The point of this feature is to find words, usually those classified by the less-literate as "S.A.T. words" (regardless of whether they would actually appear on an S.A.T. exam), that Christgau uses and which might be one reason his reviews infuriate so many people.
Today's word is jejune.
Jejune is a ripe, pretentious word that has many uses in everyday conversation:
- At work: "Frank, your presentation on the sales figures was so jejune that you actually relaxed my spastic colon."
- At home: "It's not that I don't enjoy sex, Honey, it's just that sex with you is rather jejune unless we invite one of your hotter Facebook friends to join us."
Modest Mouse, The Lonesome Crowded West. Although their glimpses of a cockroach world living on its own discards may seem jejune to some and homely to others, the lyrics are observed, informed, and explicit enough — in fact, as brave and beautiful as the blues, albeit at a more rarefied level of cultural specificity.The word also appears a couple of times in his longer pieces. His wife, Carola Dibbell (some of whose writing appears on Christgau's site) wrote an article for the Village Voice in 2000 about a preview of Lou Reed's Ecstasy album (eventually awarded four stars by Christgau in Rolling Stone, or an A in the Consumer Guide) at the Knitting Factory, and uses the word in a lengthy sentence that sums up Reed's personae up to that point:
Reed, who's been something of an androgynous poet himself at times, has been making middle age look OK since he passed from jejune student minimalist to dubious glitter queen to raging substance abuser and found his niche: neurotic-but-wiser New York bohemian artist.What I think this all means is that somehow, it all comes back to Lou Reed.
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