Guest Post: Alex Jenkins

We're emerging from our annual summer hiatus to provide you with a special guest post from AMS student Alex Jenkins. Hope you're all having a good summer - see you in September.

Homeric Nods and Matters of Agreement

…et idem indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus

(And yet I also become annoyed whenever the great Homer nods off)

Horace, Ars Poetica

Since I’m both a rabid fan of David Foster Wallace’s work, and an incorrigible grammar snob, I was delighted to come across this in-class grammar worksheet he devised. There are ten sample sentences, each with one fundamental grammatical error. Spot the mistakes, without cheating, and follow the link to see if you’re right. I managed five. One could justifiably argue that example two is disorienting even when corrected, and that eight becomes stilted when the split infinitive is fixed. But the fact remains that these are supposedly basic usage errors, and I seem to be screwing up at least 50 percent of the time.

Didacticism is never a becoming trait, and the dour yet strident pedantry of grammar purists is particularly unpleasant. No one can avoid using language, but its usage is paradoxically complex and commonplace. H.W. and F.G. Fowler, two doyens of linguistic prescriptivism, spend nearly twenty pages discussing the intricacies of using shall and will correctly, and even then concede that “southern Englishmen” have the best chance of instinctively using the correct term. [1] Granted, this conundrum is archaic (I have never lived outside East Anglia, and my shall/will instinct is non-existent), but there are still plenty of examples where “correct” usage is counter-intuitive. And in some instances correctness is jarring. Take the following sentences from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe: ‘Come out, sons and daughters of Adam. It’s all right! It isn’t her!’ [2] They seem straightforward, sensible, and certainly comprehensible. Nevertheless, “to be” is a linking verb (copula), and so technically the antecedent pronoun should be nominative, i.e. I, They, We, He, or She; the sentence should therefore be rewritten as “It isn’t she!”

To make matters worse, the grammatical terms used to describe parts of language rely on nomenclature that seems arcane and irredeemably tedious. What is an ergative verb? What is a modal auxiliary? [3] Moreover, why do the edicts of traditional grammatical usage even matter? This last question is the real kicker, and one to which Wallace devotes considerable attention in his review-cum-essay “Authority and American Usage.” [4] Wallace articulates several arguments for adhering to what is called “prescriptive” usage, and he rightly argues that many of its confusing rules exist to preserve linguistic distinctions, to eliminate ambiguity, or to foster maximal readability. And, unpalatable as it may be, a significant percentage of potential readers will be distracted by gratuitous split infinitives, and denigrate any author who uses them. A point that Wallace underplays, however, is that knowing these principles, and applying them carefully, signals, in an understated and classy way, a writer’s expertise. Just as a layperson will trust the specialist knowledge of a mechanic or surgeon, a reader will trust a writer who understands the mechanics of writing, whereby words, even synonyms, have their own discrete identities. A precisely chosen word is engaging because it offers a window on the infinitely expanding, polysemous nature of language, a linguistic network that fizzes and crackles with latent significance. In a sense, all words are loaded words: all ineluctably relate to, and derive meaning from, each other. Yet some words are semiotically richer than others. Traditional prescriptive grammar therefore functions as a safety net and comfort blanket. It signals to a reader that the writer can puncture the solipsistic bubble of her own thoughts and can communicate, via prescribed grammatical rules, with authority, wit, and humanity.

It sounds mystical and abstract, but this is necessarily so. It exemplifies what Wallace called “compassion” for the reader, and compassion, like love and hope, is so abstract it can perhaps only be discussed through art. But compassion involves a generosity of spirit, which, in writing, means that what is written rewards the reader’s attention. Language is not private but communal (q.v. Wittgenstein’s The Philosophical Investigations), and is the mechanism by which private thought becomes public, but it is meaningless unless it follows public rules. If I want someone to take what I write seriously, it should show awareness of long-established usage conventions. Or, to put it another way, if I decide to use “that” when I really mean “which”, I had better ensure a reader realizes it is a conscious decision, and not merely carelessness.

