GAMUT, n. In my notes on the romance novels below, “gamut” came up. It turned out to be really fun. I think of it as meaning a “range” and only use it in the expression “to run the gamut,” i.e. to cover the whole range, but when I wrote that below, I had to ask myself, “What’s a gamut and why can you run it?”
The answer is music. It’s a scale! Running the gamut is singing or playing all the notes.
“Gamma” and “ut” were the names of notes for musicians in medieval Europe. People used to say “gamma ut” to refer to playing all the notes from gamma to ut. It eventually ran together into “gamut.” (French has the lovely word “gamme” for this same concept, and it seems impossible that it did not occur to me that gamme and gamut were related until I was writing this. You learn something every day!)
Musicians don’t use either “gamma” or “ut” anymore. I think “gamma” fell out of fashion because it was associated with a medieval system that’s no longer how people think about music, but honestly there were a lot of incomprehensible charts when I delved into that (hexachords?!) and I am not qualified to tell you any more.
Regarding “ut,” here’s the OED on the names of notes in Western music:
The names of the solmization syllables are from certain initial syllables in the following sapphic stanza (Hymn for St John Baptist's day):
Ut queant laxis resonare fibris
Mira gestorum famuli tuorum,
Solve polluti labii reatum,
Sancte Iohannes.
You probably recognize “re, mi, fa, sol, la,” but nobody in The Sound of Music sings about “ut.” I tried to get the OED to tell me why, but alas, it has its limits. I had to go elsewhere.
People have been calling ut “do” (“doh” according to the OED) since the 1600s, thanks to Giovanni Battista Doni. This passage comes from Wikipedia:
[Doni] convinced his contemporaries to make the change by arguing that "Do" is easier to pronounce than "Ut," and that "Do" is an abbreviation for "Dominus." the Latin word for The Lord, who is the tonic and root of the world. There is much academic speculation that Giovanni Doni also wanted to imprint himself into musical canon in perpetuity because "Do" is also ulteriorly an abbreviation for his surname.
“Easier to pronounce” seems like a good enough reason. We could stop there. “Honors the Lord,” sure, that’s a bonus. Do you think the rumor that Doni just wanted everybody to sing (one syllable of) his name forever was started by somebody who hated him? Or was he really scheming? Either way I love it. I’ll think of you from now on, Giovanni, whether you wanted me to or not.
Here is a bounty of small-r romance novels that I’ve read recently. They run all the way from gamma to ut.
Something Wild & Wonderful (m/m, both cis and gay, contemporary) by Anita Kelly. This is set on the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs along the West Coast of the United States all the way from the border with Mexico to the border with Canada. I have such a wonderful memory of reading Bill Bryson’s memoir of the Appalachian Trail, A Walk in the Woods, as an adolescent, so I just had to read this. Also, as is well documented in previous issues of this newsletter, I love Anita Kelly’s writing. Anyway, Ben and Alexei meet while hiking the PCT. They’re both at turning points in their life. Alexei came out to his conservative, religious parents and they rejected him, while Ben is finally about to get his life on track after spending his twenties in a series of jobs and relationships that went nowhere. Alexei is quiet and not good with people (he’s autistic, something he doesn’t realize about himself until the end, but I’m mentioning it because I know it’s meaningful to some autistic readers to see the word itself on the page), while Ben finds talking to strangers easy and fun, but they get along well right from the start and make a great team on the trail. Nature—the dangerous parts of the trail they navigate together, the bird calls Alexei is excited to identify, the weird bugs Ben photographs—is such a presence in their relationship, it’s really lovely. This book also had two other qualities tailor-made for my interests: they read a Tamora Pierce young adult fantasy novel together (Alanna: The First Adventure, a beloved reread of mine and one of those “in retrospect, this is really queer and that’s why I liked it” touchstones) and a later section of the book is epistolary. Letters are just so messy and personal. I love reading other (fake) people’s correspondence. I love how it runs the gamut (SEE ABOVE) from dashed off and angry to meticulously composed and artful. I love thinking about the material difference between, say, sending a text or an email (instant, both easy and easy to regret) and mailing a paper letter (not at all instant, still possible to regret), and what characters choose to do. The letters, slow to arrive and not always sent or answered, work so well here to show how Alexei and Ben deal with their hurts. (If you’ve read the book or don’t mind spoilers, there is an excellent Close Reading Romance post about the letters.) A gorgeous, contemplative, satisfying romance. Content warnings from the author.
