Who Cares About Anything

I like how in THE LOVE OF THE LAST TYCOON they spell orangutan "orang-outang." Is that still a variant spelling? I don't look things up anymore because who cares. But you see "orang-outang" in a lot of old books and I like to think of the first guy who got fed up with the hyphen. "Why's this hyphen in here? It's stupid! I'm not putting the hyphen in there anymore." That guy was a rebel! Then I guess the g fell off and there were lots of punctilious cranks who were upset, punctilious cranks who remind me a lot of myself, just like an orangutan does.