Word Play
The names of many of the authors listed in The City of Dreaming Books are anagrams of famous authors. Below are a few listed in alphabetical order by the last name of the real-world author).
- Ergor Banco = Roger Bacon
- Lugo Blah (a Zamonian Gagaist) = Hugo Ball (a German Dadaist)
- Hornac de Bloaze = Honoré de Balzac
- Rashid el Clarebeau = Charles Baudelaire
- Bethelzia B. Binngrow = Elizabeth B. Browning
- Trebor Snurb = Robert Burns
- Selwi Rollcar = Lewis Carroll
- Auselm T. Edgecroil = Samuel T. Coleridge
- Asdrel Chickens = Charles Dickens
- Evsko Dosti = (Fyodor) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- Doylan Cone (Author of Sir Ginel) = Conan Doyle (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle author of, among other works, Sir Nigel)
- Samoth Yarg = Thomas Gray
- Dolreich Hirnfiedler = Friedrich Hölderlin
- Ugor Vochti = Victor Hugo
- Honj Steak = John Keats
- Melvin Hermalle = Herman Melville
- Gramerta Climelth (Author of Gone with the Tornado) = Margaret Mitchell
- Perla la Gadeon = Edgar Allan Poe
- Inka Almira Rierre = Rainer Maria Rilke
- T. T. Kreischwurst = Kurt Schwitters
- Aliesha Wimperslake = William Shakespeare
- Elo Slooty = Leo Tolstoy
- Rasco Elwid = Oscar Wilde
- Wamilli Swordthrow = William Wordsworth
- Rimidalv Vokoban (author of "Love and the Generation Gap") = Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita, about the paedophilic passion of a middle-aged European professor for the eponymous heroine)
- Gofid Letterkerl = Gottfried Keller
- Ertrob Slimu = Robert Musil
The City of Dreaming Books also contains a wealth of made-up words, which can be found in most of Moers' work. Some are omnomatopoeic, others are amalgamations of existing words or Indo-European root words; still others may have origins no more descript than the raw product of Walter Moers' imagination. Many such words can be found in Chapter 60, where Yarnspinner learns forgotten Zamonian words whose meanings are extremely subtle and specific. A sampling of these are listed below:
- "fructodism:" the sensation experienced when squeezing an orange until it becomes soft.
- "rumbumblion:" the sound produced by a volcanic eruption.
- "indigabluntic:" one of a number of derogatory epithets.
- "nasodiscrepant:" a person whose nostrils are notably different in size.
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Famous quotes containing the words word and/or play:
“Of all the words mentioned in language, there is not one that I hate more than the word “right.” Is it your right that your field prospers? That you don’t drop dead this very instant? Are living and breathing your right? As far as I can see, nothing but grace and blessing fill the universe, and these worms talk about right?”
—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)
“Mr. [John] Barrymore’s smile was the smile of an actor who hates actors, and who knows that he is going to kill two or three before the play is over. I am not an actor-killer, but I like my Hamlets to dislike actors, if you know what I mean, and I think you don’t.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)