The question of meaning has occupied philosophers for millennia, and is convolved and dizzyingly metaphysical. But there is an important related point that is concrete and easily recognisable: what one says may bear little relation to what one means. Suppose you are a parent with a teenage son. You ask him how he is and he says, “fine,” but the reply is sarcastic and dripping with existential affront, indicating, remarkably succinctly, an intractable Weltschmerz, which feeling is recognisable but irremediable, so why exactly bother and why-did-you-even-bring-it-up just shut up already. So the obvious point: none of the aforementioned is spoken, but is instantly recognisable because of vocal inflection, facial grimacing, and fatalistic posturing. Spoken language allows participants to recognise these extra-linguistic cues; writing, however, must rely on the words themselves to provide context and meaning. The upscale term for this is that speech inheres a metaphysic of presence – writing, a metaphysic of absence: the reader is usually physically absent when an author writes, and the writer absent when her work is read. This is one reason deconstructionist critics consider writing a more accurate representation of language’s ambiguities and complexities: the focus has to be on the words themselves and what they signify because writing cannot correct readers if its meaning is misconstrued.

This is pertinent, because a common rejoinder to grammar precisians’ criticisms is to say, “Oh, everyone else will know what I meant.” This is often true, but does not obviate genuine linguistic confusion or ambiguity, the classic example of which is the sentence, “There are many reasons lawyers lie, some better than others.” And even when one does know what the writer means, the error can still be irritating. Those persons with unusual names must be resigned to their frequent mispronunciation – lingual mangling, erratic ictus, or some other prosodic wincer. They will usually know what their would-be interlocutors mean, but the error – which now, as a consequence of its countless previous iterations, causes an involuntary, abreactive cringe – is still exasperating. The rather lengthy point being made here is that prescriptive usage is the grammatical equivalent of getting someone’s name right; and it’s usually simpler and more considerate to one’s readers to do so.

Happily, however, where such consideration is evident, and the consequent trust is earned not arrogated, many “errors” can be excused. [5] The Roman poet Horace coined the proverbial phrase “Homeric Nod” to refer to continuity errors in the Iliad, but no one would argue such mistakes affect its literary merit. Likewise, consistent grammar expiates many sins, and those solecisms that remain, and are commented upon, may be justified by recourse to Alexander Pope’s Essay on Criticism: ‘Those oft are Stratagems which Errors seem/Nor is it Homer Nods, but We that Dream.’ [6]

Notes and References

[1] H.W. Fowler and F.G. Fowler, The King’s English, 3^rd edn., (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), pp. 142-161. The former Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage is often upheld as the vade mecum of prescriptive British English grammatical usage. “Prescriptive” usage advocates certain rules for “correct” writing, but what constitutes correctness is naturally subjective. To paraphrase Wallace, and to save a lengthy note, one can no longer claim to be an “authority” on language ex officio; authority is now granted according to the persuasiveness of one’s arguments.

[2] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Complete Chronicles of Narnia, 2 (London: Collins, 1989), p. 98.

[3] For those sufficiently interested, an ergative verb is one that can be used both transitively and intransitively (the kettle boiled vs. I boiled the kettle), and a modal auxiliary expresses necessity or possibility, e.g., must, shall, will, should.

[4] David Foster Wallace, “Authority and American Usage”, Consider the Lobster and Other Essays (New York: Little, Brown, 2005), pp. 66-128.

[5] This includes the archaic proscription of sentence adverbs, such as happily, sadly, etc., though I’m still uncomfortable starting a sentence with hopefully, e.g., “Hopefully, I’ll see you soon” (do I hope to see you soon, or will I see you soon while full of hope?).

[6] Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Criticism”, Poet’s Corner – Bookshelf [accessed 6 August 2010] (lines 179-180).

Guest Post: Alex Jenkins

Translating Ecclesiastes: Some remarks on deconstruction, language, and thought

Alex Jenkins

With regard to scholarly writing, authors generally fall into two camps: those who insist on the importance of articulating one’s ideas as clearly as possible, and those who claim that complex ideas demand a similarly complex prose style. Both camps are, to an extent, correct. Jacques Derrida’s Limited Inc demonstrates the tension between John Searle’s maxim “if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself”, and Derrida’s commitment to linguistic uncertainty, an uncertainty he delights in incorporating into his prose. Critiquing the axioms underpinning language and questioning what it is to “mean” something is a tricky business, and is often necessarily abstruse; moreover, the rigorous critique of assumed critical axioms can be a profitable enterprise.

