A Post Every High School Graduate Should Be Able To Understand*

Over at Crooked Timber, Seth Edenbaum churlishly proclaimed me another fatuous academic who abjures clarity:

Academic snobbery is snobbery first and foremost ... Kaufman used the very specific language of a snobbery that I for long standing and very personal reasons find repulsive ... It's a class thing.

The sentence he identified as incontrovertible evidence of my snobbery?

I mean to sound light and quippy, but I seem destined to the stentorian.

I pay attention to my prose.  Some words, like "stentorian," have a knack for enacting their meaning.  My defense of tweedy naïvete sounded overwrought, so I apologized in language equally overwrought.  Little is less "light and quippy" than a phrase like "destined to the stentorian."  Edenbaum, I presume, would have me write more abstemious prose—my tactical naïvete made him "wanna go all Joan Didion on his sorry ass," a phrase seemingly designed to compel Joan Didion to wanna go all Joan Didion on his sorry ass, but I digress.  When Edenbaum is crowned King of the Words, all this ironic chicanery will stop.  His Omnipotence will put an end to the Hegemony of the Facetious and the deleterious playfulness of its oligarchs.  Sentences like this one, from Little Dorrit, would be banned:

How there had been a final interview with the head of the Circumlocution Office that very morning, and how the Brazen Head had spoken, and had been, upon the whole, and under all the circumstances, and looking at it from the various points of view, of opinion that one of two courses was to be pursued in respect of the business: that was to say, either to leave it alone for evermore, or to begin it all over again.

See how Dickens interpolated the feckless phrasing of those who work in the Circumlocution into his description of its workings?  Such loquaciousness might be literarily effective, but to the supercilious Edenbaum, such rhetorical flourishes betray mannered emptiness.  They are mere rhetoric, the feckless noodlings of orthographic nihilists like Joyce. 

When Edenbaum is King, he will declare war on the jejune.  In the beginning, his campaign will be subtle—a little gerrymandering here, a little disenfranchising there, you know, the quotidian manipulations of contemporary politics—but his bellicose nature will out soon enough.  Questionable language will be expurgated.  (The Chief of Soliquies is reputed to have asked the Second Assessor of British Literature, Elizabethean Divsion: "Do 'outrageous fortunes' really need 'slings' and 'arrows'?  Are these 'fortunes' even 'outrageous'?  Winnow 'em out!")  Any novel not written by Hemingway will be bowdlerized. 

When his administration publishes its official lexicon—complete with a taxonomy of adjectives and guide to their proper usage—the public, before only mildly unsettled, will become tempestuous.  They will demand their representatives mount a filibuster, futile though they know it will be.  The more vehement will call for them to impeach Edenbaum, but you cannot impeach a king.

He will appear on television with a diffident smirk that grows into an obsequious smile as he explains why he had to remove the epiphanies from Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man: "There was just something excessive about those swans."  As the language, once so rich, became more vacuous, more homogeneous, people will begin to pine for the lush, descriptive antebellum days.  In the words of one pamphleteer:

We should not have to describe our love with the same precision with which we find the hypotenuse of a triangle.  It is simply gauche.  We should not have to kowtow to those who express their emotions as a physicist would describe the kinetic energy of a cannonball at the apex of its parabolic flight.  When I say someone has blood on their hands, I care less about its hemoglobin's oxidation state than the desanguinated people.  If I want to call Our King, Hubris be His Name, a 'tectonic vortex of stupid,' it is the strength of the insult, not its sense, that concerns me.  When we abrogated our inventiveness to this totalitarian—when we decided it best that all our emotions be stamped and notarized by the Rector of Expressive Parameters—when we accepted this paradigm of featureless prose, we gained an infrastructure, but we lost our humanity.  All must inculcate in their children a laissez faire linguistic attitude.  Let the marketplace of language dictate the manner of expression, not that Usurper of the Tongue!

