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Help[Opinions] Re: Abilene
in reply to a message by guasguendi
I've run across this name twice in books, not counting "The Help" where it's spelled and pronounced differently.
In "The Last Picture Show" by Larry McMurtry, Abilene is a swaggering, rich, arrogant man about town. It is never clear whether Abilene is his first, last or nick name. The story is set in Texas so it could easily be a nn but it's never specified, he is always just Abilene. I suspect it's just a nn.
In "The Good Brother" by Chris Offutt, a white-supremacist, anti-government woman in Montana has two boys she's named Abilene and Dallas, after the places where their fathers were from.
So the two Abilenes I know of from books were male, but the construction of the name is decidedly female.
I don't like it, it feels too much like a wannabe cowboy nn rather than an actual name.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
In "The Last Picture Show" by Larry McMurtry, Abilene is a swaggering, rich, arrogant man about town. It is never clear whether Abilene is his first, last or nick name. The story is set in Texas so it could easily be a nn but it's never specified, he is always just Abilene. I suspect it's just a nn.
In "The Good Brother" by Chris Offutt, a white-supremacist, anti-government woman in Montana has two boys she's named Abilene and Dallas, after the places where their fathers were from.
So the two Abilenes I know of from books were male, but the construction of the name is decidedly female.
I don't like it, it feels too much like a wannabe cowboy nn rather than an actual name.
Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way, when you criticize him, you're a mile away and you have his shoes!
Steve Martin
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