Nevertheless, this piece contends that scholarly writing is sometimes over-reliant on deconstruction, and this affects both the quality of prose and the quality of critical thinking. (Its title is a reference to George Orwell’s infamous translation of a passage from Ecclesiastes, which transforms the poetry of the original into stultifying abstractions.) An example: I have in front of me a book chapter, by Robert Stam, entitled “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” As a piece of writing, and as a piece of critical thinking, it is both persuasive (if overwrought) and unintentionally silly.

It is relatively easy to demonstrate the former claim. The chapter begins with a sensible, if pedestrian, discussion of the problems of fidelity in film adaptations, and makes the inarguable, if obvious, claim that the mechanics of film-making are necessarily different to the mechanics of novel-writing. There follows a summary of the tenets of deconstructionism, which for a novitiate to cultural or literary theory is confusing but is at least short. Where “Dialogics” really hits its laboured stride, however, is when its author proudly coins the phrase ‘diacritical specificity (59).’ (And the author really is proud of his creation: he calls it ‘A more satisfying formulation….’) This jargon is inexcusable for two reasons: firstly, it’s mentally horrifically taxing to parse; and secondly, the subsequent explanation of the term does little to elucidate it. To cut some prolix short, Stam’s coinage refers to film’s ability to marshal numerous visual and auditory resources, whereas a novel must stick to words.

Things get worse. In particular, one sentence ends with the pleonastic clause, ‘thus insinuating a deeper subterranean unity linking these apparently antagonistic characters (61).’ Deeper subterranean? As in sub-subterranean? How far below the Earth’s crust are we talking here? And I know that it’s stylistically clunky to use the same word repeatedly in a short space, but I am more than willing to grant an exception to Stam; to use anthropophagic to avoid repeating the word cannibalism tempts me to take the “death of the author” concept more literally than Barthes intended. I am not against complex, polysyllabic words, nor do I mind jargon, providing it’s not wincingly self-aggrandising. Often, one long word either saves writing several, or it offers precision of meaning that the latter cannot.

And so, as a proleptic response to potential “he who is without sin” type arguments, I will admit to being seduced by critical jargon. I once argued that, with reference to Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, post-structuralist critical theory offered an opportunity for a culturally nourishing “ludic Luddism.” In my defence, however, I was gunning for assonance. Now witness the following sentence: ‘in the cinema the performer also brings along a kind of baggage, a thespian intertext formed by the totality of antecedent roles (60).’ Translation: actors have been in other movies; people watching a film will therefore remember their previous roles. What initially sounded recondite is now a facile observation of fact. It is the examination of how this “previous acting experience” epiphany influences an audience’s viewing of the film that is the most useful and interesting part of the paragraph, not the tortuous stuff that introduces and surrounds it.

This brings me to my second claim, that excessive recourse to deconstructionism negatively impacts critical thought. For decades, scholarly writing has incorporated the concepts of différance, presence/absence, readerly/writerly texts etc., and also the hellaciously turgid, pleonastic, euphuistic, and sesquipedalian prose style excerpted above. The grand old men of deconstruction don’t get a free pass here, but they are exculpated to some extent by dint of the fact that they articulated the theories first. The thing is, though, that the axioms of Western philosophy and literature have been rigorously scrutinized since the sixties, and it therefore becomes harder to create fresh approaches. Often the critical game feels rigged so that the conclusion is established before the premises: i.e. ontology is dicey, intertextuality runs riot, meaning is not fixed, and relativism is all that can be established. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to construct a novel interpretative opinion.

Stam’s chapter does a reasonably good job of wielding the aforementioned deconstructionist tools, and his insights, when stripped of their verbiage, have merit. His conclusion, however, is somewhat predictable, and sneakily disingenuous. He writes:

By adopting the approaches to adaptation I have been suggesting, we in no way abandon our right or responsibilities to make judgments about the value of specific film adaptations. We can – and, in my view, we should – continue to function as critics; but our statements about films based on novels or other sources need to be less moralistic, less panicked [sic, really?], less implicated in unacknowledged hierarchies, more rooted in contextual and intertextual history. Above all, we need to be less concerned with inchoate notions of “fidelity” and to give more attention to dialogical responses – to readings, critiques, interpretations, and rewritings of prior material (77-78).

