Category: Language

Some authors are able to rise to the occasion again and again, churning out novels for decades that are more or less the same quality.  This seems especially likely to happen in the realm of detectives – Agatha Christie and Robert B. Parker come to mind.  Some authors reach such a terrific peak that they are never able to approach it again, think Joseph Heller and John Irving.  I’m not sure where to place Tom Wolfe in this model, but I know where his book “Back to Blood” fits.

I enjoyed “Bonfire of the Vanities” when I was young and vain and I enjoyed “A Man in Full” (a little less) when I was older and a bit more rounded.  So I was looking forward to reading “Back to Blood.”  It was a mistake, not a peak.  I kept telling myself to keep reading, convinced that the plot would come together.  I did, but it didn’t.

Unless you are a Cuban American or enamored of Miami, the book is unlikely to appeal to you.  And even then it might not because I’m not sure how accurately Wolfe has captured the mood and ethos of Cuban Americans or the city where many of them live.

Too many characters were either introduced but not fully developed or developed but not engaged.  The plot was convoluted to no apparent end and included days of intensive micromanagement and months in which nothing was described, though issues remained hanging.  There were various forays involving sex and pornography that did little to advance the plot and appeared designed to showcase the author’s knowledge of, for example, public pornography.  The denouement was an open door, revolving rather than resolving the various strands of the plot.

For over 700 pages, the author relentlessly relentlessly relentlessly beat his linguistic tic of repetition into my skull skull skull.  That theme came through loud and clear — sometimes to emphasize a word, sometimes to provide atmosphere (think background noises) — and always annoyingly annoyingly annoyingly.  If more books were written like this, less reading would take place.

Nobody would ever say or write “fewer reading would take place,” however “less” is often used when “fewer” would be more appropriate.   People say that they want “less French fries,” and though I don’t believe them, neither do I misunderstand them.  Still, it’s not as precise (or mellifluous) as saying they want “fewer French fries.”

“Fewer” should be used with quantifiable things, like French fries or blood cells.  “Less” should be used with things that aren’t easily quantified, like mashed potatoes or blood.  “More” always works, whether you want more French fries, more mashed potatoes, more platelets, or more plasma.

Something I don’t want more of:  Tom Wolfe novels.

I read a lot as a child and I read a lot as an adult.  Reading feels industrious, though it produces nothing.  While reading, I am learning or being entertained.  In a minimum, I appear to be doing something, even if I am sitting in a chair barely moving.

When I graduated from college, the President of our university gave a speech at commencement.  He welcomed us “to the fellowship of educated men and women.”  I have never forgotten that phrase.  It sounded terrific then and it sounds terrific now.  What a wonderful thing to be a part of – the fellowship of educated men and women.  The welcome came with a suggestion: that each of us read a book every month.

Since then, I have kept track of every book I have read.  I don’t count magazines or comic books, though I count graphic novels (the Watchmen series is especially good).  I count volumes of poetry, which might be fewer than 100 pages (for instance “Green Squall” by Jay Hopler) equally with massive novels (like “War and Peace”).  I count all of the many baseball books I read, though none of the countless articles and blog posts.  I count all of the nonfiction I read, which comprises most of what I read.

I have a spreadsheet that lists every book I have read since June 1984.  In that time,  I have read an average of 35 books a year, as many as 59 books when I was single and unencumbered and as few as 21 when my children were young.  So far this year, the first year in 20 without children living in our house, I have read 25 books.

I can definitively state that I have read at least one book a month for the past 32 or so years.  This level of reading appears to be more than most of my friends, though much less than many avid readers and scholars.  Each year, some 2,000,000 books are published, roughly 500,000 of them in English.  At 35 books per year, I am rapidly losing ground.

It was been said of certain people that they had read every book written.  This was almost certainly never true because of how little interaction there was between east and west until after the Renaissance.  And it cannot possibly have been true since the creation of the printing press.  Still, there was a time, before the creation of the novel, when a European could have read virtually all of the consequential books hitherto written, basically the classics of Latin and Greek.

That is no longer possible, it isn’t even possible to read every book written on a topic.  My library system has 1452 books with the word “baseball” in the title.  It has 22,126 books with the word “history” in the title.  We are buried in books that have already been written and many more are on the way.

Separating the wheat from the chaff is difficult.  Book reviews help.  Friends and family try to help, with recommendations or purchases.  Usually that distracts from what I want to read, sometimes it is downright annoying.  One year, my son gave me “The French Revolution: A History” by Thomas Carlyle.  He was young enough to pay attention to whether I read the book, so I read it.  It was excruciating.  I defy you to pick up the book, open to a random page, and find two sentences in a row that are comprehensible.  Though I am no fan of recommendations from others, I continually recommend books to others.

I have recently been pushing the book “Evicted.”  It is extremely well written and it describes a world that most middle class Americans are unfamiliar with:  a world of want, a world of existential worry, an underworld in the midst of our land of plenty.  Though nonfiction, the book reads like a novel with compelling highly flawed characters.  The book concludes with a prescription for solving the problems so eloquently conveyed by its author Matthew Desmond.  If you care about our country, you should read this book.  The experience will be enlightening, not excruciating.

I just finished the fascinating and elegant “Seven Brief Lessons on Physics” by Carlo Rovelli.  It is only 81 pages and it will expand your understanding of the way the world works.

