Jerrold Seigel

Harry Mathews’s Olympian claim that potin (which I translate as ‘scandal’) must mean ‘gossip’ and ‘has never meant anything else’ (LRB, 28 November 1996) is simply wrong, as witnessed by the Dictionnaire du Français contemporain’s inclusion of two entries for the word. Under the second, the equivalent given for faire du potin is faire un scandale. It is equally false that I treat the...