The work of the Office of Nomenclature Stabilization can be said to have started in the period 1949-1951, although its full organization in its present form—the voluminous files, the worldwide network of correspondents-only came later.

In one of those years John Train, then studying for a Master’s degree at Harvard in Comparative Literature, noticed in Collier’s magazine a Mr. Katz Meow, of Hoquiam, Washington. 

 

The golden age of the expatriate literary life is already well past, there seems no getting around it, although like most golden ages it may never have existed and be simply a useful myth, a theme of conversation and art. Certainly the sympathetic enthusiasts of Mürger and du Marnier, and even of Imagism and Dada, seem as distant now as the shepherd-folk of the pastoral convention.