A History of the English Language

A History of the English Language A History of the English Language by Albert C. Baugh & Thomas Cable
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Year: 2001 (5th Edition)
Pages: 447

Baugh’s A History of the English Language is a supremely wonderful resource for learning about the origins and evolutions of English. Admittedly, it’s a bit more like a textbook than the sort of book you’d read for shits and giggles, but while my eyes would glaze over a bit when he would get into tables of Old English pronoun declensions, the history and some of the more easily-understood mechanics of change were absolutely fascinating.

A History of the English language methodically (the paragraphs are numbered, for goodness’ sake) traces English, beginning in its most primeval stages as Saxonic dialects, through its various injections of Latin via ecumenical campaigns by the Catholic Church or the more subtle inclusions from Norman, into the heavy Scandanavian influences from conquering Norsemen, into the period of great consonant change seen in Middle English and the early Renaissance, and finally into the relatively dormant transition to modern English, which saw changes in vocabulary and not very much else.

The whole book is filled with examples which sometimes stretch on for entire pages. I won’t pretend that it held my interest the entire time—it was downright boring sometimes, to tell the truth—but sometimes Baugh goes on interesting historical tangents, or brings up a genuinely fascinating point, and I smack my head and say, “So that’s why we say [word] that way!” It was moments like these that held my interest.

By and large, though, A History of the English Language doesn’t strike me as the sort of book one would read all the way through for fun. It’s more in the style of a reference work, filled with hard data in easily-accessible sections. It’s too inconsistent to be a truly fun read (I rather expected that), but it certainly is interesting if you have the patience to slog through it.

§1392 · November 30, 2006 · 5 comments · Tags: , , , ,

Wednesday’s Word: arrant

arrant
adj. thorough, consummate, utter; wandering, errant

This word is fascinating to me because it’s really just an alternate spelling of “errant,” which is a derivation of the Middle English word “erraunt,” borrowed from the present particle of the Old French errer, meaning “to travel.” It was brought into Anglo-French in the mid-14th century, and for some reason in 1550, “arrant” took the alternative meaning of “thorough,” synonymous with words like “complete” or “consummate.” Mostly likely, the word took on the connotations of self-declaration, and since it was often used in the context of opprobrium (an errant thief, for instance), it began to be used as an intensifier.

§1518 · November 29, 2006 · (No comments) · Tags:

The Futurist

The Futurist The Futurist by James P. Othmer
Publisher: Doubleday
Year: 2006
Pages: 272

I will freely admit that I read James Othmer’s The Futurist entirely because of Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, whose fictional “black mathematician” John Kane is the quintessential futurist. When I saw a short review of this book (in Wired, perhaps?), I decided to give it a shot—at under 300 pages, what could it hurt?

The Futurist is the story of J.P. Yates, a high-powered public speaker rakings in scads of money by telling people that the future is looking perpetually bright. After a crisis of conscience in Johannesburg, he becomes a renegade truth-teller, drawn into a web of international political intrigue that involves him jetting to Greenland, Milan, Fiji, Pennsylvania, and finally the war-torn Ba’sar *coughIraqcough*. Meanwhile, Yates watches while the “space hotel” that he had endorsed kills it passengers and burns up in the atmosphere; he recovers from a devastating breakup while falling in a strange sort of love with a South African prostitute; he battles what appears to be an addiction to bourbon; he tries to figure out who the hell keeps sending him mysterious Nostradamus quatrains.

The book is a wacky sort of romp, equal parts of Christopher Buckley and Chuck Palahniuk—I say this because The Futurist is unabashedly political (especially in its questioning of current American foreign policy), but also a personal narrative in the sort of odd, postmodern way that Palahniuk seems to revel in, the sort of which we are treated to all the intimate details of the main character but never feel like we know him. Its plot is preposterous, certainly, but once again, it’s not preposterous in a way we haven’t already seen in something like Lullaby, wherein the characters drift from one place to another in an existential haze, just as confused as the reader.

This was James Othmer’s first novel, and I can tell: parts of it seem unpolished to me. The ending chapter wraps up all of the book’s issues (Yates’ embattled relationship with his father, his feelings toward Marjorie the prostitute, his political and social conscience, &c.) in a few perfunctory pages, leaving the reader with little, if any, narrative satisfaction. It was very annoying, because despite the oddness of the book, I found myself enjoying it, wondering what the hell was going to happen next.

I have a feeling that the book drowns in its own modernity: whether or purpose or by accident, the book is filled to the brim with specific references: the corrupt executives at Tyco, real-world futurists like Faith Popcorn, brand names, recent events, and other such things that will soon fade from the public consciousness and lose their impact in the book (Othmer’s attempt at irony, perhaps?).

The long and short of it? There are better books about personal crisis. There are more poignant political satires. But for being a debut novel, The Futurist is pretty damn good.

