The persistence of being

In a lovely essay titled 'The Persistence of Books' in the lovely literary zine,World Literature Today, Rebecca Walkowitz writes about Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes,  Junot Diaz's use of Spanish and English in his fiction, Paul Kingsnorth’s breakout novel, The Wake, and Ali Smith's book  How to Be Both (2014).

In Tree of Codes, Foer has cut out words from the pages of the book, so that we see both gaps (literal cutout spaces in the paper) and words from other pages, which lie beneath those gaps. Tree of Codes (the title itself involves paring away letters from The Street of Crocodiles) uses the codex—the structure of paper sheets lying one on top of the other—to engage readers in the turning of pages, encountering holes, and registering loss or absence. Moreover, as Hayles points out, the reader’s intensive experience of her own body is meant to evoke by contrast the unfelt loss of other bodies, especially the loss of the novel’s author, who was murdered by a Gestapo officer in 1942. Loss, gaps, and absence are a condition of the novel’s history, which Foer seeks to make palpable through his adaptation. 
Foer’s work registers the absence of English words but generally forgets—and allows readers to forget—the absence of Polish words. There is no direct reference in the text or in the afterword to the original language of the work. In this sense, Tree of Codes is interested in the history of the book but not especially interested in the history ofbooks: their movement through the world in multiple editions and languages, their debt to translators, and their reliance on English as a medium of translation. Like many other recent works of world literature, Tree of Codes animates the medium specificity and sensuous effects of the printed page

....Books are not simply containers for language. They also establish the location of language. They do this, for example, by reproducing the national lexicon (the words that count as US English) while marking out and distinguishing, through italics, words that are foreign or outside that lexicon. Typographically, literary fiction since the nineteenth century has served to affirm the borders between local and global diction. Junot Díaz makes this point—and upends it—in his 2012 collection of short stories, This Is How You Lose Her. Díaz’s fiction is concerned with the relationship between English and Spanish. When his works move into other languages, translators have had to figure out how to communicate the formal dimensions of that theme. In particular, they’ve had to grapple with his selective use of italics, in which many but not all Spanish words are presented, alongside English words, in roman font. How do you translate a work of US fiction in which some words are local and foreign at the same time?

.....Incorporating medieval and modern, Kingsnorth shows that the normative technologies of the novel—the standardization of typeface and format, orthography and font—are complicit in the invisibility of English. We have forgotten the history of English. We have forgotten that English has a history. The Wake hopes to awaken our memory. 
Kingsnorth suggests that the flourishing of the English-language novel, represented by the triumph of contemporary anglophone fiction, is rooted in the physical brutality of the conquest. The novel presents that history while also seeking to inaugurate an alternative, localist future.
Incorporating medieval and modern, Kingsnorth shows that the normative technologies of the novel—the standardization of typeface and format, orthography and font—are complicit in the invisibility of English. We have forgotten the history of English. We have forgotten that English has a history. The Wake hopes to awaken our memory.
Kingsnorth suggests that the flourishing of the English-language novel, represented by the triumph of contemporary anglophone fiction, is rooted in the physical brutality of the conquest. The novel presents that history while also seeking to inaugurate an alternative, localist future.

....
Like Kingsnorth, Ali Smith asks us to consider the words, voices, and agents that precede or lie beneath the book we hold in our hands. Smith’s How to Be Both (2014) evokes multiple languages by generating the impression of multiple narratives, books, historical periods, and media. The novel emphasizes not only the history of writing but also, like our other examples, the typographic representation of that writing. The characters make free use of smartphones and iPads and other digital technologies, but the work relies on the codex and on the reader’s visual experience of letters and shapes on the page. The work is thus “post-digital” or “bookish” in the sense used by Jessica Pressman. It reaffirms the technologies of the book while benefitting—through composition, format, design, and circulation—from the technologies of the computer. Insisting on the book becomes a way to make the reader’s body participate in the text, to be sure. But it is also a way to make the reader a kind of instigator or operator of the text. The narrative provides an apt image for this process when it tells us that one of main characters, George, re-watches the same iPad video over and over again. She does this, she says, because she wants to witness the “happening,” by which she means the fact of circulation rather than the represented acts. We too are asked to witness the happening: the way the book presents itself to us, the way its words and ideas visually and figuratively twist into other words, and our experience as readers and handlers of the object. The reader’s experience is inseparable from the novel’s plot.

