My God you have to love the Internet today. Call me uneducated, nonliterary, a boor, but until a few months back I had never read (that I recall) Verlyn Klinkenborg. Then I came across a quote from “The Rural Life” on one of the blogs I read regularly (I am sorry to say I can’t be certain which). That led me to Amazon and an excerpt from the book. I really liked the way he used the language. Then I was perusing a online book catalog and found a copy of “The Rural Life” at a price I couldn’t refuse so I bought the book…Loved every page. Now with the magic of rss feeds I can have Mr Klinkenborg’s articles delivered from the New York Times every time he publishes one. Today’s column was about the prefix ‘Post’ … or the ‘Post’ prefix (sorry, I couldn’t resist). Here is a paragraph that I found particularly insightful…
The most innovative user of the prefix post-these days is the post-Austrian governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who says that he is now engaging in “post-partisan” politics. He has a serious point, which is that the number of independent voters in the state is growing even as the number of registered Republicans and Democrats is dropping. To many of those independent voters, the arcane machinery of party politics may look a little antiquated, especially since the current occupant of the White House seems to be post-Republican — even post-electoral — though, of course, never post-partisan.
Source: ‘Post-’ – New York Times