Given that Stam begins by deconstructing fidelity, and continues to do so in various guises throughout the chapter, it is redundant to write, in case we hadn’t already noticed, that strict adherence to fidelity is not a good idea. But the sneaky bit of his argument is his reassurance that ‘We can… continue to function as critics’; the subtext of this statement is that our critiques must incorporate the same deconstructionist techniques that he uses. The critic always interprets a film through her subjective lens, which is influenced by race, cultural background, sexuality, etc. etc., all of which can then be deconstructed again. The “dialogical” approach that Stam argues for risks being internalized by the critic and her inbuilt prejudices; and the result is worryingly solipsistic.

Nevertheless, deconstruction is not itself evil, or damaging; it’s just a theory, and much like evolutionary or atomic theory it is often unfairly judged on the supposedly bad things it has produced. Yet its current usage tends to reproduce the same tired tropes again and again. Historical, social, and cultural contexts do tend to affect audiences in similar ways, and therefore reasonably confident critical assertions can be made. Yes, ambiguity is always going to be present, but, as Ezra Pound commanded, make it new. Then again, he was a fascist, and they tend to have definite opinions.

Works Cited:

Stam, Robert. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation.” Film Adaptation. ed. and intro. by James Naremore. Rutgers UP, 2000. pp. 54-78.

Guest Post: Allusions of Grandeur

Allusions of Grandeur – Ironically brief thoughts on the postmodern epic novel

A guest post by AMS student Alex Jenkins.

The tradition of the literary epic[1] extends as far back as the literary tradition itself. From Homer’s Odyssey to Joyce’s Ulysses the extended, meditative, and highly allusive fictional form is present in some of the greatest canonical works of Western literature. The postmodern era, however, marked a different epoch for the epic.[2] It was, as David Foster Wallace has remarked, ‘the first generation of writers that had actually read a lot of criticism.’[3]

Let’s then take, as examples, three Ascapartic tomes from the past century, each roughly two decades apart and each fearsomely erudite: The Recognitions by William Gaddis, Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon, and Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. What makes these postmodern epics so distinctive is their commitment to allusiveness. Postmodern epics do not allude merely to elucidate certain themes, or establish themselves in the literary canon, or to show off, although all of these are certainly factors. Rather, the allusions comprise the very fabric of the text, somehow inextricable, as though the authors are not so much deploying their erudition as being bound by it and forced to recombine iterations and permutations of intertextuality.

Such is the argument that The Recognitions adduces. The plot revolves around the counterfeiting of paintings (usually Dutch masters), and the intrinsic value of these copies, which are always artfully damaged to indicate their previously unknown existence. The counterfeits are presented as being somehow more true to the spirit of the original, as their unfinished states are able to imply[4] perfection that is otherwise unattainable. Thus we get the idea of the simulacrum even before Baudrillard wrote about it.[5] In fact, the counterfeiting is more of an allusion to Kant’s noumenon, the posited state of perfection independent of the senses that is somehow referred to only by aperçus. The allusion is deprived of its original Enlightenment referent, and instead coupled to a vapid New York society obsessed with who’s in, who’s out, who’s who, and who’s in whom. And who’s gay. (The novel’s gay icon is a woman called Agnes Deigh; postmodernists tend to have a thing for silly and/or sophomoric names, viz. Recktall Brown in Recognitions, a Mr ‘Touchy’ Phiely in Infinite Jest, and as for Pynchon take your pick.) So image is everything and anything is ripe for reference (or plagiarism, the distinction is somewhat lost on the characters at one time or another). And as one editor informs a budding playwright, ‘“You just take the words and string them around a little different”’, ignoring the flustered response, ‘“But words… words they have to have a meaning (Gaddis 350).”’

