is for Ennui.
French. A beautiful language rempli à la capacité [1] with subtle delights. It possesses a two-syllable word for the feeling of utter weariness and discontent caused by a complete lack of interest: ennui. Not stupid American boredom, but a sophisticated listless oppression that would be paralyzing if paralyzation didn’t involve intense emotion.
[1] Filled to capacity.
is for Douchebag.
A word that once meant “a small syringe having detachable nozzles for fluid injections, used chiefly for vaginal lavage and forenemas” has gone on to describe “contemptible or despicable person”. As mentioned on Frankly Curious, douchebag was even chosen as Word of the Year. We live in a wonderful era where a simple word for a gross necessity can go on to become a celebrity.
is for Celebrity.
According to an online dictionary, the word celebrity has been around since the 14th century, originating in Middle Earth probably to describe Gandalf. Or maybe it’s Middle English. Who knows.
A celebrity is any person who, for whatever reason, is stalked by paparazzi. Being worthy of attention is not a requirement, although marketability is. There are levels of celebrity, those whose contributions have some positive and useful impact on the world [1] and those who are typically referred to as “train wrecks” [2].
“George Clooney is a celebrated actor. Lindsay Lohan is a celebrity.”
[1] Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart come to mind.
[2] Honey Boo Boo and her mother, Jabba the Hutt.
is for Bother.
Another terse, yet nimble word than can be used as a noun or a verb. As a noun it can mean annoy, irritate, worry: “Such a bother!” Or it can describe effort or work: “Why bother?”
While as a verb, bother is something that causes annoyance, irritation, or worry as in, “You bother me.”
I found this why bother? We’re all gonna die image by Holbein at FromOldBooks.com
is for Angst.
We can thank the Germans for angst [1]. Who but they could so concisely express the feeling of dread, anxiety, or anguish? A useful world for a distressing world.
[1] The word. Germans don’t have a corner on its production.
If you read this blog even causally, you know what a fan I am of Don Quixote. It is a delightful book that everyone should read. In a way, my writing about the book is an effort to share my joy about Cervantes’ crowning achievement. But there are other ways to do that.
Here’s one. I could go door to door every Saturday and talk to people. “Hi! I was wondering if you’ve read Don Quixote?” The middle aged woman stares at me blankly. “No? I’d like to read you a passage from Part 1, Chapter 7, The Second Sally. ‘At that instant Don Quixote began shouting…'”
I suspect if I did that people would either think that I was crazy or that I was involved in some kind of prank. They would just want to get rid of me. But it would be different if somehow they managed to see that I really do love that book and I really do want to share my love of it. In that case, they would think that I was just this rude guy who thinks that he has a right to bother other people who are otherwise enjoying their weekend.
But wait, there’s more! Suppose that I wasn’t just spreading the good word about what a great read Don Quixote is. Suppose I was selling a subscription service. Suppose I wanted to get them to come to Don Quixote appreciation meetings where they would be expected to pay dues! In that case, I think these front door confrontations might turn violent.
This is how I feel about the Jehovah’s Witnesses who come to my front door almost every Saturday: they are incredibly self-serving and rude. It is every bit as repugnant as the kids who come through the neighborhood selling magazines. Perhaps worse, because the kids at least admit to what they are doing.
What’s more, because I truly am interested in spiritual matters I find it annoying that I can’t discuss these issues with them. If you’ve ever talked to them, you know how it goes. Start talking to them about cosmology or theodicy and what you get back is some Bible verse. Truly, if you argue with them about how all of their beliefs depend upon the core belief that the Bible is actually the word of God, they have an answer. They will turn to John whatever and show you that the book says right there that it is the word of God. So any discussion with them is nothing more than the most aggravating tautology you will ever deal with.
I really don’t know what to do about these people. I don’t like to be rude to people, even when they are being rude to me. Perhaps the next time they come, I can bring a copy of Don Quixote to the door. And for only $12.95, it too can be theirs.
There is a great deal of moral thought in Graham Greene’s Monsignor Quixote. I just want to finish off my thoughts on this novel, which I discussed in video form a couple of weeks ago.
In modern America, I think of Christians as being selfish conservatives who think the poor are morally inferior. It is nice to remember that this is exactly the opposite of traditional Christian thought. Father Quixote is a man who cares very much about all people. I think this, more than anything else, is why his best friend is the Communist Sancho.
In this first excerpt, Father Quixote is trying to figure out what penance he should give to an undertaker who claims to have stolen handles off the coffin of a beloved priest (although he didn’t really):
Imagine the good Christian men Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney (yes, Mormonism is a kind of Christianity) would think of this idea about the sin of theft. In our society, the rule seems to be that if you steal from the rich you will get more punishment, not less.