 Read the full article at the link.

The magic in the stick

Repeat after me..er. her now: Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

This reminds me of a word I learned to spell as a 9 or 10 year old! (Yeah.. I was (am?) geeky that way! :)) This one: Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis


For those wondering what the post title means...

“What matters is not the length of the wand, but the magic in the stick” - Anon

What goes of wands, goes for words too, no? ;)

Some other more philosophical quotes about length! :)

 “Life's like a play; it's not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters” - Seneca  

“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Yes and No are very short words to say, but we should think for some length of time before saying them.” - Anon

Brevity the soul of wit?

Good magazine explores the Facebook’s Status Update as a 21st-century literary form 

OTOH, another article in the same zine wonders if text messaging is destroying our language.

Victory Speech

Nov 4th 2008. Historic night for Obama and the US but also... "A very good night for the English language" writes James Wood, whose recent book - How Fiction Works - is on my to-read list.

A movement in American politics hostile to the possession and the possibility of words—it had repeatedly disparaged Barack Obama as “just a person of words” —was not only defeated but embarrassed by a victory speech eloquent in echo, allusion, and counterpoint. No doubt many of us would have watched in tears if President-elect Obama had only thanked his campaign staff and shuffled off to bed; but his midnight address was written in a language with roots, and stirred in his audience a correspondingly deep emotion.

Do read the entire piece. You'll read of allusions in Obama's speech that you, like me, may have missed.

Verbage Garbage

In a piece in the New Yorker, Verbage -The Republican war on words, critic James Wood talks about how the Republicans political discussion has confused and corrupted language, reflecting perhaps a "deep suspicion of language itself". I am reminded of the recent Peggy Noon WSJ op-ed piece: Palin's Failin', in which she wrote:

More than ever on the campaign trail, the candidates are dropping their G's. Hardworkin' families are strainin' and tryin'a get ahead. It's not only Sarah Palin but Mr. McCain, too, occasionally Mr. Obama, and, of course, George W. Bush when he darts out like the bird in a cuckoo clock to tell us we are in crisis. All of the candidates say "mom and dad": "our moms and dads who are struggling." This is Mr. Bush's former communications adviser Karen Hughes's contribution to our democratic life, that you cannot speak like an adult in politics now, that's too austere and detached, snobby. No one can say mothers and fathers, it's all now the faux down-home, patronizing—and infantilizing—moms and dads. Do politicians ever remember that in a nation obsessed with politics, our children—sorry, our kids—look to political figures for a model as to how adults sound?

Anyways, Wood's article has come for some criticism, as I gleaned via this Bookslut post today:

Mark Liberman at the Language Log chastises Wood (also this) for his "childish egocentrism, which assumes without checking that 'This isn't how I pronounce or use this word, so it must be wrong; and I don't recall having seen this before, so it must never have happened before.'"

a sexy sesquipedalian

I want to be a sexy sesquipedalian,
brevity is over-rated.

That's the first thing that came to mind after learning a new word from Maureen Dowd's writeup in the NYT today remembering Paul Newman. (Should say, much as I enjoy her snark and wit usually, somehow the article today was disappointing and does not do justice to Newman or her own writing talents. It seems like it was written in a hurry and not much thought was put into it and I don't say that only because it ends suddenly. Seems like a quick job that she felt obliged to do (due to Newmans death) in the midst of the political campaign... big let down for me; though I learned a word!)

Ok.. indulge me - feel like writing some bad poetry. :)

I want to be a sexy sesquipedalian,
brevity is over-rated.

