Tomine, Adrian – Sleepwalk: And Other Stories

Website

Sleepwalk: And Other Stories

His regular series has been kind of hit or miss. Some of the stories are fantastic (the one with the twins in particular), and some of them are just OK. Still, there are enough good stories in here to make it worth getting.

Until I get around to reviewing these, if ever, maybe you’re curious about where the phrase “to fly off the handle” comes from. From A Hog on Ice and Other Curious Expressions:

This Americanism first got into print about a hundred years ago, meaning, as it does today, to lose one’s self-control suddenly, or, as in popular parlance, to lose one’s head. The latter was the literal meaning, for the allusion was to the head or blade of a woodsman’s ax, which, if loose upon the helve, was likely to fly off dangerously at a tangent anywhere along the swing of the ax. John Neal seems to have been the first to record the forerunner of the present expression, for the earlier usage was just “off the handle”. Neal, a novelist from Portland, Maine, visited England when he was thirty, and while there published, in 1825, the novel, Brother Jonathon; or the New Englanders. In this, speaking of a surprise attack upon an Indian village, one of his characters says, “How they pulled foot when they seed us commin’. Most off the handle, some o’ the tribe, I guess.”

Posted on April 27, 2010, in Reviews and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on Tomine, Adrian – Sleepwalk: And Other Stories.

Comments are closed.