(As a subscriber, you'll receive excerpts of the novel–and possibly the whole thing!–in the coming weeks...) Is there such a thing as "final revision"? A couple days after thinking I had finished edits, fixes, etc., even while tweaking the cover of The Immaculate Jagoffs of Pittsburgh (click for the Facebook page), it came to me that the Foreword needed just a little something else, to set the stage for the intense Pittsburghese that will follow. The conceit of the Foreword is that a scholarly linguist from Boston is in Pittsburgh for a conference on Mobility, Indexicality, and the Enregisterment of “Pittsburghese.” (That's an actual paper, believe it or not.)
Here's the addition, inserted right after Dr. B.E. Aggrandini returns from a restroom break to find a copy of a stained manuscript titled All Yinz R Jagawffs, left on his desk by a mysterious stranger in a Steelers jacket:
The seminar resumed after the break, but was quickly interrupted by a noisy altercation outside our first-floor conference room: With great gusto, police were “detaining” a huge young man. We all rushed to the back of the room to witness the struggle, with many of us taking out our phones to document it–until the door of the conference room crashed open, a man with a pistol drawn entered and commanded, “Picksburgh Police! Owl yinz get away from tha winda, get awt here like itz a fahr drill an let yer phonez awn tha front desk as evidence soze you won’ get arrestedt! All be watchin yinz like a all!” I froze, feeling like I was being barked at by a dog able to mutter a smattering of English; as the detective threateningly pointed a gun at me, a colleague led me away.
Outside, even though the three hundred-plus pound suspect was noisily (and, from what I could see, rather successfully) wrestling with a half-dozen police officers, my seminar’s participants were abuzz, dissecting the detective’s extraordinary transposition of “all” and “owl”–and back the other way! One presenter tried to steer the conversation to the detective’s even more unique (according to her, at least) dropping of the “t” in won’t–followed quickly by the addition of the “t” to the “ed” for “arrestedt.” (“It was like the ‘t’ jumped back in his throat, just waiting for a past participle to surf!”)
When I asked the colleague who saved me what the “close drill” was, in relation to the “far drill,” he shook his head knowingly. “Fahr is the local Hungaro-Germanification of fire. It’s in my presentation.” Alas, I was not to hear it; after the exhausted suspect gave up and we were allowed back in, I exercised my authority and ended the conference for the day; still shaking, I collected my briefcase and rushed back out into the cool, refreshing air.
Walking back to what he thought would be a temporary home, our narrator is attacked by an inebriated young woman who screams Kiss me–I’m Irish! (this is March 17, 2020) before stuffing her tongue in his mouth. The next day, he wakes up with COVID, and is...stuck...in...Pittsburgh... (After the Foreword, the novel shifts to the last week of 1972.)