I may be a man of few words,
but remember I'm the one who at 10 (or 12?)
had learned to spell
Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis;
though I didn't care much for Greek dishes.*

You may undermine my effort through
floccinaucinihilipilification (2),
(arguably the longest word without an e)
and accuse me of antidisestablishmentarianism
(longest word excluding coined and technical ones)
but I'm just ....well...supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

* Lopadotemakhoselakhogameokranioleipsanodrimypotrimmatosilphiokarabomelitokatakekhymenokikhlepikossyphophattoperister-alektryonoptokephalliokigklopeleiolagōiosiraiobaphētraganopterýgōn.
2) "the act of describing something as worthless, or making something to be worthless by deprecation".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/27/endangered.languages

hat tip Lahar Appaiah http://cultureczar.blogspot.com

Reflections by an Aiibiishaabookewininiwag

This excerpt from an article from 2000 by Louis Erdrich about learning Ojibwemowin, the language of her mother's ancestors:

English is an all-devouring language that has moved across North America like the fabulous plagues of locusts that darkened the sky and devoured even the handles of rakes and hoes. Yet the omnivorous nature of a colonial language is a writer's gift. Raised in the English language, I partake of a mongrel feast.

I empathize. I wonder if I will ever be driven to learn to read/write Kannada, my mother-tongue; if only to be able to read a small diary my dad kept in the 1960s, which I only found recently after his death. I know how to speak in three Indian languages (Hindi, Marathi, and Kannada) but can read and (barely) write in only two of them (Hindi and Marathi). But I am most comfortable in English. I think I even think in English. Someone had asked me what language I dream in. Do dreams have languages? Do dreams have colors? Do dreams mean anything?

Back to the Erdrich piece. I loved this para:

Ojibwemowin is also a language of emotions; shades of feeling can be mixed like paints. There is a word for what occurs when your heart is silently shedding tears. Ojibwe is especially good at describing intellectual states and the fine points of moral responsibility.

Ozozamenimaa pertains to a misuse of one's talents getting out of control. Ozozamichige implies you can still set things right. There are many more kinds of love than there are in English. There are myriad shades of emotional meaning to designate various family and clan members. It is a language that also recognizes the humanity of a creaturely God, and the absurd and wondrous sexuality of even the most deeply religious beings.

P.S. Aiibiishaabookewininiwag in Ojibwemowin means the tea people, the Asians. (I think it likely means East Asians but maybe also includes Asian-Indians, the people whose land Columbus and co. were seeking when they alighted upon the Native Indians (though not the Ojibwe/Chippewa tribe that speak the Ojibwemowin) in America. It seems, the Chippewa are the third largest Native Indian group north of Mexico, after the Cherokees and Navajos. (Note to self: Some day I need to read about the various Indian tribes - which regions in the US they populated, a brief history, and so on.)

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity

Essential reading for everyone, especially those interested in language and literature: George Orwell's 1946 essay: Politics and the English Language. It was apparently written when Animal Farm had just been completed and Nineteen Eighty-Four was a preliminary manuscript - approximately at the same time as his other essay, The Prevention of Literature, which also concerns itself with truth and the use of language.

I have not read either essays yet but will get around to it sometime this month. For now, just one quote from the essay (I am sure it is full of quotable quotes -- like I said: essential reading in its entirety):

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.

And thanks to wikipedia, here are the six rules that Orwell thought will help writers avoid most of the errors in the examples of poor writing he talks about in his essay.

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Speaking of essays, I just started reading The Best American Essays 2007 last night -- so far, just the Foreword and bits of the long-winded introduction by the issue editor, David Foster Wallace... so more about any interesting essays from the book later.

Words and Rice

An interesting site called Free Rice, where you can enhance your vocabulary while raising money to donate rice to people in poor countries. - found via The Shifting Career blog at NYT, which enlightens us further about the concept:

The rice is paid for by advertising revenue on the site; as you play the game, different ads appear. Best of all, once you enter the site and run through some introductory words, the site starts feeding you words that match your vocabulary level. Procrastination tool meets fund-raiser — what could be better?

