In the NYT Book Review on the 1st, Charles Finch on “‘Career of Evil,’ by J.K. Rowling Writing as Robert Galbraith”, where we find this:
What Rowling writes these days, under the pen name Robert Galbraith, are crime novels: the closest equivalent adults have to the apotropaic formula of childhood literature, parading the unimaginable in front of us and then solving it, stabilizing it.
Whoa, apotropaic! Now that’s an obscure word. Either Finch has in fact glossed it with “parading the unimaginable in front of us and then solving it, stabilizing it” (in which case, demonstrating that he knows le mot juste is just showing off) or he’s amplifying on le mot juste in full awareness that scarcely a single one of his readers will know what the word means, which is just maddening.
Either way, an infuriating Buckleyism.
