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John Updike
Much has been said about John Updike since his death, yesterday. I'd like to give him the opportunity to speak for himself. Here are some quotations.
"Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews."
"Inspiration arrives as a packet of material to be delivered."
"The artist brings something into the world that didn't exist before and he does it without destroying something else."
"Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying."
"We take our bearings, daily, from others. To be sane is, to a great extent, to be sociable." "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy."
"A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world."
"Facts are generally overesteemed. For most practical purposes, a thing is what men think it is. When they judged the earth flat, it was flat. As long as men thought slavery tolerable, tolerable it was. We live down here among shadows, shadows among shadows." "Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them." May he rest in peace.
Jan/Feb Word Fugitives discussion
Herewith some Word
Fugitives responses I wish I'd had space for in the January/February issue of
the magazine. What they were in response to was this:
Michael McWatters, of New York
City, writes, "I use a computer for the better part of my waking life, and
I've noticed that certain repetitive keyboard tasks are making their way into
my non-computer life. For example, I recently knocked a jar off the counter,
and a little voice inside yelped, 'Command-Z!' (the keyboard shortcut for
Undo). Ditto for the time I accidentally ripped a page in a book. A friend
mentioned that she recently lost her keys and thought, 'Command-F' (Find).
There should be a term for this confusion, as it's only going to become more
common."
Posted by mark: but have you tried to unlock
your front door with the carkey clicker?
Posted by Jill: The one I want to use is the
"insert" function--as in, "insert about three more hours into
the day" without impacting normal needs like sleep, food etc. Alyssa
Smith, of Dulles, VA: With those Command Fs and Command Zs, Michael McWatters
is, of course, referring to his "interior macrologue."
Jeff
Reed, of Wilmington, DE: Because the user needs to resort to the "F"
or "Function" keys on the keyboard, it might be that "Functional
Iteracy" would do. Or because it's written form is a new notational
language, it might be "Keyculus" (after the notation developed by
Newton now known as calculus). But, because you need to be wired to both
understand and use the new notation, perhaps it's just "geekspeak."
John
Marum, of Oakland, CA: Attempting computer commands in real life situations is
called making imachinations.
Dylan
Armstrong, of Westhersfield, CT: In referring to Michael McWatters' linguistic
need, it seems that the word "compucalque" fits well. The key stroke is a direct
translation of the action he would like to perform (i.e. Undo, Find, etc). Qualifying it with the
"compu-" prefix speaks to the fact that the word is not from another
spoken language but from the languange that we use to communicate with our
computer.
Editor's note: the New Oxford
American Dictionary defines "calque" as "another term for loan
translation," and "loan translation" as "an expression
adopted by one language from another in a more or less literally translated
form."]
William
M. Walsh, of Laguna Woods, CA: In response to Michael McWatters' search for a
term to describe the intursion of his "virtual" world key strokes
into real world actions:
ALTERKEYGO
Steve
Chandler, of Galloway, NJ: Michael McWatters, and his friends, looking for
real-life equivalents to the keyboard shortcuts are suffering from keystroke.
The long view on inaugurals
As I noted in my previous post, the Times the other day gave us a contemporary, interactive, don't-need-a-long-attention-span point of entry into all the inaugural addresses of the past.
But, sigh, sometimes isn't it wonderful to tag along with someone such as an expert on inaugural addresses as he ponders them? Thinking actual thoughts? Case in point is "So Help Me God," by Ted Widmer, a former presidential speechwriter, which ran in The American Scholar four years ago.
Read it all if you aren't in a hurry. To head right for the material about inaugural addresses per se, start at the heading "Recitation" on the second page.
And if you only have time for a snippet, here you go: The kabuki of the typical inaugural can be broken down into specific set pieces; the thoughts arranged in a comforting sequence that would have been instantly familiar one hundred, even two hundred, years ago. 1. I am not worthy of this great honor.
2. But I congratulate the people that they elected me.
3. Now we must all come together, even those of us who really hate each other.
4. I love the Constitution, the Union, and George Washington.
5. I will work against bad threats.
6. I will work for good things.
7. We must avoid entangling alliances.
8. America's strength = democracy.
9. Democracy's strength = America.
10. Thanks, God.
Tomorrow's word of the day
I'm sorry I haven't posted anything yet today, but I've been having way too much fun with the "Inaugural Words" interactive graphic in the NY Times to think cogent thoughts. Or, really, I've been trying and failing to draw conclusions about the various Presidents from the words they emphasized in their inaugural addresses. Maybe others have had better success.
Also, any bets on what will be the most-used word in Barak Obama's address tomorrow?
Hinky!
Reader Brian Clark writes: I have a two-year running dispute with my brother about the existence of the word 'hinky.' I had used it in a sentence, "Well, my car's brakes are feeling a little hinky." He did not believe in the word, so I bought him an unabridged dictionary, I believe American Heritage or some such, and hinky was not in there, but then I found a different one, Oxford maybe, and there was the word.
So, who decides the veracity of words and how they will make it into a certain dictionary?
I'll answer that after the jump.
Continue reading "Hinky!" »
The uncertain future of dictionaries
To me, the future of the dictionary industry doesn't look much brighter than the future of the American auto industry. To be sure, people learning a language will continue to need dictionaries. And specialized dictionaries will remain useful. The Oxford English Dictionary, for a case in point, lays out the entire history of English before our eyes; it's a cultural treasure. (If, however, it were required to make money for its owners -- as most dictionaries now are -- not even the first volume of the first edition would have made it into print.)
In a recent thread, Jesse Sheidlower and I began discussing dictionaries and what they're good for. Jesse is editor at large at the Oxford English Dictionary, and as you might imagine, he considers dictionaries invaluable. My job includes fielding regular people's questions about language, so I'm constantly discovering new things that people wish dictionaries did, but they don't. I don't mean to suggest that lexicographers are particularly lazy or sloppy. But it seems to me that they invest a lot of hard work in things users don't need or want.
More after the jump.
Continue reading "The uncertain future of dictionaries" »
January/February Word Fugitive
Carolyn Haggis, of Oxford, England, writes, "I'm looking for a word for the items of clothing which sit perched on a chair in my bedroom, waiting to be reworn. They are not yet ready for the laundry bin (since I plan to rewear them), but they are no longer suitable for the wardrobe (which I reserve for clean clothes). I assume others keep their lightly worn clothes in a similar purgatory?"
Post a comment if you have an idea for the word that Carolyn Haggis needs. If you hope to be quoted in The Atlantic and earn indisputable bragging rights, please sign in with your full name, and include in your post the town and state (or country) where you live.
Joining the "conversate" conversation
My fellow Atlantic blogger Ta-Nehisi Coates posted a couple of days ago about "conversate": is it a word or not? He interviewed Jesse Sheidlower, of the Oxford English Dictionary, and they had a good conversation, well worth reading. Jesse is a smart guy and a first-rate lexicographer. But one thing no lexicographer is likely to tell you is that we don't need dictionaries anymore to tell us what counts as a word. We can decide for ourselves.
As Jesse said, what lexicographers do is search out words that people use, see how they use them, and write them up. Adding a new word to the dictionary doesn't amount to giving it a stamp of approval; it just means that the lexicographers found the word in wide enough use over a long enough time that they decided dictionary users might want to know about it.
Well, owing to the Internet, anyone today can figure out how widely used a given word is. Just google it. "Conversate" is all over the Web. If, however, you want to find out whether it's in standard use -- which is often what people mean when they wonder if something is a "word" -- archives of edited media, such as Google News, are a better place to look. According to a search I did just now, "conversate" has turned up in the newspapers and press releases, etc., that Google News tracks exactly five times in the past month. That's very few. Two of the five come from Ta-Nehisi himself; two are from AllHipHop.com, and one was published in an actual newspaper, in a quote from a basketball player. Isn't this already starting to be a good basis for drawing your own conclusions about "conversate"?
Peeved about "slay"
Huh. I have as many peeves as the next grammarian, but "slay" doesn't particularly bother me. It's no farther off-kilter than "pix" in the beloved 1935 Variety headline "Sticks Nix Hick Pix" (translation: Small-town and rural viewers aren't responding positively to movies set in rural milieux).
Headlines are often highly condensed -- I've put in my time as a newspaper editor deleting unnecessary syllables to get the danged thing to fit on one line. And "Slaying" is at risk of being read as a participle rather than a noun-adjective -- as in "Slaying Suspect Amanda Knox, Mystery Killer Vanishes."
In any case, I probably don't need to worry that "slay suspect" will turn up in The Atlantic anytime soon.
No, Caroline, we don't know
I have no opinion -- none at all -- about whether Caroline Kennedy would make a good senator. But for someone with a law degree and now political aspirations, she's astonishingly ill-spoken.
It's not necessarily admirable in consumers of political rhetoric like me that we focus more readily on "um"s and "you know"s than on what the person is saying. But we do, and it's no surprise that we do -- English teachers and speech coaches have been making this point forever.
I never whaled on Sarah Palin for the way she talks, because there isn't much reason to suppose she could do better. She doesn't have a fancy education, and she doesn't come from a place that's world-renowned for its intellectual life. But Kennedy is a different story. She has the best education money can buy and every possible reason to know what accomplished public speaking sounds like. And she still sounds like a dope, because of those "um"s and "you know"s.
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