Posts filed under “Books & Literature”
ASK DR. BOLI.
Dear Dr. Boil: Is there anything written that is beyond parody? If there is, how would you know that it’s not just in poor taste? If it is beyond parody, what can you do to recover from your exposure? —Sincerely, Stumped in Steubenville.
Dear Sir or Madam: It goes without saying that parody is beyond parody, unless it is very bad parody, in which case the single joke in the metaparody will be that the parody is not funny, and that sort of joke wears thin quickly. Indeed, most kinds of humor or comedy are immune to parody for the same reason.
Parody thrives on the serious, the well-intentioned, and the self-important. Whenever a piece of writing shows that the writer had a higher opinion of it than readers do, it cries out for parody. And that is almost always the case: few indeed are the works of literature whose authors have not had a higher opinion of them than their readers had.
Of serious works, then, there are few that are beyond parody. But such works do exist, and they are invariably the works that are their own best parodies. The works of Amanda McKittrick Ros are beyond parody, for example, because no parody could ever hope to equal the sheer unlikeliness of the original.
But what other works of serious writing are beyond parody? Surely Dr. Boli’s readers will have some opinions, and together we can compile a useful list. Readers should be warned, however, not to include Dan Brown on the list. It has been conclusively proved that Dan Brown is not beyond parody.
As for the rest of your question, taste that is merely poor is always subject to parody. It is only the egregiously awful that places itself beyond parody, and the best way to recover from exposure to it is to eat chocolate.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
DR. BOLI’S LIBRARY OF LOST BOOKS.
No. 9.—Pasquino of Rome: Seven Books of Useful Improvements.
WE KNOW OF Pasquino’s work from the transcripts of his trial, in which a number of the “improvements” he published were described in some detail. It is often said that Pasquino was an inventor far ahead of his time, and indeed the list of his inventions justifies that popular opinion of him. A few of his more notable ideas are given here in summary form, as we have taken them from the trial reports:
A kind of drinking vessel made of paper, which may be used once and then discarded.
A method of bending a certain length of wire in a prescribed pattern, so that it may be made to hold a small number of sheets of paper or parchment together with perfect security until such time as it becomes necessary to separate them.
A kind of food which may be chewed indefinitely without swallowing, and which also provides indescribable delight by producing a kind of bladder or bubble when inflated with the mouth.
A device for measuring the time during which a carriage is left at a particular location, said device also exacting a set fee for every quarter-hour during which the carriage is left there.
A kind of chitarra or vihuela which, by the application of the remarkable properties of certain electrical substances, may be increased in volume of sound so much that an entire neighborhood may be entertained with its playing.
A paper container or package for private letters, which may conveniently be sealed by an adhesive applied in advance to the package, and moistened with the tongue when it is required to seal the letter.
A type of handkerchief made of very thin and fine paper, which may be used once and discarded, and which may be stored in large quantities in paperboard boxes designed for the purpose, in such a way that, when one handkerchief is plucked out, another handkerchief presents itself as ready for the plucking.
Having heard detailed testimony on many of Pasquino’s “improvements,” and having seen a number of demonstrations, the court of the Inquisition agreed that they were indeed works of the devil, powered by a supernatural alliance with demons. All copies of the book were burned, and Pasquino himself, as his agreed-upon penance, spent the rest of his life writing commentaries on the extensive works of St. Stolidus, and indeed died at his desk many years later, having completed more than six thousand pages of commentary. This latter manuscript is preserved in the Vatican library, but the card in the front cover reveals that no one has ever checked it out.
USEFUL ENGLISH PHRASES FOR VISITORS FROM FOREIGN LANDS.
No. 2.—At the Home for the Incurably Insane.
–
Good morning.
Good afternoon.
Good evening.
It is a fine day today.
It is indeed a fine day, and I shall send a telegram to that effect to the Washington Post.
It is indeed a fine day, which is all the worse for you, my fair maiden.
It is not a fine day, and stating that it is will be considered an act of war against the Kingdom of Bavaria.
What would you like to do today?
Would you like to participate in some of the organized activities?
Would you like to gather weasels by the flowing stream?
Would you like to compose a roundelay with me?
The King of Bavaria presents his compliments, and inquires whether you would like to dance the Lindy Hop with him.
I would be delighted to dance the Lindy Hop with you, because I am in fact Charles Lindbergh.
