TORCH, n., FLASHLIGHT, n. I recently had to look up, for novel research, when handheld battery-powered lights were invented (1899). Wikipedia revealed why US and Canadian English speakers call these things “flashlights” while the rest of the English-speaking world calls them “(electric) torches”:
Early flashlights ran on zinc–carbon batteries, which could not provide a steady electric current and required periodic "rest" to continue functioning. Because these early flashlights also used energy-inefficient carbon-filament bulbs, "resting" occurred at short intervals. Consequently, they could be used only in brief flashes, hence the common North American name "flashlight".
Funny enough, the inventor who applied for the U.S. patent for flashlights/electric torches was David Misell, a Brit living in New York City. The patent itself just says “electric device,” so I guess we can’t know for sure if a British person invented this term that British people no longer use.
Decades prior to this device’s invention, people spoke of “flash light” or “flash-light” to mean a signal from a lighthouse or a boat, or a camera flash.
“Torch,” naturally, is much older, the word dating to around 1290. It comes to English from French, and in its Romance origins, it refers to something twisted. Torches were sometimes made of twists of fiber (flax, hemp, etc.) dipped in pitch.
“Electric torch” didn’t always refer to something handheld; people used to say it for streetlights, though that went out of fashion as electric lighting, both portable and not, became more common.
Here’s what I’ve read lately in small-r romance:
The Art of Scandal (m/f, both cis and het, contemporary) by Regina Black. This is electrifying. Reading it feels like a little zap to the senses. Rachel Abbott is the mayor’s perfect, polished wife, his dedicated planner and assistant for thirteen years—until he accidentally sends her a dick pic that was clearly meant for someone else, and their cold marriage finally shatters. But Rachel won’t be pushed out on the street with nothing, because she’s been there before—as a Black teen mom who lost her father and had no one to turn to—so she makes a deal with her soon-to-be-ex-husband: in exchange for their house and a million dollars, she’ll stand next to him at campaign events to boost his favorability ratings, and she won’t tell the public he’s a cheating piece of shit. That will be enough money to start her life over, to protect herself and her college-age daughter until Rachel can figure out a career. She thinks she can contain her anger and disgust and go through with the plan, but then she meets Nathan Vasquez, a young artist hiding his light under a bushel, and he reminds her of who she used to be. They have an instant connection. This is a big, messy, painful romance. People make serious mistakes, marriages fall apart, parents and kids hurt each other, loved ones die of cancer. Rachel’s struggle with motherhood is particularly raw. I thought the grief and anger and complications made the love and kindness stand out even more. A romance novel, to me, is not just people falling in love, but people falling in love in the face of big obstacles, internal and external, when everything in the world is telling them they shouldn’t, but their love just cannot be denied. They choose it even when it’s hard. And as this book sees so clearly, all kinds of love—romantic, but also between family members and friends—can be hard and complicated. Sometimes they’re still worth it.
Can I Steal You for a Second? (f/f, both cis and bi, contemporary) by Jodi McAlister. This story is set at a reality show like The Bachelor, and it’s about two of the women contestants falling for each other instead of the man, and it’s delightful. Like the previous book in the series (review), I read it in almost a single sitting, and when I put this book down, I yearned for it every minute we were apart. The two books of the series occur concurrently, with some familiar scenes retold from new points of view, which is one of the most satisfying things to read. Mandie and Dylan, the two protagonists, are so sweet to each other despite being trapped in this potentially cutthroat environment, and it’s so compelling to see them struggle against the show’s constraints and their own fears. Mandie’s emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend profoundly undermined her confidence, but she works hard to learn to trust herself again and it’s very rewarding to see her find her way with Dylan.
Winter’s Dawn (cis m/nonbinary, fantasy, historical, novella) by Arden Powell. Thomas Brighton is a professor who ends up wrongly imprisoned in a magical prison that his research helped design. In the confinement of his cell, he discovers that the adjacent cell is occupied by a mysterious Irish revolutionary named Winter. There is a Count of Monte Cristo-style secret tunnel between their cells, and speaking to each other is the only relief from the misery. This novella is such a ticking bomb of tension, and the explosion is dazzling.
In things that are neither Romance nor romance, I finished Nghi Vo’s Siren Queen, a fantasy novel told like a memoir of a career in Hollywood’s Golden Age, where studio execs are literal monsters, which I mentioned last time, and it was lush and haunting. (The titular siren queen does have many romantic relationships with women, and the book is all-around delightfully queer, but it is not a romance.)
I also read Fady Joudah’s translation of Mahmoud Darwish’s 2003 volume of poetry Don’t Apologize for What You’ve Done, which was very beautiful and erudite. I love a poem about poetry, and there’s a lot of that here, but I especially loved these lines from “Like a Mysterious Incident,” in which Darwish remembers a conversation with Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos—the “he” in the lines below. They met in Athens, where Darwish (and other PLO members) had fled after the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
I said: What is poetry … what is poetry in a nutshell?
He said: It is the mysterious incident, poetry,
my friend, is that inexplicable longing
that makes a thing into a specter, and
makes a specter into a thing.
In June, I forgot to mention that I’ve been writing this newsletter for five years now. That’s so many. Thanks for reading! I cherish all your questions and knowledge and book recommendations in reply to these emails. Here are some of my favorite Word Suitcase newsletters from Year V:
Gerfaunts and orafles (July 30, 2023) — in which I show off a nineteenth-century portrait, compile a lot of novel-adjacent research on a famous historical giraffe, investigate the word “giraffe,” and love Charish Reid’s contemporary romance Mickey Chambers Shakes It Up
a word to the poem (October 15, 2023) —the first of Year V’s many Borges-obsessed newsletters, this one is about the word “leopard,” a Borges poem called “Inferno, I, 32,” the vast and unknowable complexities of the universe, secret miracles, and Sierra Simone’s kinky Tristan and Isolde retelling Salt Kiss and Salt in the Wound, and Mia Tsai’s lovely fantasy romance Bitter Medicine
Octidi 18 Nivôse (January 7, 2024) — “calendar,” the French Republican calendar, an anecdote from Peter McPhee’s Living the French Revolution, and three excellent romance novels: Freya Marske’s A Power Unbound, Rien Gray’s Double Exposure, Jodie Slaughter’s Bet on It, plus a link to an excerpt of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger about Israel and Palestine and Mohammed El-Kurd’s poetry collection Rifqa
God’s secret dictionary (January 22, 2024) — more Borges devotion, the unusual translation choice “jactitation” in a version of “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” the limits of language, the infinite, and the marvelous romance novel D’Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding by Chencia C. Higgins, plus a little Murderbot and Marcia Lynx Qualey’s translation of Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands by Sonia Nimr
Every beating heart a secret (February 4, 2024) — John Koenig’s Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows and the word “sonder,” Charles Dickens on great cities at night and how we’re all gonna die before we finish the books on our To-Be-Read piles, and me on how romance novels like Talia Hibbert’s The Roommate Risk and Kate Clayborn’s Georgie, All Along can demonstrate the difficulty and wonder of truly seeing another person, plus Nghi Vo, Fargo Nissim Tbakhi, and Rasha Abdulhadi
You see in these dates a record of how adamantly I was not writing my novel in January and February 2024. (Previously: Year I, Year II, Year III, Year IV)
Thanks again for letting me tell you about whatever words and books are on my mind. I’ll be back in your inbox on July 21.
