The Dictionary

The dictionary doesn’t have individual contributions. It’s like building a cathedral. The workers are unknown. But one of the things I tend to do is suggest that it might be interesting to have examples of things that aren’t from France. 

If it’s a wind, which we worked on recently, does it always have to be the mistral? What about the winds of elsewhere? How about zephyrs or siroccos? 

In French, there exists an enormous variety of classifications, proverbs, and witticisms about winds. There are winds that push ships as well as winds that come from the gut—the noisy, bodily winds of Rabelais. 

All shadings have to be in the dictionary.

On working on a French-language dictionary as part his duties at the Académie française in “Dany Laferrière, The Art of Fiction No. 237” in The Paris Review (Fall 2017)

Dany Laferrière OC, OQ (born Windsor Kléber Laferrière April 13, 1953) is a French-writing Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist.