An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition - Paperback

by James Lipton (Author)

A delightfully unexpected, lovingly curated ode to the unique collective nouns that adorn our language, from "a leap of leopards" to "a murder of crows" and beyond, from the inimitable voice behind Inside the Actors Studio

"I am madly in love with collective nouns! They make language so colorful and ticklish. . . . [An Exaltation of Larks] possess[es] an embarrassment of riches (wink wink!)." --Lupita Nyong'o, The New York Times

For those who have wondered if the familiar "pride of lions" and "gaggle of geese" were merely the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided a definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, often poetic terms he has unearthed and collected into one exhaustive volume. Over years of painstaking research, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a "slouch of models," a "shrivel of critics," an "unction of undertakers," a "blur of Impressionists," a "score of bachelors," a "pocket of quarterbacks," and many more.

Witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt, An Exaltation of Larks is a brilliant compendium of more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to that ever-evolving species, the English language.

Back Jacket

An "exaltation of larks"? Yes! And a "leap of leopards", a "parliament of owls", an "ostentation of peacocks", a "smack of jellyfish", and a "murder of crows"! For those who have ever wondered if the familiar "pride of lions" and "gaggle of geese" were only the tip of a linguistic iceberg, James Lipton has provided the definitive answer: here are hundreds of equally pithy, and often poetic, terms unearthed by Mr. Lipton in the Books of Venery that were the constant study of anyone who aspired to the title of gentleman in the fifteenth century. When Mr. Lipton's painstaking research revealed that five hundred years ago the terms of venery had already been turned into the Game of Venery, he embarked on an odyssey that has given us a "slouch of models", a "shrivel of critics", an "unction of undertakers", a "blur of Impressionists", a "score of bachelors", and a "pocket of quarterbacks". This ultimate edition of An Exaltation of Larks is Mr. Lipton's brilliant answer to the assault on language and literacy in the last decades of the twentieth century. In it you will find more than 1,100 resurrected or newly minted contributions to that most endangered of all species, our language, in a setting of 250 witty, beautiful, and remarkably apt engravings.

Author Biography

James Lipton was the creator, executive producer, writer, and host of Inside the Actors Studio, which has been seen in eighty-nine million homes in America and in 125 countries and has received fourteen Emmy nominations. He was the author of the novel Mirrors, which he then adapted and produced for the screen, and of the American literary perennial An Exaltation of Larks, and has written the book and lyrics of two Broadway musicals. He was a vice president of the Actors Studio and the founder and dean emeritus of the Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University, he received three honorary PhDs, France's Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and has been awarded the Lifetime Achievement Emmy by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.