I think this one was a novel, not a short story, but might conceivably have been a mid-length novelette or something.
In the snippet that I recall, one character is being hired on as an employee or consultant and is asked if he has experience in dealing with the WhatchamaCallems, some nonhuman race with a weird culture.
Rather than answering the question directly with a “yes” or “no”, Character immediately launches into WhatchamaCallem-type behavior, which is a totally weird mixture of fawning fulsome elaborately frilly complimentary language + little asides (displayed in parentheses like this) that were nasty and contemptuous but apparently also audible to the person being addressed, and the whole works preceded by some kind of introductory vocalization like “ning ning a ning!” kind of like onomatopoeia for ringing a little bell. Oh yeah, I think the speaker would refer to both himself and to the person being addressed in the 3rd person at all times.
Thus, kind of like this:
Ning ning a ning! Oh, AHunter3’s heart does swell with effusive gladness to be blessed with the possible presence of the discerning and ever-noble eye of the illustrious and brilliant Straight Dope Message Board member who honors him by coming into this thread (and the member’s head doth swell as usual, I see, if that member’s roving eye can be brought to bear on this content for sufficient duration for member’s two functional neurons to make a synapse).
Anyone recognize?
It sounds like a Keith Laumer “Retief” story, but I can’t identify which one in particular (Jame Retief - Wikipedia). However, on the off chance you’ve got the details a little wrong, I thought I’d mention this story “A !Tangled Web” about aliens named the !Tang, who talked like this when they had to say no: “I fail to answer your identification query correctly. My life loses all meaning. I die, and the disappointment spreads. All die. Oh the embarrassment”. That story is by Joe Haldeman.
Thanks, but my details aren’t very wrong. I’m almost positive that the startoff phrase was “Ning, ning a ning!”, that the over-the-top fawning praise stuff was followed, in every single sentence, by an immediate insult to the very same person, spoken as if the person being addressed would somehow not hear it. And I am almost positive that the first time we (the readers) encounter any of this is when the character is asked, “So have you ever dealt with WhatchamaCallem folks?” and does a demonstration. Person who asked the question “is not amused”. Then later in the story he does indeed end up dealing with some of them and they do indeed speak that way to each other and everyone else.
Yup. The scene is from Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds, the first in Daley’s “Alacrity FitzHugh and Hobart Floyt” trilogy (Jinx on a Terran Inheritance was the second book in the trilogy):
Alacrity, an experienced star traveller–a “breakabout”–is being (somewhat involuntarily) recruited as a guide not just to the Srillans, but as someone with wide experience of many nonhuman cultures, to guide the Earthman Hobart Floyt in an offworld mission in a far-future era when humans travel widely among many star systems but Earth itself is politically isolated and rather backwards.
Love the trilogy (Fall of the White Ship Avatar is the third book, for completeness’ sake), and I have virtually worn out my copies with re-reading. I’ve occasionally pondered whether or not it would make a decent television series, although some of the “Strange Attractor” stuff might appear more contrived on screen.
Brian Daley is also one of the few authors to throw in vocabulary words that I don’t know (and I know a fair number of words) and yet are exactly the right word for what he is describing (as opposed to the author just showing off), including adit, adumbration, blivet (def#1) and niello.
I thought the character names listed on the website referenced by silenius sounded familiar but I wasn’t sure if that meant it was THE book or merely a book that I had indeed read at some point. Thanks!