The site is a sister-site of Poverty.com, which was "was created for all people around the world who want to end poverty. It was started in January 2007 by a private individual (John Breen) and has no political, religious, or corporate affiliation."

Related: I used to compile articles related to Fighting World Poverty here.

Karass

Some days back, I wrote about learning a new word - tristesse.

A new word for today is karass, which means "a group of people linked in a cosmically significant manner, even when superficial linkages are not evident."

The interesting thing is that it is a word Vonnegut created:

In his classic novel Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut explains how the world is divided into two types of social organizations: the karass and the granfalloon..

Well, coincidentally, just this morning after reading about the New Jersey Governor getting into a serious accident en route to moderating a meeting between the Rutgers women's basketball team and radio personality, Don Imus, I was thinking that life is indeed like a movie (Short Cuts & Crash came to mind!).... ..

…..somewhere out there in NJ (not quite LA..but you get the picture), is probably a guy who drives a red pickup who came off the shoulder onto the road too early, causing the aforementioned accident....and who who is working hard to put his child to college, possibly Rutgers. Tonight, he/she will not sleep well!

Oh well… as Vonnegut would say… And so it goes. We are all indeed part of a karass caught up in this existential life to nowhere. Am in a weird musing mood, this Friday evening…as you can tell!

Horses of a religious turn of mind

Learn about horses of a religious turn of mind and gentlemen with moveable head in this post.

Lynn Truss would be proud :)

Brevity, the soul of wit

This is how people break up in today's e-world...

I decided to never look at his MySpace page again.

This was posted by someone called Serena at Onesentence.org, where writers try to pack a wallop in a single sentence. Most fail...a few succeed.

My only contribution at the site to date was:

Life began to unravel into a jaded routine of inconsequential moments as soon as he stopped believing in himself.

Also see the following websites which live up to the idiom 'Brevity is the soul of wit'

Ten Word Review . One Word . One Sentence . Two Sentences . 100 Words . 400 words

nu-cu-lear Ghandi

A few days back, Amit Verma wondered why Westerners spelled Gandhi as Ghandi. I think it is just a case of a wrong-becoming-a-right simply because it was repeated often enuf... error being cast as a variation (or metathesis) of the norm - the kind of broohaha that one sees in the case of Bush (and many others like him) pronouncing nuclear as nu-cu-lear...or whatever it is Bush says and his supporters justify!! (And don't get me even started on other Bushisms and verbal gaffes)

anyways, just read Scott Adams (yes..him, of Dilbert fame) justifying the spelling because of a silent H .. much hilariy ensues :)

A silent h can be put anywhere you want, precisely because it is silent. So for example, it is equally proper to spell it Gandih, Gahndi, hGandi and even Gandhhhhhhhi.

and more fun later..

In Viking days, not only was the h totally noisy, but the Norsemen used them in practically every word. This caused a lot of confusion. The most common phrase in Viking became "Whhaht? I cahn't hunhderstand! Get the h out!" But it all came to a head one day when Eric the Artistic carved a wooden chair out of a tree stump and was showing it off to friends. That's when Allen the Insensitive said, "Nice Chairh, hEric. I thinkh I'll shit on it" Well, the next thing you know, swords are drawn and limbs are flying. And that was the day that the Vikings decided to stop talking in English and go discover the United States, which they called America.

haha.. Waiting for the day when "misunderestimated" and "subliminable" becomes a legit word :)

---

via Monkeyfilter:

Do you speak American? PBS put together a site to go along with its broadcast special (premiered in January) that's chock full of linguistic goodness! Take a quiz or check out the dictionary.

Everything you wanted to know about our crazy language - from Slayer Slang to New York Speak to Women Talking Too Much to Artificial Voices in Technology. There's also a nice list of commonly mispronounced words. Some people will just never learn.