I have spent about the last week and a half or so plugging through a review of Bryan Garner’s ‘A Dictionary of Modern American Usage.’ Sound exciting? Well, you would be surprised just how entertaining it is.
At the heart of the review is the history of an almost-political battle fought among usage experts and speaks volumes about the natural proclivity for sides to line up around an argument and dig in for battle. If professors in bow ties with more degrees than a mid-summer heat wave become each others’ arch nemeses, then how can there really be an era of post partisanship on the national political level where there are actual stakes?
It may sound odd to hear that someone has been reading a book review of a dictionary, but you have to consider the author. David Foster Wallace, who sadly committed suicide last fall. Wallace penned the review, ‘Authority and American Usage’ ‘- both a hilarious and in-depth look at the English language usage wars.
I first became interested in Wallace after hearing of his suicide. News institutions, like the LA Times and Rolling Stone, reported his death as an incredible loss and credit him with being ‘one of the most influential and innovative writers of the last 20 years.’
Curious to see what the buzz was about, I attempted to dive right into his 1,000 plus page novel ‘Infinite Jest,’ but it was too long and too difficult for me to even make it 1/100th of the way through. So I moved onto his two collections of essays, ‘Consider the Lobster’ and ‘A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.’ There I found his real genius.
Wallace could make literary criticism interesting. His take on former tennis player Jane Austin’s ghostwritten autobiography was surprisingly riveting. His exploration of a Maine Lobster Festival in ‘Consider the Lobster’ basically centered on trying to figure out if lobsters felt pain when being boiled alive ‘- some of the funniest material I have ever read.
‘Up, Simba’ which appeared in shortened form in Rolling Stone and was re-released this past summer as a book, ‘ was a record of his time on John McCain’s campaign trail in 2000. Impressed by Wallace’s ability to use irony, humor and incredible insight, I even ventured into the aforementioned dictionary review.
In it, Wallace delves into a history of the battles between usage experts. There are tight, WASP conservatives called Prescriptivists that Wallace compares to George Will (apparently they all wear bow ties).
On the other side of the aisle are the Descriptivists who are freer in their acceptance of forms of English. He goes into great detail as to how the two sides stage their point of view, with each putting out their own usage dictionaries. They agree on very little ‘- most importantly, they do not even agree on how to categorize new words.
If there is a segment of the population whose whole life is to decipher the usage of the English language, make determinants about it and decide what proper usage truly is and if this segment of the population has drawn up battle lines that would put Congress to shame, what does that say about the persistence of disagreement?
This is why I never bought into President Obama’s post-partisan shtick. How can politicians with everything ‘- according to their ideology ‘- on the line be convinced to move past their disagreements? Obviously Obama does not expect to walk his proposals through Congress, but he seems to rely too much on the idea of a civil debate and conciliation.
For President Obama to see his most ambitious ideas come to fruition, he must realize that there is no such thing as nonpartisanship. With his 100th day passing yesterday, it is not too early to judge his record. Obama’s stimulus package was considered by many economists to be too small and too dependent on tax cuts ‘- the result of trying to placate Republicans.
In the end, no House Republicans and only three in the Senate voted for it. The battle on health care is going to tumultuous and trying to appease Republicans could result in a health care bill very different from what he wants. Pushing through the Employee Free Choice Act to make it easier to unionize will also require a tough battle; even new Democrat Arlen Specter has already said he will still oppose it.
In the end, perhaps a quick story Wallace opened with at the
‘There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?”
The point is not that you sometimes forget the big picture; the most obvious reality goes unnoticed. At no point in American history has there been a period of nonpartisanship ‘- not even in the world of usage dictionaries. It is more important the
Nick Milano is a Collegian
columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].
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