Needless to say, this man will publish incognito, the pecuniary reparations he will demand fifteen pages later invested in the construction of yet another bureaucratic ziggurat.  So people will continue to speak in irreverent terms of deciduous trees in autumn; the pulses of lovers will quicken at the mere mention gametes; expecting mothers will place hands on their womb, flush with the thought of the mitotic maintenance of chromosomal sets; treasured Christmas tchotckes will trigger thoughts of their polymer structure as they remind widows of equinoxes long passed and their evanescence; the sun will inspire enervated poets to thoughts of plasma and thermodynamic decay, shooting stars of quasars, &c.

I would not want to live in the literal world Edenbaum would have us live in.

*Because, you know.

Comments

[Martin GL]

You make me uncomfortable with your words and what you say.

The last bit reminds me of a line at the end of Tom Stoppards "Jumpers":

"if rationality were the criterion for things being allowed to exist, the world would be one gigantic field of soya beans!"

[R.L.Page]

Little Dorrit was a favorite of Eliot's, and that makes it good enough for me and thee.

[By the way, have you spilled something on your keyboard? Sticky keys?]

Never mind. This seems to fit right in with the emerging central issue on these intertoobz: Who shall be the Language Police? Well ...

Once upon a time and a very good time it was, there was a moocow coming down along the road ...

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

You make me uncomfortable with your words and what you say.

I try. Not too uncomfortable, I hope. Don't need anyone sending anyone any more letters.

By the way, have you spilled something on your keyboard? Sticky keys?

That's probably the most typos I've ever missed in a post. My eyes, they must be tired.

[aren't you so smart]

You can use 75 ten-dollars words you must be so smart. JG makes a DIFFERENCE. You show off how smart you think you are. BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE LOSER.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

The General's doughboys really don't understand context, do they? I didn't use seventy-five $10 words, I used one hundred ... as in, the one hundred words every high school graduate should know, as linked to in the post. You people, disappear aleady, please? Thank you.

[Jon Schnapp]

"tectonic vortex of stupid"

I have now fulfilled my "Literally Laughed Out Loud" (LLOL) quota for the day. And for this, sir, I thank you.

[R.L.Page]

$750 for one piece? Good work, if you can get it.

[Luther Blissett]

Scott: Can I offer some well meaning advice? Just ignore all of this. Don't worry about your reputation. Your reputation, based on your real blogging, research, conference papers, dissertation, etc., is rock solid. As I tell my middle schoolers, don't be provoked. Ignore the jackasses around you, and continue doing your own thing.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Don't worry, LB. This isn't me worrying about my reputation. I just happened to read the "100 Words" piece while Edenbaum was complaining about my use of "stentorian," and it seemed a nice fit. Typos aside, I'm having a nice, clear-minded day, doing nothing but reading Edith Wharton. So very much better than London. So very, very much.

[Tom]

"orthographic nihilist" thanks i agree joyce rules. I have boke reprot on joyce due in 2 hrs and this is just teh phraze i need. her pome abote trees is the best.

[bob mcmanus]

This post seems back on form. Endure the trolls. I see the self-mockery in the sentence, but can still sense an irony. But I never quite understood what Bill Buckley was doing either, with the lifted eyebrows, pencil at the lips, impish smirk as he dropped a hundred dollar word like the flick of a fan. It's a cool move, and if I had the time or brain, I would defend Edenbaum.

So much Joyce, my day is made. And I saved the Valve thread to my harddrive. Thank you.

[Mike Russo]

Damn, this was funny.

Although, at the risk of churlishness, I think you're at 99, not the full century -- I'm not finding moiety. Which, to be fair, I only noticed because when I clicked through to see the list, my immediate reaction was "some of these are kind of weird, but nobody, much less high school seniors, needs to know moiety, which really is just a pointlessly erudite synonym for a common word."

[R.L.Page]

I wonder how Mr. Edenbaum pronounces "erudite." I suspect that for him it's a four-syllable word, (necessarily inflating the $75.00 price tag.)

[seth edenbaum]

My god what a silly little fuck you are. Why not quote from the friends of Steve Gilliard who had to put up with your over-written (and overwrought) lecture on civility.
Why not supply the context for your ramblings?.