§1516 · November 28, 2006 · (No comments) · Tags: , , ,

Wednesday’s Word: atrabilious

atrabilious
adj. gloomy, morose, or melancholy; irritable or ill-tempered

Today’s word makes more sense if one is aware of the ancient ideas of “humours,” or the bodily substances which affect mood and disposition (a study known as “physiology.” The Latin atra bilis, or “black bile,” is what caused melancholy or sadness which present in excess. In the 1600s, the word first appeared in English, having been taken more or less directly from the Latin, adding the common suffix -ous to the end.

What is even more interesting is that the word’s Greek counterpart is μέλας (melas) and χολή (kholé), literally “black bile,” from which we derive the word “melancholy”.

The latter part of the definition (irritable) is a more recent development, the difference between plain old “bilious” (pertaining to yellow bile, which in mediæval physiology was the cause of a choleric temperament) and “atrabilious” was somewhat conflated, meaning that the latter is now used to describe either, though its real meaning is exclusively the former.

§1514 · November 22, 2006 · 2 comments · Tags:

Lord of the Barnyard

Lord of the Barnyard Lord of the Barnyard by Tristan Egolf
Publisher: Grove
Year: 1999
Pages: 410

This book brings the total number of Tristan Egolf books read this year to 3—his entire catalog, actually, because he killed himself in 2005. His Kornwolf was the second book I read this year, and I also reread his much short Skirt and the Fiddle. I hadn’t intended to reread Lord of the Barnyard (incidentally, it’s my favorite book of all time), but earlier this week I was possessed of a manic desire to read it once again, having not done so since before I began this meme in 2005.

Lord of the Barnyard: killing the fatted calf and arming the aware in the cornbelt (its full title) is a massive, sprawling work with more levels than I care to get into for a simple review, but I’d like to briefly talk about a few rather than fawn over Egolf’s prose the entire time. But first, a bit of background for those unfamiliar with the work.

The story begins with Ford Kaltenbrunner, a miner in the small midwestern town of Baker, who is mysteriously killed just before the birth of his only son, John. The son ends up as an odd (possibly autistic) little misanthrope who happens to be a brilliant farmer. However, his life spirals out of control, and he ends up away from Baker for three years, after which he returns in virtual anonymity and ends up leading a garbage strike that leaves the town paralyzed and awash in its own excrement.

There are socialist overtones to the entire work. I hesitate to call John Kaltenbrunner an Everyman, but I am immediately reminded of Sinclair’s Jurgis (especially when John works in a poultry plant, whose own conditions aren’t much better than those of The Jungle). Baker isn’t overflowing with the well-to-do, but it is stratified nonetheless by perceived class differences, the garbagemen being at the very bottom of the heap, so to speak. John qua Lenin is the unassuming malcontent who inspires the dumptruck-driving proletariat to cast off the oppression of the narrow-minded bourgeoisie (or “Baker Lay,” as they are called). It’s a classic case of socialism on paper, wherein the working man’s withdrawal takes a cog from the grinding gears of society and brings the middle class tumbling down.

But at the same time the narrator or Egolf qua narrator seems to sympathize with the plight of the garbagemen in particular, there is a strange sort of hate for the zoo of southern-midwestern Baker, filled with third-generation German immigrants, slack-jawed yokels, ambulance-chasing Methodists, ‘wetback,’ and ‘trolls,’ whatever that may refer to. In fact, I would venture to say that there is nothing less than unbridled contempt for the blinkered, Philistine pig-ignorance of the “Baker Lay,” which includes the so-called “factory rats” that also make up the lower class. Egolf’s selective sympathy continues to strike me as strange.

It’s easy to think of John as a messianic figure, and in fact he is both revered as a messiah by a small group of townspeople and reviled as an antichrist by most everyone else. The most prominent feature of Lord of the Barnyard, moreso even than the struggle of class warfare and intellectual elitism, is the matter of Legend. You see, the entire book is a narration by an unnamed garbageman who knew John, and he takes great pains to point out that the tale isn’t entirely known by anyone: just as John struggled all his life with the dubious legend of his father, so the embarrassed Baker Lay struggle with and obfuscate the legend of John Kaltenbrunner, the “corncrib fascist,” who became an almost mythical-being in an attempt to downplay his role in the spanking of Baker.

But that’s the stuff of theses. One of the things I really love most about Lord of the Barnyard is the rollicking prose. It contains absolutely no direct dialogue, everything being told as a sort of transcription of an oral tradition. What’s more, Egolf seems to take particular exuberance in the power of language, going on for pages and pages to describe single scenes, his pen sharp as a blade, never afraid to eviscerate the “Methodist crones” or detail young John’s extensive work on the farm. It’s truly a rhetorical marvel, and that has something to do with its continued existence as my favorite book.

It’s not as easy to find as, say, a Harry Potter novel, but if you ever see it, I suggest you pick it up. Lord of the Barnyard is an absolutely fantastic piece of work, and reading it over again made me feel weepy that Egolf is dead and gone. What a damn shame.

§1511 · November 21, 2006 · (No comments) · Tags: , ,

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