truffin.com » Power of Words

My Oyster in a Grain of Sand

TcT — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:13:45 +0000

Sitting at the breakfast table, the repast now over except for the steaming mug of dark-brewed coffee, I am surrounded by books. On the table itself, 32 volumes arranged in six piles corresponding to various projects Sherry is working on. Hundreds more in the bookshelves hugging the walls, even more set aside in boxes on the floor.

It strikes me anew that each book, each collection of pages bound together with some purpose, proves to be not a container of sometimes wondrous thought but rather a door. “It is a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door” old Bilbo used to say. For these books, on each page, do not so much contain the content of their writers’ minds as open up those minds for our exploration. I sing not only of fictional works or narrative works (although I am shivering in anticipation of entering the mind of Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt even as I slog my way through Gerard Manley Hopkins). Even these philosophic and critical works open onto a mind wrestling with a problem. I look forward to exploring the mental landscape of a contemporary master as he instructs us on the magic of a sentence; I am curious about the slices of vision offered a series of interviews. Might they flay the imagination setting free a new work?

It is an embarrassment of riches I eat breakfast with each morning, sipping Indonesian coffee, stunned into immobility by the panoply of worlds awaiting my engagement.

Read it again!

TcT — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 16:39:30 +0000

Little kids love to hear the same story over and over again. Even when they know the words by heart, they cry out for some beloved adult to read some treasured narrative over and over, and woe be unto anyone who forgets a word or tries out a new version. Growing up in church, we also read the same thing over and over. Let’s face it, we’ve got one book, and if you’re in church long enough, you’re going to have time to read or hear about just about every part of it. And, let’s also be honest, there are some bits in there that are not really all that conducive to out-loud reading or study. (I’m looking at you Numbers!) So that reduces the raw amount of readable material even more. But, as we know, that repetition is not boring. We come to these well-known passages at different times in our lives, from differing perspectives throughout our maturation, and the word speaks to us afresh again and again.

That phenomenon is also true with the books we read. When I was what would now be called a “tweener”, I read Old Yeller at least three dozen times. I first read Frank Herbert’s Dune in high school and still find it interesting 20 years later. Just last summer, I re-read another sci-fi book I first discovered as a teen, Robert Forward’s Dragon’s Egg.

But more than just re-reading a book, I’ve found that there are certain works that I feel compelled to re-read on a somewhat regular basis. It might be yearly, or every other year, or even at longer periods, but there is still something that regularly calls me back to these works, something that the work does to me that I need. For these works, it’s more than just that I re-read them, but that I feel a “need” to re-read them. I know I’m not alone in this. I have a friend who reads Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings every year. So here’s what I’m going to do: I’m going to list those works that I find myself drawn back to on a regular basis. I’m not going to rank them or offer any explanation. And I won’t ask you for any explanation either, but I do think it would be fun if you listed some of the works that you find yourself “having” to re-read on a somewhat regular basis. Oh, and since I’m going to assume that all you good people are reading your Bible quite regularly, you don’t need to list it here. And for now, let’s limit ourselves to books.

Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
Melville’s Moby Dick
Eco’s The Name of the Rose
Sayers’s Gaudy Night
Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Abomination/Aberration

TcT — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 13:09:12 +0000

You say potato; I say pimiento. Close? Right? Wrong. As an instructor of first-year college writing, I’m used to this kind of mistake. We’ve come to blame the “Whole Language” fad that somehow is ubiquitous in the lower grades. It’s likely ubiquitous becuase it’s easy. Rather than force students to read the right word, it asks them to guess. Look at the beginning, look at the end, look at the totality of the word in its environment rather than it’s phonetic parts. To be fair, some of the holistic theory behind whole language makes sense, and I’m sure that well-schooled practioners (likely educated in something other than whole language) can pull it off with admirable results. However, the results I tend to see are much more line with the following example.

In a story today (June 25) on ESPN’s website, a sidebar declares

Shaquille O’Neal’s first full year with the Phoenix Suns, in which the team won nine fewer games, was an abomination when looking at his history with new teams.

Wow, I knew the Shaq reign in Phoenix wasn’t going exactly according to plan, but “abomination”? That seems a bit strong. M-W.com suggests that an abomination is something that is abominable. Thanks. Further digging reveals that it is something that ” worthy of or causing disgust or hatred “. Now, it may be true that fans of the Phoenix Suns find Shaq’s performance worthy of disgust, but, putting on another whole language hat, the context of the sentence suggests that perhaps the author had another word in mind.

I’d suggest that the writer really meant that Shaq’s performance in Phoenix was an “aberation.” That is something that is “deviating from the usual or natural type.” Why do I say this? Because the sentence–and the accompanying data chart–refer to Shaq’s performance differing significantly from his performance with other teams: that Shaq’s Phoenix performance is different from his performance on other teams.

Yes, “abomination” and “aberration” begin with “ab” and end with “ation.” That much is true. What our muddled writer and editors seem to miss is that there’s a big difference between “omin” and “erra”. Just as there’s a big difference between “ota” and “imien.” In this last case, it’s the difference between a large, starchy root that can be made into a lovely mound of creamy comfort and a large, red pepper that we like to enjoy stuffed into olives. In the author’s case, “omin” suggests that the entirety of Shaq is vile and worthy of scorn while “erra” connotes the idea that Shaq just had a bad season.

For the sake of the Cleveland Cavaliers, let’s hope that I’m not making an “omin” “erra” in calling out this poor choice of words.