"No, apologizing for sounding excessively formal is not the same thing as patting myself on the back. It’s an apology."
This was the "apology:" Damn it, I mean to sound light and quippy, but I seem destined to the stentorian.
And for this:

...let it be said that I consider “tweedily naive” a compliment. It’s the stance I cultivate in the classroom, so that all might feel comfortable expressing their opinions. (The actual instruction involved Star Trek, Octavia Butler, and a roll of pennies. That class was incredible.) Such is the feminist pedagogy I was taught, such is the feminist pedagogy that I practice.

And what annoyed me, as I thought I had made clear you pathetic little fuck, was not that the use of the term "thug" but the use of the term "common" in saying that it was something that you were not. That claim is a definition of snobbery. Am I wrong? Moreover, you should be aware that stentorian is a word best left to others to apply to one's tone. And if as I suspect you don't know what the word means, perhaps you shouldn't have used it.
I stand by my original comment. Only you know how much time you spent composing a comment on a blog in an attempt to explain to the assembled masses the various meanings and implications behind an act of choice that almost all others considered an act, admittedly unintentional of gross irresponsibility. You used the fracas that resulted as an excuse to extemporize, laboriously -if that's possible- and exhibit to the world your own erudition. You failed. And in the process you pissed off a nutjob who began harassing you.
Was I supposed to care about this?
Your manners, and your politics, are atrocious.
nuff said

[Luther Blissett]

Good to hear, Scott. Admittedly, I've read -- what? -- only "To Build a Fire" and maybe a few others stories by London, but I can only imagine how nice it must be to read Wharton now.

In your abundant spare time, check out Claudio Magris's *Danube*. I'm about halfway in, and it's simply stunning.

[R.L.Page]

And in the process you pissed off a nutjob who began harassing you.

Posted by: seth edenbaum | Wednesday, 13 June 2007 at 06:52 PM

So it would seem.

[Scott Eric Kaufman]

Mike:

I thought I'd included the line "he thought himself a moiety of one," and then something or other about his better half. Well, I'll add it later.

My Dearest Seth:

Why not supply the context for your ramblings?.

Is a question really a question if a period follow the question mark? Who knows. I will say that anyone reading this blog who doesn't know that particular context isn't reading so much as looking at this blog. They see the words, sure, but they don't read them.

And what annoyed me, as I thought I had made clear you pathetic little fuck, was not that the use of the term "thug" but the use of the term "common" in saying that it was something that you were not. That claim is a definition of snobbery.

No. You cut off the meaningful part of my phrase in order to pillory me for a perceived slight against the working class. There's a difference between "a common thug" -- emphasis on "common" -- and "common internet thug" -- emphasis on troll.

Moreover, you should be aware that stentorian is a word best left to others to apply to one's tone. And if as I suspect you don't know what the word means, perhaps you shouldn't have used it.

I have absolutely no idea what it means. I think it means loud, a la Stentor, and that over the years has come to mean "loud and unnecessarily declamatory" ... but since I don't know what "declamatory" means, I think you win this one.

You used the fracas that resulted as an excuse to extemporize, laboriously -- if that's possible -- and exhibit to the world your own erudition.

Um, what? I could quote myself here saying that I don't know what I'm talking about vis-a-vis context other than what I know intuitively, but that would contradict your charming screed, so I'll refrain.

And in the process you pissed off a nutjob who began harassing you.

This is only your first comment, how are you harassing ... wait, I see now. You mean the other guy.

Your manners, and your politics, are atrocious.

I do put my elbows on the table when I eat. I know, it's so common of me, but I can't live up to the lofty standards of decorum you, man of the people, insist upon.

[seth edenbaum]

I assumed that you were using stentorian in the sense of authoritative rather than simply loud, since the latter makes little sense (again: in context) And I apologize for my errors in grammar but I toss these things off. You struggle with them I guess.
None of this is worth it. You're a moralizing, stuck up prig, but I hope your job is safe.

Interestingly, I have less sympathy for Brittney Gilbert. I assume for some reason that if you had been in her position you wouldn't have made her mistake, which makes your obliviousness that much more frustrating.
Take that as a compliment if you like.
ciao.

[Loki]

Scott, you're hilarious. I really hope that you don't take these astounding "comments" any more seriously than your responses would indicate. It seems there are more fruitful and rewarding things to spend time/energy on.

[barry]

I toss these things off

that's certainly the impression i get. like a franticly masturbating chimp.