' as past tenses of 'sneak' and 'dive'. Now, I've seen people using these words but I thought 'snuck', especially, was used in a jocular way, similar to when people say 'thunk' as a past tense of 'think'. Is it ok to use 'snuck' & 'dove' in US English? It looks very odd to a UK reader.

It also seems odd as it makes the verbs less regular; I thought US English was supposed to move towards uniformity and simplicity.

Jonathan wrote: "I noticed that the translator, Lisa Dillman, used 'snuck' and 'dove' as past tenses of 'sneak' and 'dive'. Now, I've seen people using these words but I thought 'snuck', especially, was used in a j..."

In the U.S. dove is used a lot and is considered an acceptable variant for dived. Snuck is rarely used, and if so in a light and comic vein, perhaps to describe a childhood adventure. Let me add that if snuck wasn't in that context, it would stop the reader. Why is this word here?

Alex wrote: "Snuck is rarely used, and if so in a light and comic vein, perhaps to describe a childhood adventure. Let me add that if snuck wasn't in that context, it would stop the reader."

Uh, this isn't true at all. Many, many speakers of English, not all of them American, use snuck as the regular past tense of sneak, without comic or childish overtones, in all situations.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph...

Thanks Alex and thanks for the graph Nicole. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say 'snuck' here in the UK and I'd only come across it online a couple of years ago. I looked in my physical Oxford dictionary from 1990 and there's no mention of it; 'dove' is mentioned though as a US variant of 'dived'.

It was a bit surprising seeing 'snuck' used by the translator especially if it's considered quite modern.