Stephen Fried’s fond reminiscence of Jim Quinn ( Philadelphia magazine, 10/19/2020) came out over five years ago, but I just discovered it, and since Quinn is one of my language heroes ( first touted just a few weeks into the existence of LH, reinforced in 2004 , 2007 , and 2013 ) I wanted to share it with y’all. I’ll quote the language-related passages, but he led an interesting life in general, so I recommend the whole thing: Jim Quinn was one of Philadelphia’s finest, funniest, and smartest writers — of longform journalism, essays about food and language, and poetry for the first four decades of his career, and later of fiction as well. He was also, arguably, the city’s longest-living, longest-haired, and most prolific link to the best things about the 1960s, maintaining throughout his 85 years a sense of wonder and humor, political commitment, righteous indignation, and shrugging indifference to authority. […] Quinn could write the most gorgeous sentences.…