It is not my custom to dance the Lindy Hop in months with no R.
I would dance the Lindy Hop with you, but sadly I have no umbrella.
My room is a very poor vintage, and I should like a better one.
My room is entirely adequate, and I despise adequacy.
My room is in Luxembourg; could you please retrieve it?
My room is not visible to the naked eye.
Is it Tuesday today?
Will it be Tuesday tomorrow as well?
It is Tuesday today, and it will be Tuesday tomorrow as well.
It is Tuesday today, but I am sorry to inform you that it will never be Tuesday again.
It has always been Tuesday.
Would you care to sup with me?
Would you care to dine on moonbeams and breakfast on emeralds?
The food here is appallingly Latvian.
The food here is edible, and so are the curtains.
I have not eaten food since the Ultramontanes came to power.
Do you speak English?
I do not speak English, and neither do you.
I would speak English if I were properly rewarded.
I am not satisfied with English, and have therefore invented my own language. Lunmer wandel plebrus kwokum sfat.
FUNNY PAGES.
FROM THE ILLUSTRATED EDITION.
THE SPELLING BOOK: DR. BOLI’S OWN LIST.
Several amusing answers came in when we asked readers to pick the words on the page above that would not appear in an elementary-school spelling book today. (Do children learn to spell in elementary school today? Dr. Boli has not been in elementary school for some time, so he is perhaps ignorant of current educational theory.)
For what it may be worth, this is Dr. Boli’s own list, along with his explanation of why he thinks each word would be excluded from current spelling books:
Fag, because children use that word all day and teachers are sick of hearing it.
Cag, which turns out to be an obsolete variant of keg.
Hag, because we prefer not to teach our children more colorful insults for their teachers than the ones they already know.
Wen, because the proofreaders would assume it was a misspelling for when.
Cit, an insulting term used of townsmen by country people; no longer heard now that everyone lives in the suburbs.
Wit: an obsolete term.
Wed: obsolete, because our aversion to monosyllabic language has caused it to be replaced in all usages by marry, although we still happily use the form wedding, which has two syllables.
Fop: obsolete, because for the past two hundred years (with a brief interruption in the age of Oscar Wilde) men have not cared enough about clothes to be fops.
Milt, because children might ask what it means and have to be told to shut up.
Gilt, because a proofreader would correct it to guilt.
Smut, because the metaphorical use has entirely replaced the literal.
Slut, because the meaning has shifted subtly over the years.
Chub, because it would be taken for the insult rather than the fish.
Flog and drub, because teachers are no longer allowed to do those things to children and do not wish to be reminded of the fact.
Some of the obsolete terms, such as wed, are kept tenuously alive by journalism-school graduates who, rather than use the same word twice in an article, will ransack the thesaurus for synonyms. But these words would almost certainly be excluded from a children’s spelling book.
There are also many other terms that are unlikely to appear because they are seldom used today: shad, drab (which has been almost entirely replaced by the real-estate agent’s term neutral decor), jilt, and brad, for example. But these words would probably raise no serious objections if they did appear.
The book, by the way is Noah Webster’s American Spelling Book, the ninetieth edition (Webster spells that “nintieth”), published in 1816.
ONE MORE SPELLING GAME.
A few articles ago, Dr. Boli used this page from an early-nineteenth-century spelling book merely to illustrate the idea of “spelling.” Now here is one more spelling-related game: How many words can you find on this page that certainly would not be in an elementary-school spelling book today? Dr. Boli will start the game by picking two words: “cit,” because it is almost never used anymore, and “slut,” because it is used entirely too often.
MORE FUN WITH MISSPELLED WORDS.
What fun we have had with spelling! The correspondence is rolling in thick and fast with even more candidates for “most misspelled word.”
“Rabe” suggests “‘affect’ and ‘effect’? But I don’t know how to ask for it.”
The answer, of course, is that you ask politely. Then you think of a way to outwit Google. Dr. Boli tried an experiment:
“does not effect”: About 37,200,000 results
“does not affect”: About 511,000,000 results
This search is not perfect: effect is a perfectly legitimate verb (“I hope to effect some change in their behavior”), but rarely used. In this case, however, the inaccuracy is irrelevant. Even assuming that every use of “does not effect” is wrong, you’re, definitely, and led still beat “affect” in our ranking.