Words, as Derrida informs us, do have a meaning, but that meaning pays no heed to anything outside of the text. Words themselves have their own discrete logic, and political, historical, or even scientific contexts cannot provide a telos – a signifying anchor for them. Or, to put it another way, words rely on other words to have meaning, which words then rely on further words, and the whole thing quickly becomes synapse-frazzlingly convoluted; the proposition that language is ferociously untameable is the post-structuralist sine qua non. This instability of structuring agents parallels the fall of V2 rockets upon WWII era London in Gravity’s Rainbow, and it does so in the sense that, just as no definitive interpretation can be imposed open the fluidity of language, it is impossible to make any psychically palliative predictions about possible death from rocket impact. As far as rockets are concerned, ‘Everyone’s equal. Same chances of getting hit. Equal in the eyes of the rocket (Pynchon 66).’ And if rockets weren’t phallic enough already, Pynchon runs with the idea that Tyrone Slothrop’s (q.v. silly names discussion supra) erections are somehow linked Pavlovianly to their (the rockets’) impact.

Attempting to forge connections between signifiers is a primary concern in Gravity’s Rainbow, and it fails for the same reason that Structuralism was rewritten: meaning can’t just be generated from difference along neat binaries like light/dark.[6] For Pynchon, the V-2 rocket becomes a ‘text [that] is theirs to permute and combine into new revelations, always unfolding… (Pynchon 862).’ So the novel concludes with its plot fragmented like the casing of a rocket[7] and is not really plot any longer, at least not plot qua plot: there is no theme save for what can be discerned by (re)combining the narrative elements provided; it pushes allusion and self-reflexivity to stratospheric levels, as the narrative involutes and refers to its self-reference.

Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace performs a similar trick, but the self-commentary is supplied by copious endnotes that intertwine, like a double helix, with the novel’s polyphonic narration. (The endnotes, incidentally, are called ‘Notes and Errata’, though arcana is more apt as Wallace delineates the precise pharmacological properties of, e.g., ‘Tenuate… the trade name of diethylpropion hydrochloride, Marion Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, technically a prescription antiobesity agent, favored by some athletes for its mildly euphoric and resources-rallying properties… (Wallace 983).’ And this representative sample comes from a footnote to the original endnote; the DNA helix analogy barely does this justice, though at least it’s in the same semantic field as Wallace’s preternatural facility for argot.) As often as not the endnotes eschew any pretence of elucidating a particularly recondite reference – to Cantorian set theory, say – and even sometimes function as discrete chapters viz. notes 269 and 304.[8] Yet Jest’s style presciently foreshadows how information gathering functions in the Google/Wikipedia age: distractions from a topic are no inconvenience – merely click the back button on the internet browser and extricate yourself from whatever hypertextual warren you find yourself in. This proves rather more difficult when reading a 1079 page paperback (two bookmarks really are required); and while the minutiae of drugs and tennis are obsessively chronicled and over-determined the novel ends without apparent resolution. Yet infinity can have neither an end nor a beginning. Allusion in Infinite Jest is linked to its depiction of culture: endless proliferating and lethally addictive. And when something is self-reflexive and deconstructs itself, what are allusions for if not to keep a reader occupied while this deconstruction happens? After all, for a fellow of infinite jest the combinations of text are limitless.

Works Cited

Gaddis, William. The Recognitions. 1955. London: Atlantic, 2003.

Pynchon, Thomas. Gravity’s Rainbow. 1973. London: Vintage, 2000.

Wallace, David Foster. Infinite Jest. 1996. Foreword by Dave Eggers. London: Abacus, 2008.

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[1] It’s reasonable to ask exactly what constitutes an epic in this instance. The distinction should be made between Epic (i.e. epic poetry) and epic (what this piece discusses). In addition, epic in this usage requires not just length, but breadth, i.e. its scope, and the number of subjects tackled, should be impressively ambitious. Quite who is impressed is naturally subjective. It is also fair to say that, generally, the authors of these opuses are male, perhaps convinced that size does matter, as well as what you do with it.

[2] It’s pretty much over as far as I can tell, although the intellectual ideas undoubtedly remain incredibly influential.

[3] David Foster Wallace. “An Interview with Charlie Rose.” March 27, 1997. <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/5639>. (Accessed May 13, 2009).

[4] As opposed to inhere – playing with the concept of signification is pretty quintessentially postmodern.

[5] Though Baudrillard did it with added Marxism.

[6] i.e. light is understood as such because it is not darkness.

[7] Though, arguably, just “sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

[8] For those readers whose curiosity is piqued, note 304 provides background to the novel’s Quebeçois separatist subplot, and, most terrifyingly of all, features a satire of hyper-academic prose, of which pleonastic and prolix barely do adjectival justice.