Scenes From A Re-Education

Fourteen years ago, while reading The Adventures of Augie March in the break room of the bookstore where I worked, I was brought up short when Saul Bellow used a word I didn’t know – lepidopterous – to describe a chair.

What’s lepidopterous mean? I said.

A co-worker eating lunch looked up from the sports page and said: Butterfly-like.

Thanks, I said, and re-read the passage.

And thought:

Ah, I see it. What a brilliant image. What a wordsmith.

And then thought:

Wait a minute…

So…it’s a wing chair?