Except for a grammar site explaining the difference between “affect” and “effect,” the top-ranked site for “does not effect” was the Facebook page “Chewing gum does not effect my learning at school,” whose “about” page elaborates: “You don’t need to be a genius to know that chewing gum does not effect your learning at school.” Dr. Boli has a snippet of anecdotal evidence to the contrary. (Unless, of course, the writer meant “effect” in the perfectly correct sense of “bring about,” in which case, brava, anonymous young woman on Facebook! You are indeed correct in saying that chewing gum does not cause learning to happen.)
If you’d like to have some fun in the other direction, try “has no affect.”
Jared writes: “Incredibly, hors d’oeuvre is spelled appetizer nearly three quarters of the time.” To which Horace Jeffrey Hodges adds: “And the Germans usually misspell ‘hors d’oeuvre’ as ‘Vorspeise’!
Dr. Boli might add that the Italians leap into the melee with antipasto, which gives us another category of misspelling to deal with: foreign terms commonly used in English. Antipasto is very commonly spelled antipasta in Pittsburgh Italian restaurants. When pasta meets antipasta, is the result an earth-shattering kaboom? Evidently not.
Also in the category of foreign terms often misspelled: the abbreviation etc., which is often spelled ect. and pronounced “eck cetera.”
Meanwhile, Greybeard asks, “What about differences in regional dialects? While I currently live on this side of the pond, I used to live on that side of the pond. Even though I no longer live on that side of the pond, I frequently colour my speech by adding a ‘u’ to certain words just for the humourous effect.”
We must obviously make a distinction between misspellings and legitimate alternate forms. It might be possible to argue that colour is a misspelling if the writer is not consistent in applying the same rule to humour, honour, rumour, and so on, but it would not be worth the trouble. There are also certain words that are variable even in American usage: gray and grey, for example, or judgment and judgement, where one form is more common but both are correct. (The computer spelling-checker is rapidly propagating the notion that there can be only one legitimate spelling of any word, and it is likely that the less-used alternatives will be considered as un-American as “colour” within a generation.)
On the same subject, “creeper” picks “‘cancelled,’ hands down.” But here is another case of regional difference: “cancelled” is correct in most other English-speaking countries, but the most common American spelling is “canceled,” although the double L is also legitimate, as Merriam-Webster told us a hundred years ago: “Cancel v. i. [imp. & p. p. Canceled or Cancelled; p. pr. & vb. n. Canceling or Cancelling.]”
The question of regional dialects is an interesting one in the scientific study of misspelling. Misspellings often reflect pronunciation; and, as pronunciation varies, so must misspellings. In Pittsburgh, “the Galapagos Islands of American dialect” (as one national newspaper famously called it), there is a strong tendency to shorten long vowels, so that meal is indistinguishable from mill and sale hard to distinguish from sell. Thus we often see “FOR SELL” or “MUST SALE NOW” in classified ads—mistakes that would be simply baffling in an area where the distinction in pronunciation is strong.
“RKae” writes, “I would’ve guessed ‘its.’ (Or should I say, ‘would of’ guessed…?)”
“change it’s spots”: About 236,000 results
“change its spots”: About 2,380,000 results
The ratio here is almost exactly 1 to 10, which is (surprisingly) not nearly as high as your for you’re.
Dr. Boli tried an experiment in the other direction, but ran into a serious difficulty. Google searches URLs as well as text, and most software that automatically generates URLs from titles (such as the WordPress software Dr. Boli himself uses) strips the apostrophes. If you write an article called “It’s Not About the Money,” the WordPress-generated URL will include “its-not-about-the-money.” A majority of the top results for “its not about” were sites where the writer knew perfectly well how to spell it’s, but the URL stripped out the apostrophe. This observation also means that the number of correct spellings of its in “change its spots” may be slightly overestimated.
THE MOST MISSPELLED WORD, CONTINUED.
So far in our quest to find the most misspelled word in the English language, we have discovered that the question is even more difficult than we thought. We have to decide what counts as a misspelling (rather than a mistyping, as reader Martin the Mess reminds us), and what counts as a word. Assuming that contractions count as single words, our top candidate so far is “you’re,” which may be misspelled “your” about 15% of the time. But what about “you’re” for “your”? And “they’re,” their,” and “there”? “And “it’s” and “its”? Let us keep refining our methodology, and Dr. Boli will share some of his results in this space tomorrow.