"Grimaced," "scowled," "grunted," "wiggled" and "gritted"

1. Ben Zimmer writes about the computational analysis of literary style -- an older topic than is usually admitted, I remember first coming upon it in introductions to collaborative Jacobean plays [Fletcher's verse is distinguishable from everyone else's because 70% of the lines have feminine endings; Middleton and Dekker use different stock exclamations in The Roaring Girle though I've forgotten what these were; etc.] -- and writes re the jargon of the novel:

Hargraves found peculiar patterns in simple words like the verb “brush.” Everybody talks about brushing their teeth, but other possible companions, like “hair,” “strand,” “lock” and “lip,” appear up to 150 times more frequently in fiction than in any other genre. “Brush” appears near “lips” when two characters’ lips brush against each other or one’s lips brush against another’s cheek — as happens so often in novels. For the hair-related collocations, Hargraves concludes that “fictional characters cannot stop playing with their hair.”

2. He incidentally corrects a misperception re "bolt upright" that I must confess to having been under. (Viz. whether people can "bolt upright" or only "verb bolt upright."

3. Zimmer's list of uncomfortable verbs reminded me of this letter about Darwin's flatulence in the LRB:

Steven Shapin writes that Darwin’s uncontrollable retching and farting seriously limited his public life (LRB, 30 June). Some years ago, to my delight, I worked out that the great man’s full name, Charles Robert Darwin, is an anagram of ‘rectal winds abhorrer’.

"In eerie female reservoirs of bran"

I found out via Elisa Gabbert about the poet K. Silem Mohammad's "Sonnagrams," which are exact anagrams of Shakespeare sonnets; from the author's note, "The title is composed last, using whatever letters are left over once I’ve assembled a working sonnet." Here are some at Boo magazine; here are some more at Wag's Revue; they're all quite remarkable if you like stunt poems, and some of them are great in a surrealistic way even if you don't. Here's one:

My, You Annoy Me, Funny Daddy Roy: Yes, You of Uneasy Eye (Eye of Yore)

Wise fools who rub the curly heads of state,
Sweet monsters who sell honor out for fun:
Now by my learned counsel be set straight,
And board a flying saucer for the sun.

Lifesaver, doughnut, onion ring, or halo;
Lacuna, vacuum, emptiness, or hole—
The UFOs in Limbo hover way low;
In Purgatory, langue’s denied parole.

I know a word the OED omits:
Its syllables are fatal to be heard.
Whoever says it retches, dies, and shits;
I urge you not to utter such a word.

Although you feel the author’s days are through,
The author in the end erases you.

And here's another (which I hesitated about posting because of possible search-engine repercussions):

WWW (I Heil My, My, My Hitler; I Heel My Whiny Cur; I Wrap My Rueful Vulva in My Limp, Unholy Fur)
 
You few non-nude and many naked elk,
Who, in your ludic pastures over yon,
Fear not the mad Behemoth’s flailing whelk
That abrogates our fretful Helicon:

You indolent nude teens who always flee
Redactions of a crude antithesis:
The symmetry of progress yet must be
The progress of a symmetry (like this).

 If ponies value nudity, they do
As Puritans do patriotic rap;
You hear this said, and know it to be true,
As if it were a boner in your lap.

For nudity is only true in porn;
For why was Woodrow Wilson ever born?