The other excerpt is shockingly beautiful in its compassion, although I think most people will find it repellent. Don Quixote starts this dialog with Sancho:
“She wanted to be raped, I suppose.”
“No, no, her thought was quite logical. Her virginity was less important than the salvation of the Moor. By killing him at that moment she was robbing him of any chance of salvation. An absurd and yet, when one thinks of it, a beautiful story.”
Again, this is not the thinking of most people who consider themselves Christians. Yet this saint did just what Jesus supposedly did: she suffered for the sin of the Moor.
Many years ago, I attended a lecture by Kurt Vonnegut. He said that reading was the western version of meditation but that it was better. “When we read, we meditate with the greatest minds of our culture.” I think he was right. And I can’t think of a novel in which this is more true than Monsignor Quixote. I highly recommend meditating for a few hours with Graham Greene, who is certainly one of the greatest minds of our culture.
I’ve been experimenting for months, trying to create videos that don’t totally suck. And I am making progress. I still don’t feel comfortable releasing anything I’ve worked hard on. But I’ve decided to start releasing videos that I just throw together. It’s typical internet stuff, except that they deal with stuff I’m interested in. This time it is Graham Greene’s excellent Monsignor Quixote. I have a lot to say about the book, but I don’t have time right now to write about it. So I offer you “A Late Night Babble”:
Recently, I wrote about female TV conservatives who are blond. Immediately, the phone rang. It was Andrea.
“That’s not how you spell blond,” she said, but with an –e on the end of it. “It is blond without an –e for men, and blond with an –e for women.”
If it weren’t for Andrea’s large stockpile of assault rifles and Facebook page filled with violent conservative grammar rhetoric, I would have hung up right then.
“And what are you gonna do to me?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she replied with a disturbing calm.
Of course: the Grammar Inquisition! A lot of good liberal grammarians were tortured for ending sentences with prepositions back in the 90s.
“Do your best,” I said and hung up the phone.
I know my days are numbered, so I need to get this out while I still can. Both blond and brunet were originally French words. As a result, when applied to females in the French language, one would add an –e or a –te to the ends of these words. Thus: garçon blond (blond boy) and jeune fille blonde (blond girl).
But I forgot! I don’t speak French; I speak English. And the funny thing about English is that we don’t do that. So the Grammar Inquisition can bite me. I won’t back down!
It isn’t just me saying this. Let us go back to the 1926 first edition of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H W Fowler:
That’s in 1926, or as I say, “Almost 100 fucking years ago!”
Today, there are major issues with the use of these words as nouns because they are seen as sexist. The American Heritage Guide to Contemporary Usage and Style has the following to say about this:
I don’t think this is bad advice, but I do use blond as a noun to describe men—admittedly, less often than I do with women.
The main thing is that using “blond” and “brunet” only makes usage more clear. There is no point in clinging to these gender signifiers—regardless of what the Grammar Inquisition has to say.
I know what’s been on your mind this last week, “Did Frank read Foucault’s Pendulum last weekend like he said he would?”
Alas, no. Well, a little. I read the first 15 pages. Twice! Let me explain.
I don’t have a copy of The Name of the Rose, but as I recall, it started well. William and Adso are walking to the monastery and William does his 14th century imitation of Sherlock Holmes. I was hooked. As I recall, in two pages, I knew not only that William was brilliant, but also that he was vain about his intellect. It was a great opening — the kind that makes you want to read more.
Such was not the case with Foucault’s Pendulum. The first time through, I was confused. This is not really uncommon for me. The first time I read Catch-22, I read the first 60 odd pages three times before I finished the book. In that case, I was just trying to get a handle on all of the characters. In Eco’s book, I was just trying to figure out what the hell was going on. There was a lot of stuff about a museum and odd comments about this or that character being dead and all that, “Who would think it would lead here?”
The second time through, I realized that the writer is on the run — or so it seems, I didn’t get a good feeling about his mental stability. He has decided to hide in the museum where the bad guys will not be able to get at him — maybe, because he’s not really sure of anything at this point. This kind of mysterious opening can work. In fact, Eco uses it to some extent in The Name of the Rose. The problem here is that after 15 pages, I didn’t know who the main character was and I didn’t care. The question I asked myself was, “Do I really want to spend another 600 pages with this guy?” And my answer was no. So I spent the weekend reading more Slavoj Žižek.
Yesterday, I got a book that is a masterclass on how to writing a first chapter: one of Graham Greene’s later novels, Monsignor Quixote. Wow. I had wanted to quote the first part of the book, but I wouldn’t know where to stop. Admittedly, I am a fan of Don Quixote. And this book has lots of sly and not so sly references to Cervante’s classic. And it is funny. But the main thing about it is that the main character is rendered on the page with great skill at the same time that all the preparations for the story are set up.
