Something About Snodrog

Meet the pedant.

Snodrog is a pedant residing in the Flapping Forest and practiced the sinister and overly-confusing art of logic. He loved to show off his knowledge, however his outrageous collection of useless information came with a price: you'd better agree with him or he would use his wizardly smarts to turn you into a linen napkin - a flimsy (The Pedant and the Shuffly, 7).\

Bellairs derived Snodrog's name from the backwards spelling of a Chicago restaurants or café called Gordon's, located at 1321 East 57th Street.

"What transpired here to warrant commemoration is uncertain, though there are more than a few Chicago-influences within the book [1]."

The character's pedantic tendencies come from Bellairs's friend Donald Wilcox (1938-1991), who was researching at the University of Chicago at the same time Bellairs was in graduate school. Snodrog was modeled after Wilcox "not because he was obnoxious, nor had his brain cells winked out but because he was an erudite academic nitpicker [2]."

References

• [1] Correspondence with Charles Bowen.
• [2] Correspondence with Marilyn Fitschen.