CUTLER, Charles L(ocke, Jr.) 1930-1999

PERSONAL: Born September 8, 1930, in Springfield, MA; died, 1999; son of Charles L. (a manufacturer) and Annie (Harris) Cutler; married Katharine Church, July 7, 1962; children: Charles L. III, Pamela. Education: Attended Harvard University, 1948-53; University of California—Berkeley, B.A., 1954; University of Edinburgh, graduate study, 1954-55; Springfield College, M.Ed., 1956. Politics: Republican. Religion: Christian. Hobbies and other interests: Writing haiku.

CAREER: Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, production editor, 1956-58; Xerox Education Publications, Middletown, CT, editor, beginning 1959. Member of board of directors of Levi E. Coe Library.

MEMBER: Mensa, Middletown Judo Club.

WRITINGS:

Connecticut's Revolutionary Press, Pequot Press, 1975.

We Made It to 100: Wisdom from the Super Old, Rock-fall Press (Rockfall, CT), 1978.

O Brave New Words!: Native American Loanwords in Current English, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1994.

Tracks That Speak: The Legacy of Native American Words in North American Culture, Houghton Mifflin (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to American Heritage and American History Illustrated.

SIDELIGHTS: Charles L. Cutler was the author of two books that explore the legacy of Native American words as they apply to the modern-day English lexicon. O Brave New Words!: Native American Loan-words in Current English is a work that "charts new ground," according to Booklist's Kevin Roddy. As the reviewer pointed out, many of the Cutler's "loanwords" from Native tongues relate to "place-names, river names, names of geographical formations, and the like." "Estimating that there are more than one thousand still-current North American Indian loan-words in English," noted Fiona Robertson in Notes and Queries, "Cutler reminds us that the AmerIndian languages are 'one of [English's] major vocabulary sources outside the Indo-European family.'"

In a similar vein, the posthumously published Tracks That Speak: The Legacy of Native American Words in North American Culture is an "abalone-to-woodchuck tour of the Native American contribution to the American vocabulary," noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor. As Cutler related in the book, "You can hardly step outdoors without using words derived from Native American languages." Indeed, such Native words as chipmunk, hickory, and sockeye were "all long at home in the pages of Webster's," wrote the Kirkus Reviews critic. A Publishers Weekly contributor pointed out that Cutler's work here "leans heavily on an unscholarly bibliography," including articles from popular magazines. The critic added that "the easygoing tone of a magazine article can seem lightweight stretched out over an entire book," but concluded that Cutler was "a much appreciated contributor to magazines."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Cutler, Charles L., Tracks That Speak: The Legacy of Native American Words in North American Culture, Houghton Mifflin (New York, NY), 2002.

PERIODICALS

American Indian Culture and Research Journal, fall, 1995, Frederick White, review of O Brave New Words! Native American Loanwords in Current English, p. 302.

ANQ, spring, 1996, Janine Scancarelli, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 56.

Booklist, September 1, 1994, Kevin Roddy, review of O Brave New Words, p. 12.

Choice, April, 1995, W. B. McCarthy, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 1298.

Ethnohistory, spring, 1996, Donald Lance, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 336.

Journal of the West, fall, 2000, Max Oppenheimer, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 100.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, review of Tracks That Speak: The Legacy of Native American Words in North American Culture, p. 303.

Library Journal, October 15, 1994, Amy Boaz Nugent, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 72; June 15, 2002, Faye Powell, review of Tracks That Speak, p. 74.

Nineteenth-Century Literature, March, 1995, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 556.

Notes and Queries, June, 1996, Fiona Robertson, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 206.

Plains Anthropologist, May, 1996, Jack Weatherford, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 188.

Publishers Weekly, March 11, 2002, review of Tracks That Speak, p. 66.

Reference and Research Book News, February, 1995, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 42.

Roundup, January, 1995, review of O Brave New Words!, p. 23.

Science News, July 6, 2002, review of Tracks That Speak, p. 15.*