Assorted Prose by John Updike

terms “ BEAT ” and “ DEFEAT ” are called in from the bullpen (meaning an area in which pitchers not actually in the game may “warm up”). However, 4–1 gets the coveted verb “ VANQUISH .” Rule: Any three-run margin,
provided the winning total does not exceed ten
, may be described as a vanquishing. If, however, the margin is a mere two runs and the losing total is five or more, “ OUTSLUG ” is considered very tasty. You will notice, S.F., the trend called Mounting Polysyllabism, which culminates, at the altitude of double digits, in that trio of Latin-rootrhymers, “ ANNIHILATE, ”
    “ OBLITERATE, ” and “ HUMILIATE. ” E.g., “ A’S ANNIHILATE O’S , 13–2.”
    Special cases:
    1. If the home team is on the short end of the score, certain laws of mutation apply. “ SHADE ” becomes “ SQUEAK BY. ” For “ OUTSLUG, ” put “ WIN OUT IN SLOPPY CONTEST. ” By a judicious exploitation of “ BOW, ” the home team, while losing, can be given the active position in the sentence and an appearance of graciousness as well.
    2. Many novice banner writers, elevated from the 2-col. obscurity of Class A ball to the black-cap. screamers of the big leagues, fumble the concept of “ SWEEP. ” It
always
takes a plural object. Doubleheaders and series can be swept, but not regulation single games. (The minimal “ WIN STREAK ” is three games long; five makes a “ SURGE. ”) A team that neither sweeps nor is swept splits. A headline familiar to New Englanders is “ SOX SPLIT. ”
    3. Which brings up the delicate matter of punning, or paronomasia. Each Baltimore journal is restricted by secret covenant to one “ BIRDS SOAR ” every two weeks. Milwaukee, with a stronger team, is permitted twelve instances of “ BRAVES SCALP ” before the All-Star game. “ TIGERS CLAW ” and “ CUBS LICK ” tend to take care of themselves. As for you, San Francisco, the lack of any synonyms for “giant” briefer than “behemoth” and “Brobdingnagian,” together with the long-standing failure of New York’s own writers to figure out exactly what giants
do
(intimidate? stomp?), rather lets you out of the fun. In view of this, and in view of the team’s present surprising record, you may therefore write “ GIANTS A-MAYS. ” But don’t do it more than once a month: moderation in all things, S.F.
Métro Gate
    January 1959
    L A R ÉGIE A UTONOME DES T RANSPORTS P ARISIENS —The Paris Transit Authority—has very generously given the Museum of Modern Art a battered old entrance gate to the Métro, the French capital’s subwaysystem. The Museum has no less courteously installed the thing in its garden, and there we went to see it. The gate, of cast iron, and one of many produced from a design by Hector Guimard, an exponent of the curvilinear, vegetative style that was known as Art Nouveau in 1900 and that, curiously, is still known by that name in 1959, has been rooted in concrete near the windowless gray brick tower built by the Museum after its fire. The garden, cold and sere within its high walls, was loud, as it always is, with the strange murmur (Traffic? Air-conditioners? The End of the World?) that so strongly resembles the protest of a sea-shell against your ear. The
objet d’art
we had come to view proved to be an inverted U of scabby green metal fifteen feet high and six strides wide. We stood between its legs and looked up, and received the disconsolate impression we usually receive underneath the brontosaurus in the Museum of Natural History. The metalwork is less foliate than we expected—indeed, there’s not a leafy line in it—and the organic principles informing its contours derive less from branches than from bones. Anticipating the tapering, strenuous grace of arboreal imitation, we found instead the stubborn little knobs and puckers of bones, an impression to which patches of blood-color scumbled through the vile green paint added an explicit grisliness. These were not even clean