WORDS, GOING CHEAP

I was listening to the car radio as I drove back from doing the shopping for tonight's dinner (Stockman's (god knows why they call it that) sirloin mini-roast, roast vegetables, broccolini, carrots and gravy) and the announcer had a guest in the studio, an expert on words. She was discussing neologisms and malapropisms and wonderful things like that, and that got me thinking about writing. 

There is a dictum I follow, or try to follow, and I teach it to my students; don't send a ten-dollar word to do a ten-cent job. I see it a lot at university, because the student has read an article, or stolen from an article, and really doesn't understand the vocabulary used in the article, but they're determined to use it in their essay, by crikey, just to show that they've read something. Thus, stories they've been told as kids become parental anecdotes related in childhood, lies become quasi-relevant structural factual fabrications, and they go to parties to become bibulous. 

I'm as fond of polysyllabic words as any academic who's been through the hell of a PhD thesis - it's a love-hate relationship - but I'll call a chimney sooty, rather than fuliginous, or someone half-awake, rather than hypnopompic. It gets worse when we enter the somewhat louche (hah!) world of literary criticism. Terms such as alliteration (Simon seeks some simple solutions) are okay, even though people often can't distinguish it from assonance (it's inspiration is indolence). But I can't blame people for scratching their heads when dithyrambic or choriambic come up. When we hit Modern Literary Theory, in all its self-admiring wonder, who can but be confused by the terms used, often only for a single theory enunciated by a single person? Dasein, for instance, or hypogram. These are specialist words, for specialist discussions. If you wish to be one of these specialists, you have to learn the specialist lexicon, much as you would have to learn all the terms used in cricket to be a cricket commentator and talk about cricket. I would submit that hermeneutics or semiotics are terms no stranger to normal discourse than googly or doosrah. But, I would also submit, they are equally specialised.

And this brings me to Joyce and Eliot. T S Eliot once said that his poetry was intended to be read by any educated man. What he didn't say was that the educated man (and I'm quoting, so don't accuse me of sexism, it's all Tom's fault) should have studied Latin, Ancient Greek, French, German, Sanskrit, classic literature and philosophy. Consider the introduction the The Waste Land:

“Nam Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi
in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σιβυλλα
τι θελεις; respondebat illa: αποθανειν θελω.”

How's your Latin? How's your Greek? Do you want to live? Do you want to die? While I love Eliot's poetry, in order to read it effectively one has to study; become educated in the same fashion as Eliot, who really did, quite often, send ten-dollar words to do a ten-cent job. I mean, periphrastic? Really? Old Possum's not much better, and that was for kids.

Which leads me,in a periphrastic way, to James Joyce. I believe I have discovered the best method of reading Finnegan's Wake: think drunk. You don't have to be drunk, although this may help, but think drunk, as though you are in a pub, which is very appropriate, listening to many drunken conversations, or what passes for conversation among a pubfull of drunk Irishmen. 

"What clashes here of wills gen wonts, oystrygods gaggin fishy-gods! Brékkek Kékkek Kékkek Kékkek! Kóax Kóax Kóax! Ualu Ualu Ualu! Quaouauh! Where the Baddelaries partisans are still out to mathmaster Malachus Micgranes and the Verdons cata-pelting the camibalistics out of the Whoyteboyce of Hoodie Head. Assiegates and boomeringstroms. Sod’s brood, be me fear! Sanglorians, save! Arms apeal with larms, appalling. Killykill-killy: a toll, a toll. What chance cuddleys, what cashels aired and ventilated! What bidimetoloves sinduced by what tegotetab-solvers! What true feeling for their’s hayair with what strawng voice of false jiccup! O here here how hoth sprowled met the duskt the father of fornicationists but, (O my shining stars and body!) how hath fanespanned most high heaven the skysign of soft advertisement! But was iz? Iseut? Ere were sewers? The oaks of ald now they lie in peat yet elms leap where askes lay. Phall if you but will, rise you must: and none so soon either shall the pharce for the nunce come to a setdown secular phoenish."

Now, does that not sound like pissed prose from loose lips lubricated with  . . .

This is the whisky part.

Writers Tears Irish Whiskey. 

I discovered this in Dublin, a few years ago, when we stayed there a couple of nights after being in the beautiful Beara Peninsula for a week. Dublin, for me, was not much of a fair city, but this was when the GFC was making mockery of the Celtic Tiger. There were many unemployed people, and an air of discontent, but not in the Celtic Whisky Shop. It's down in Dawson St, not far from the National Library of Ireland, where we had wandered around the Yeats exhibition. There were many whiskies, but my eye was drawn to the Writers Tears, and I bought it. 

Jim Murray gives it 93 points and says of it:

"A glossy pot still character: rather than the usual fruity firmness, the recognisable pot still traits are shrouded in soft honey tones which dovetail with lightening kumquat-citrus tones. Quite a curious, but always deliciously appealing animal. Works beautifully well: the arrival is an alternating delivery of soft and hard waves, the former showing a more bitter, almost myopic determination to hammer home its traditional pot still stand point; the sweeter more yielding notes dissolve with little or no resistance, leaving an acacia honeyed trail.."

What he means, deprived of reviewer speak, is that it slides down the throat like honeyed oil, like the kiss of your lover distilled, like the dew from the tree of life. You can get it in Australia, if you search a little.

Bye