PARVUM OPUS
Number 210
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FOOTNOTE (adversaria, aide-memoire, annotation, apparatus criticus, comment, commentary, commentation, docket, entry, exegesis, gloss, item, jotting, marginal note, marginalia, memo, memoir, memorandum, memorial, minutes, notation, note, note of explanation, register, registry, reminder, scholia, scholium, word of explanation)
I picked up a book at the library, a reprint of a 19th century novel with an introduction almost as long as the novel itself. The Curse of Caste: or The Slave Bride by Julia C. Collins was a serialized novel first published in 1865 in The Christian Recorder, the national newspaper of the African Methodist Episcopal church. This is the first novel published by a black American woman. Unfortunately, Mrs. Collins died of tuberculosis before the story was finished. The editors, William L. Andrews and Mitch Kachun, composed two alternative endings, a happy one and a tragic one. Besides including a forward by Frances Smith Foster, an introduction, notes to the introduction, an additional editorial note by Anne Bruder, and a reading group guide, they've annotated certain words in the text. I hope somebody is getting either a Ph.D. or tenure out of this.
I was puzzled by the words they chose to footnote with simple definitions. "Mien", for instance. This is not a particularly 19th century word, nor is it any more literary or rare today than other words they did not footnote, such as deportment, and it's much more common than the archaic spelling of cigar, segar, which they did not footnote. They footnoted Hades but not Heaven. I'm reminded of Frederick Crews' parody in The Pooh Perplex of a translation of a supposed scholarly work, "A. A. Milne's Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathcomplex" by Karl Anschauung, M.D. ("anschauung" means "opinion" in German). The article's first editorial footnote says, "I have reproduced the original German wherever there has been any doubt about shadings of meaning" ~ such as uncanny, hence, themselves express, Pooh's meaning, thus, and so on ~ words which are not doubtful at all. The Collins editors, however, are not engaged in parody. Maybe they think it's necessary to explain names from classical mythology, but why define words still in English usage that were used exactly the same way in Civil War America? This reflects either on the editors' grasp of English, or else on their experience with the literacy level of today's college students.
"Too Good for a Trade?" is an article by Paul Levine (New York Times, September 17, 2006) about the value of vocational education. Worth reading and considering. A skilled tradesman not only can make a good living, but also can find much satisfaction in his work. Now we think everyone should have a chance to go to college, but not everyone has the taste or aptitude for, well, jokes about footnotes. The quality of scholarship has declined, and grades are inflated, just so everyone can get a white-collar job, I guess. And those who would previously have sneered at the blue-collar jobs now find themselves too good for a cubicle job, thus "Dilbert" and movies like Office Space.
Part of the American dream is for the younger generations to do better than their parents and grandparents, and today we think this means having a job with higher status. But there is a long tradition behind this desire. John Adams wrote:
I must study politics and
war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons
ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval
architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their
children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary,
tapestry, and porcelain.
At the time, the latter studies belonged to women (dilettantes) or to wealthy men of leisure (Thomas Jefferson during his time off) or to the occasional driven artist. In my case, my forebears were farmers and soldiers, so that I might study English literature and grammar. I'm not sure that this is upward evolution, but I'm grateful.
Jim S. wrote:
I thought it was a rather
curious use of the expression "act of God" when the Iraqi government
used it to describe hanging of Saddam's half-brother this week. This referred
to their popping off his head at his hanging.
What the Iraqis might mean by this is a mystery to me, but this could be one of those rare ecumenical moments.
GOLDEN BULL
Mike Sykes tells me that the British do spell the steps that cross a fence "stile". He also sent this:
As for Germaine Greer,
she was recently offered the "Golden Bull" award by the Plain English
Campaign for writing, in an article for the Guardian:
The
first attribute of the art object is that it creates a discontinuity between
itself and the unsynthesised manifold.
Her response is at The Plain English Campaign have given me a 'Golden Bull'
award. Well, they can stuff it | | Guardian Unlimited Arts. In my
view, this does her little credit. She claims that they "couldn't even be
bothered to do an internet search for "unsynthesised manifold". Most
of the references you'll find are to her use of it, though there is Glossary of Terms in Kant, which doesn't help
much.
I have asked several reasonably educated people what it meant to them, including two philosophy graduates, and none knew. I can't decide how to characterise her statement that
Most
reasonably educated Guardian readers would, I faintly hope, have
recognised the phrase "unsynthesised manifold" as an English version
of a basic concept in Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, first
published in English in 1790 and familiarised in Britain by the work of
Coleridge and just about anybody else who writes about aesthetic theory.
She must have a peculiar
understanding of "reasonably".
As her graduate student, I felt reasonably uneducated when she appeared disdainful that some of us (me) had not taken music lessons growing up. And I certainly haven't spent a lot of time with aesthetic theory. Also, I can't imagine what she meant in her interview by saying that the word "somewhat" is imprecise. To be fair, I must add that she was also kind-hearted and generous to me.
(I'm glad to know about the Plain English site.)
PERFECT ENGLISH
Anne DaBee commented on the ancipitalizing Mrs. Deutsch:
For those who care, Mrs.
Deutsch was the perfect teacher of English and all things related thereto, at
Mahtomedi HS in MN. Or perhaps the teacher of perfect English ~ she was both.
If I remember correctly, she also required that for a passing final grade all
her students learn (and recite) all (4?) verses of the Star Spangled Banner.
There weren't many like her back in the 60s, and I suspect there are almost
none today, more's the pity.
If you're very good (or
not), I might pass along the naughty limerick Anne remembered from "The
Bog", whatever that is.
PUT DOWN THAT TACO!
Remember the Taco Bell Chihuahua who used to say, "Yo quiero Taco Bell"? Supposedly Taco Bell retired him because some Latin Americans thought the dog was a thinly veiled ethnic stereotype (according to Wikipedia). Stereotype of what? All Chihuahuas speak Spanish? Spanish-speaking people in America like Mexican food? All Mexicans are Chihuahuas? Chihuahuas like Tex-Mex food? I don't get it. Perhaps the very fact that Taco Bell sells cheap Tex-Mex food is itself a stereotype, and if they're really contrite, they'll close down completely.
According to the Urban Legends page, the speedy, big-eyed mascot was really mimicking Taco Bell's prime customers, teenage males. Would anyone have objected if the dog had spoken English? I call on all American teenage boys to protest.
SQUEEGEE
Something I learned from John Ratzenberger's Made in America: The squeegee, made by the Ettore Company of California, is named after a tool that was used to clean the decks of boats, the squilgee or squillagee. An obsolete verb, squeegee, is possibly related to squeeze.
Another note on the death of humorist Art Buchwald: There's a video obituary on The New York Times web site, an interview with Buchwald taped, I believe, last year.
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