Sizzle Reel (cis f/nonbinary, contemporary) by Carlyn Greenwald. I received a free Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review. Good things about this book: it’s a really wonderful tour of secret, strange places in Los Angeles; the main character is an aspiring cinematographer and often describes how she would frame and light moments in a movie, which I found very charming; the three main characters have excellent chemistry. The love triangle resolves into one romance and two friendships, which isn’t quite as delightful to me as polyamory, but it’s alright. Alas, I had trouble with a contradiction in Luna, the bisexual main character. She’s fluent in queer vocabulary like “comphet” (compulsory heterosexuality, a term first popularized in the 80s by poet and essayist Adrienne Rich, though probably these fictional twentysomethings are referring to its more personal use in the 2018 “Am I a Lesbian?” Masterdoc, which has been circulating on TikTok recently) even while she remains bafflingly committed to a heteronormative concept of “virginity.” I realize this latter is supposed to constitute a flaw; Luna is both young (24) and a “baby gay” (recently out), and other characters repeatedly tell her to chill about penetration. I could have handled her obsession with her own “virginity” in isolation. Paired with “comphet,” it made me scratch my head. She’s got a nonbinary lesbian for a best friend and she’s had her own bi awakening and supposedly understands comphet—and still thinks sex = penetration? I mean, it’s a big world out there, I’m sure people like that exist. But do I find their struggles compelling? Girl, just get eaten out by the hot movie star and enjoy it. Content guidance: a few instances of homophobia/biphobia, unsupportive family, forced outing, sex.
Show Girl (cis m/trans f, both het, contemporary) by Alyson Greaves. Here is a story of someone coming out to herself as trans—and eventually, everyone else—suddenly and unexpectedly, and it is adorable and so readable that I was sneaking a couple of pages while brushing my teeth and in between stretches. Alex works with “his” close friend James, the boss at their tiny computing company. When they lose their contracted trade-show models to an illness only days before the big expo, James suggests that Alex—who is young and slender and pretty—put on a dress and do it. Alex panics, but doesn’t object, because it turns out she really likes wearing a dress. And then it turns out maybe what she really likes is being a woman. But Alex knows about trans people (in the vague, distant way of someone who has been pointedly not learning more) and can’t possibly be one because if she were, she would already know, wouldn’t she? Trans people all know from birth, don’t they? Her journey is bumpy and endearing, especially because she’s a very funny narrator (“The lurking waitress startled us both. Just our luck to end up at the only Pizza Express where the waitstaff were trained for stealth combat operations.”) Alex’s self-discovery is also complicated by the way James keeps gaping at her and telling her how beautiful she is. Being a woman throws their friendship into a new light and makes both of them realize their feelings, which they then have to navigate while also working at the expo. The yearning is palpable. But also Alex feels happy and can imagine the future for the first time ever, and she makes friends with the other trade-show models and meets tons of other queer people, and it’s just so satisfying to watch her blossom. Content guidance: some gender dysphoria, some sexual harassment, threat of transphobic violence (Alex fears being attacked; it doesn’t happen), misgendering (by an unsupportive parent who is mostly off-page), sex.
An Island Princess Starts a Scandal (f/f, both cis and lesbian, historical) by Adriana Herrera. This is about Manuela, a Dominican-Venezuelan woman painter, who is spending her summer at the World’s Fair in Paris in 1889, trying as hard as she can to get “knee-deep in immorality of the lesbian sort” before she has to submit to marrying a man to keep her family financially afloat. She meets—and kisses—a tall, imposing woman in a lesbian sex club, but fails to find out her name. Luckily, they meet again in daylight: the woman turns out to be Cora, a duchess with vast wealth and business ambition, who wants to buy some land from Manuela in order to complete a railway across South America. Manuela agrees to sell Cora the land in exchange for an enormous sum, plus a guided tour of Paris’s lesbian community—especially its scandalous nightlife. They bait each other and are desperately horny and hugely dramatic about it. There’s tons of delicious detail about the World’s Fair (the Mexican pavilion! the greenhouse!), art history (Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, previously discussed in this newsletter, makes an appearance) and women artists, Caribbean and South American expatriates living in Europe, unionizing, and of course, the lesbian community in fin-de-siècle Paris. And it’s sexy as hell. They send each other a few letters, too, from very impertinent to very heartfelt. I loved it. Content guidance: homophobia, unsupportive family, sex.
This email marks Year IV for Word Suitcase, which I started writing in June 2019. (Previously: Year I, Year II, Year III.) I didn’t write as much this year because I was parenting, so my list of favorites is short:
Legally obscene (December 4, 2022) — in which I finally address the word “cunt” (can you believe it took this long?) and exalt Freya Marske’s A Restless Truth
fact one: the whale is a discourse (May 14, 2023) — on the word “discourse,” reading, education, and Moby-Dick, plus Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston and Tanked by Mia Hopkins
As always, it is a pleasure to write and share this newsletter with you. Thank you for reading, whether you arrived four years ago or today!
I’ll be back in your inbox in two weeks.