Two brief snippets to whet your appetite:

1. Rovelli describes with fluid prose the nuance and ramifications of Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity. The ultimate conclusion being drawn from these theories at this time is that space is not empty but full of gravitational waves.  Gravity, by the way, remains inscrutable.  We know how to account for it, but we don’t know why it works.  Gravity is a theory, one that is utterly reliable.
2. Einstein is quoted as having written that people “who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion.” In essence, one chapter of the book talks about the flow of time and how it is different than our common place perception of it, essentially, that time does not exist.

It’s pretty heady stuff and worth the investment of a couple of hours, whether you are well versed in science or more in the nature of an English major.  I am the latter.

On page 43, Rovelli discusses loop quantum gravity and states that space is comprised of grains that are “a billion billion times smaller than the smallest atomic nuclei.”  This particular construct has always bothered me, even though I know perfectly well what is being stated.

I understand “two times bigger” or a “billion times bigger.”  In those cases, the things compared can be envisioned.  A basketball is bigger than a baseball, whether six or eight or 12 times bigger I don’t know.  But you can see each of them in your mind, you can envision eight baseballs and think, yea, a basketball is bigger than that.

But “two times smaller” is an impossibility.  You can envision a basketball, but what is two times smaller than a basketball.  If a basketball is the unit of measure, how can it also be the divisor of itself.  (No one would ever state that something weighs two times less than a pound.)  What is being conveyed, of course, is that the other thing is half as big as a basketball.  Then why not say that.  It is simpler, more direct, and less susceptible to quibbles from the likes of me.

That is the only complaint I have about the book.  It is otherwise exquisite.  Whether or not you read that particular book, read something.

The Violent Femmes sing in Lack of Knowledge, “Read read read read read read read everything you can read, learn learn learn learn learn learn learn everything you can learn.”  I like their music, I like their sentiment.  When you read, you learn.  Whether you read a book a month or a book a year, read something.

I just read Language Myths, edited by Lauri Bauer and Peter Trudgill, published in 1998.  Twenty-one different authors each tackle a language myth and debunk it.

Below are the myths, each of which gets its own chapter.

–The meaning of words should not be allowed to vary or change.

–Some languages are just not good enough.

–The media are ruining English.

–French is a logical language.

–English spelling is kattostroffik.

–Women talk too much.

–Some languages are harder than others.

–Children can’t speak or write properly any more.

–In the Appalachians, they speak like Shakespeare.

–Some languages have no grammar.

–Italian is beautiful, German is ugly.

–Bad grammar is slovenly.

–Black Children are verbally deprived.

–Double negatives are illogical.

–TV makes people sound the same.

–You shouldn’t say “it is me” because ‘me’ is accusative.

–They speak really bad English down south and in New York City.

–Some languages are spoken more quickly than others.

–Aborigines speak a primitive language.

–Everyone has an accent except me.

–America is ruining the English language.

The various authors make compelling cases for concluding that the truth is contrary to every single myth posited.  I’ll mention one argument to give you an idea.

The myth is that double negatives are illogical, but according to the author, they aren’t.  The myth derives from math.  Two minus negative two is four, the two negatives equal a positive.  That’s how math works, that’s not how languages work.  When someone says “I didn’t talk to nobody,” no sentient person really thinks, hmmn, if he didn’t take to nobody, then he must have talked to somebody.  Only pedants think like that and they do it purposely to showcase how smart they are.  Everybody, including the pedant, knows that the speaker didn’t talk to a human.  Furthermore, double negatives are an integral part of many languages.  In French, “I don’t want anything” is “je ne veux rien,” where “ne” and “rien” both indicate a negative.

The other myths are similarly discredited — though in truth, some of the “myths” have the appearance of strawmen.  Memorize the opposite of the myth and you will have a much better understanding of linguistics.  Or read the book and you will understand why the myth isn’t true.

The overwhelming takeaway from this book and other books I have read about language and linguistics is that languages are in a constant state of change.  Words are created regularly (think about anything pertaining to text messages), fall into disfavor (dungarees), and change meanings (“nice” originally meant “silly”).  The only thing constant about language is flux.

Books and writing have tended to slow the rate of change by locking in meanings and usage.  But even so, words continue to morph.

Like many English words, “while” has multiple meanings, and most of them have a temporal element.  Unfortunately, “while” has also become a synonym for “although.”  It shouldn’t.  The better practice is to retain the temporal element, as in “I read the book while riding the bus.”  Use “although” when contrasting two related concepts, as in “although the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm.”  The oft-used “while” just doesn’t convey the same meaning. “While the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm” almost seems illogical, as if it were warmer when the sun wasn’t shining.

Similarly “since” should be used to convey that time has passed, “I haven’t been outside since 10 o’clock this morning.”  It is frequently used as a synonym for “because,” again without enhancing clarity, “since he went outside, he put on a jacket.”  The reader isn’t certain when or why the jacket was put on.

The synonymic usages are here to stay, but I don’t like them because they add a level of ambiguity.  Retaining the temporal element is clearer, less difficult to understand, and more difficult to misunderstand.

What we are really looking for, especially in conversation, is comprehension.  So the next time you are having a conversation with someone and they don’t use “bring” or “come” exactly the way you would, take a deep breath and consider that, because you understand what is being conveyed, there is no reason to correct the mythical mistake that is likely on its way to becoming common usage.