Language: A close examination (The State of the Language, 1980)

 Leonard Michaels & Christopher Ricks. The State of the Language (1980) In what sense can one talk about a language as an entity that exists? What does “exist” mean? A rock exists. It’s a passive existence. Wind and weather slowly eat at its substance until it ceases to exist. An animal exists, but the processes that keep it alive also wear it out, and these plus the ravages of wind and weather eat at its substance until it too ceases to exist.
     But language? Language is something people do. It’s not passive like a rock. It’s not active like an animal. Language exists while it’s spoken. We observe as well as understand it, and those observations, sorted and classified, compared and contrasted, create a concept. Since concepts must correspond to entities, language must be an entity. That’s the logic of “concept” and “entity.” And so a language exists, and we speak about as if it changes passively like a rock or actively like an animal. A pretty delusion, but it serves to help us discuss how people’s speech habits have changed over time. Thus the “State of the Language”,  a collection of such discussions.
     Most of the essays are by academics, the rest by practitioners. The academics too often write to test or develop some theory. The practitioners enjoy recording their observations. A few indulge in satire, some catalogue and analyse so earnestly that they slip into self-satire. But all take talk about language seriously. Class, trades and professions, psychology and philosophy, the desire for novelty, the literary traditions, these and many other influences on the development and uses of language all get a look-in. All focus on how people speak and write English. All assume, mostly tacitly, that people are what they speak, no matter what they profess to say.
     In the 40-odd years since this book was published, English has become established as the world's lingua franca. Speakers of other languages have adopted and adapted English words. Native English speakers risk misunderstanding when they use their idioms and allusions. Psycholinguistics has come into its own as the study of how language both expresses and shapes experience. The phrase “human language” is now necessary because ethologists have discovered  complexities of animal communication that resemble some features of human language. The link between self-awareness and language is established, but not understood. The creation of large-language-model pattern generators (misdescribed as artificially intelligent) have prompted rethinking of what human language and intelligence are.
     “In the beginning was the word”. So begins the Gospel of John. Whatever else these essays teach us, they show that language not only makes us human, but creates the experience that we call reality.
     A collection worth keeping. ***

Canadian National Treasures (Callwood, 1994)

June Callwood. National Treasures (1994). Vision TV received its licence in 1987, and began broadcasting from its very modest studio a few months later. In 1991, June Callwood discussed an interview show with them. Her guests would be National Treasures, or at any rate people that she thought should be recognised as such. Most of her guests were drawn from her circle of friends and media acquaintances (she was a journalist and social activist). The show was a success, and helped Vision TV grow its audience. It’s now a money-making property owned by ZoomerMedia, with a more secular and marketing approach than the religious and multi-cultural service that its founders had promoted.
     This book consists of edited transcripts of nine of these interviews. They’re interesting as documents of a certain time and sociopolitical ambience that has passed. They trigger nostalgia for what looks like a simpler time, which it wasn’t. The cultural landscape simply felt smaller back then. But the transition to the larger and less easily encompassed  Canada of today was already underway.
     Callwood is a pleasant conversationalist, which makes for easy reading, but I don’t get the sense of personal or other revelations that I’ve had from Eleanor Wachtel (Writers and Company) or Mary Hines (Tapestry) interviews. However, the interview with William Hutt did change my perception of him. The others confirmed or expanded what I already knew (or thought I knew) about them. Recommended for anyone who wants to know more about the 1990s in Canada. All the interviewees have relevance today. ***

How Money Began... (Whitehead and Baskerville, Money, 1975)

 

     Geoffrey Whitehead & Patricia Baskerville. Money (1975). Subtitled How Money Began and How it Works, which is a nice summary of the book’s intentions. Apparently aimed at the curious middle-schooler, it succeeds. At the time it was written, very little was known about the origins of money, and despite a few lucky finds since then, we still don’t know much. By the time Middle Eastern city states codified law, money was already in use, and the laws designed to promote fair and honest trading were brutal. It seems that the propensity for cheating is somewhat stronger in us than for fair and honest dealing.
     Within its modest aims, the book is a success. I learned a few new details about coinage and paper money. The book is strongest dealing in physical money, and weakest in its explanations of how money works, skimming over the psychology (as economic theories generally do). The authors make a distinction between wealth and money early on, but don’t mention that the money-is-wealth superstition was a factor in the inflation caused by Spain’s importation of huge amounts of gold and silver in the 15/1600s. The Spanish did not grasp that these "precious" metals were only as valuable as what they could buy, which was less and less as the supply of silver and gold increased.
     The authors mention the usual concepts of money as a medium of trade and store of value, and talk about money as measuring prices. The printing is excellent. Recommended if you can find a copy. This one will be donated to the library’s book sale. **½

Death (Lapham's Quarterly 06-4, 2013)

  Lapham’s Quarterly 06-4: Death (2013) The many ways people have died and been done to death, musings about death, religious warnings and promises about life after death, the decay of the body and the waning of memories, the consolations and pain of grief.... Death is a large subject.
     Much of what we do is an attempt to either thwart death or to ignore it. A few minutes ago, I read an article reporting that cancer deaths in Canada are down overall while some cancers are increasing. More screening is one reason. The tone of the report suggests that somehow the defeat of cancer will prevent death. But of course it won’t. The odds of dying from cancer are about 1 in 7 or 14%, but the odds of dying from any one of the myriad causes are 1 in 1, or 100%.
     Meanwhile, we plan our lives as if they will continue at least until the next scheduled event. Life must go on.
     An excellent collection, as usual. ***

Fake News (Lapham's Quarterly special issue, 2018)

Lapham’s Quarterly: A History of Fake News (2018) As far back as we have writing, there’s been fake news. I suspect there was fake news well before any was recorded in writing. There’s also been pushback. Much of ancient fake news was merely exaggeration of the sponsor’s importance. Near eastern relics show that as often as not the new regime defaced their predecessor’s fake news and replaced it with their own.  Some of has this leaked into sacred texts: Ancient Israel was not as significant politically or economically as the Old Testament suggests.
     Quite early on, fake news has been both deliberate, and a mere side effect of more important objectives, such as attracting readers and advertisers in order to increase cash flow. The Hearst chain was notorious for starting the Spanish-American War for just this purpose. Electronic media have merely magnified these tendencies, as they have magnified all communications and accelerated their effects. This collection gives us mostly insider reports on how fake news was generated, with occasional confessions of unease or shame. It’s both entertaining and appalling. Like the news itself. ****

Stamboul Train (Graham Greene, 1932)

 Graham Greene. Stamboul Train. (1932). Green called this novel an “entertainment”, and it’s certainly that. A mix of characters travel from Oostende to Stamboul on the Orient Express. Carleton Myatt’s purpose is to complete a business deal in Stamboul. The other characters all somehow cross his path. A chorus girl, a political idealist, a murderous thief, an English shop-keeper couple on holiday, and so on.
Green’s invention is prodigious, enough for several novels. The story edges close to farce here and there, but human weaknesses always jerk it back into reality. Or maybe life is a farce, and Greene adds a dash of high realism.
     There is no poetic justice here, despite Greene;s claim that it’s merely an entertainment. Greene is a ruthless observer of the failures of  human nature and the systems we’ve invented to control it. Love and betrayal, greed and generosity, political paranoia and ignorance, meanness and naivete – it’s a rich stew of humanity. Green’s deprecation of his work may been a ploy to forestall criticism. It may also have prevented recognition that it is one of those apparently second-rate books that rise to the level of art.
     I thoroughly enjoyed the book. There were two film adaptations. I think a 4- or 6-part video series might do it justice. ***

Fred Pohl's Best (The Best of Frederik Pohl, 1975)

Frederik Pohl. The Best of Frederik Pohl (1975) Pohl wrote his first SF stories while still in high school. After a few stints as editor, he withdrew, but re-emerged some years later. The range and weirdness of his invention reminds me of Philip K. Dick, but his tone is lighter, and his satire milder than Dick’s. Pohl is interested in the effects of technological and social changes. He’s also interested in projecting current trends into the future and developing them to absurdity. He’s especially annoyed by advertising, by the relentless push to produce and consume more and more. He knows the tricks of manipulation using language, and his best stories demonstrate their effectiveness rather too well.
     Like many SF writers of the time, he tends to ignore of ecology, usually because ecology would complicate the story. “The Midas Touch” for example supposes a system of over-production and hence over-consumption. As satire on the consumer society, on the unquestioning assumption that ever-increasing production is the purpose of the economy, it’s well done. But the system would have collapsed from ecological exhaustion long before it reached the absurd levels of consumption portrayed. So Pohl ignores the ecological implications of over-consumption because he wants to make another point: That we are trapped in boxes of our own making, and so we persist in solving problems that would simply disappear if we changed our assumptions.
     The motif of unsuspected invasion by hostile aliens figures in several of the tales. Some critics have suggested this is an expression of the Cold War fear of Communist subversion. But the stories work just as well, and perhaps better, read simply as warnings that the Universe is likely a very hostile place. I enjoyed (re)-reading these stories Recommended. *** to ****