I’m sad that Eco let me down last weekend. I may someday give the novel another try. I suspect that if I had gotten to page 100, it would have been really good. But openings like Foucault’s Pendulum shows a certain writer’s arrogance, that is understandable after the success of The Name of the Rose. Or maybe he just forgot his art. He ought to have read Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing.
You should need no encouragement to read any Graham Greene novel. But Monsignor Quixote is a fast, funny, thoughtful read. And I’ll bet your local bookstore has it in stock.
I just finished reading two translations of the first part of Don Quixote and I’ve begun to see it in a whole new way, at least in terms of theatrical production. Cervantes does something that was greatly improved upon by later writers: he brings a number of subplots together with the main plot. It isn’t clear that he knows that he’s doing this, because he doesn’t make good use of it.
Probably the most surprising thing he does is to reintroduce of the 15 year old lad from Chapter 4. When we first see him, his master is whipping him. Don Quixote, that righter of wrongs, makes the lad’s situation even worse. And Don Quixote, lost in his dream world, rides off thinking he has done a great deed.
Here the boy comes back and explains all that happened. Don Quixote wants to right this further wrong, the boy stops him. He explains that Don Quixote only makes bad situations even worse and that the best thing is to stay the hell out of other people’s business. This is the only time in the whole novel that Don Quixote seriously considers that he is not right.
These last chapters also set right the story of Cardenio, Lucinda, and Ferdinand. This involves Ferdinand’s first love, Dorothea, who he abandoned. They leave as two couples: Cardenio with Lucinda and Ferdinand with Dorothea. The evil Ferdinand gets no punishment for his actions, probably because he is of noble birth who are not only above the law but beyond moral expectations.
There is also yet another couple of young lovers who get together, but why they are thrown in the book is not clear. Gines de Pasamonte shows up long enough to return Sancho’s sometimes stolen sometimes not donkey. The barber whose basin Don Quixote stole is bought off. And the innkeepers are paid for Don Quixote’s lodgings and all the destruction he has caused.
The most important tying up is done with Don Quixote’s friends the priest and barber—but not the barber who lost his basin (this is very confusing when they are together in the story). They bring him home where he is cared for by his niece and housekeeper. The plot is left there, but Cervantes writes that he has heard of further adventures, but hasn’t been able to get his hands on them. So the book ends with as shameful a lead in to a sequel as the new Spider-Man film.
The main thing about all of this is that if plotted correctly, all of these story threads could come together to great comedic effect. The story does not have to be a sequence of adventures—it can have real dramatic momentum.
One thing though: the windmills have got to go!
As I read through Don Quixote, I try to mix it up in terms of translations. As readers know, my favorite translation is Putnam for various reasons, but most especially because his translation is distinctly better than previous translations and no translation since is distinctly better than his. Nonetheless, recently I’ve been reading Burton Raffel’s 1995 translation. It is the most unique translation that I’ve found.
At first, I was put off by what I thought unusual translations for the sake of being different. In particular, Sancho names Don Quixote, “Caballero de al triste figura.” This is translated by various writers as follows:
It was only later that I realized that Raffel was (as much as possible) translating Don Quixote like a poem. He tries to get the sound and the syntax as close as possible to the original. This is a hopeless task, of course, but he succeeds surprisingly well.
There are times when this causes him to give up on translating altogether. A particularly interesting passage is in Chapter 26, where Sancho is quoting a letter Don Quixote had written. In the original:
“No diria,” dijo el Barbero, “sobajada, sino sobrehumana, o soberana.”
The point is that Sancho is ignorant and confuses words. He refers to the, “Great and scrubbing lady”![1] The barber replies that it can’t be that and suggests “superhuman” and “sovereign.”
Dealing with word play of this type is difficult in translation. Putnam deals with it well, but at the expense of a close translation:
“He would not have said sufferable,” the barber corrected him; “it must have been sovereign lady or something of that sort.”
Compare this to Raffel who doesn’t even try to translate this, but simply adds editorial comments so the reader can understand the joke.[2]
“It couldn’t say that,” said the barber. “Not ‘much pawed-over’ but ‘more than human’ [sobrehumana] or ‘sovereign’ [soberana] lady.”
One way is not necessarily better than the other. However, despite Putnam’s cleverness in translating this, the true nature of the joke comes through better with Raffel.
Because Raffel has worked so hard at recreating the experience of reading Don Quixote in Spanish, the text is a bit more stilted and less modern than Putnam’s. It is nonetheless highly readable; the pages fly by. I’ve thought a lot about why there have been so many translations of Don Quixote since Putnam. Grossman’s translation, while marginally better, doesn’t seem to be worth the effort. Raffel’s translation is distinct, and we are better off for it.
[1] “Sobajada” is not in my Spanish dictionary; Google translates it is “scrubbing.”
[2] Putnam provides an endnote on the subject: