29OCT22. Well derailed is *one* way to put it. You've heard of not being able to commit to reading a book? Here I am for two years unable to commit to29OCT22. Well derailed is *one* way to put it. You've heard of not being able to commit to reading a book? Here I am for two years unable to commit to shelving one. In fact I did grab a chapter or two here and there (Oct '20, Sept. '21, though as you can see May '20 was the last time noted here) but now I've committed to jumping back in by re-reading all my notes compiled thus far. Oh and how about this: Having reached page 718 in Grossman (Book 2, Chapter XL) my notes doc is over 17,000 words long! - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 07MAY20. Hm. Eleven months and several books later [June 2019 was my last foray, though not noted here], time to hop back into this. I'd been taking detailed notes and creating a sheet of thumbnails so when finished I'll have a lengthy summary. (Analogous to what Dr. Larry Daw did with Gravity's Rainbow). Surely, knowing me, I'll get derailed again—or derail myself—but here we are now. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 01FEB19. Wow, did Part One screech to a halt! Cervantes just tied everything up with two paragraphs and a few poems—a technique I'm wagering writers employed often back in the early days of narrative novels. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 14JAN19. Slow and steady progress. The goal initially was to finish by May, when a local theater production of Man of La Mancha opens. I'm pleasantly surprised by how much I'm enjoying yet another oldie but goodie (see Tom Jones) and by how little I mind the slow pace necessary to grasp and savor the story. (Or rather stories, since the multi-chapter interpolated novellas are holding my interest as well as the main thread.)...more
20JUN18. Fifty pages in and enjoying myself quite a bit. SDLP has lost none of his sense of adventure and play. (Not wild about Nina cracking wise nea20JUN18. Fifty pages in and enjoying myself quite a bit. SDLP has lost none of his sense of adventure and play. (Not wild about Nina cracking wise nearly every time she opens her mouth, but still.)
My only real gripe, believe it or not, is physical: No matter what book I'm reading I do a lot of flipping back, but the deckled edge makes it maddeningly difficult. (Exasperated, I once used a circular saw to remove the deckled edge from a book. Did the job, sure, but I won't do that again: years later and a fine, flour-grade sawdust still puffs out from between pages.) - - - - - - - - - - - - 24JUN18. Still going strong, devouring this hoped-for and classic SDLP combination of humor, erudition, introspection, absurdity (a different kind of humor?), pseudo-serendipity (moments that seem offhanded or coincidental but then clearly are not) etc. - - - - - - - - - - - - 07JUL18. Still enjoying this every time I sit down with it. As I mentioned when commenting on another review—of which comment this 7/7 entry is simply an edited version—Lost Empress is feeling to me not only like Naked Singularity, but like Evan Dara’s Lost Scrapbook and the recently read Overstory by Richard Powers. (Dara's book doesn't even have discernible chapters, but am I the only one who's never seen a book count its chapters down, as Lost Empress does?)... ...tasty little call-backs (when I even catch them!) to events and/or characters dozens if not hundreds of pages earlier (thus my railing on the physical “unthumbability” of the deckled fore-edge back on 6/20); I’ve had to start scribbling chapter thumbnails on loose-leaf, is how often I’m having “Wait, no sh!t??” moments and compulsively flipping back. ...a few philosophy blasts, but nothing nearly as ostentatious as someone described in another GR review I read. Sure, a two-page excursus on the merits of the 4-3 defensive alignment had me checking my watch a little, but beyond that, who couldn’t stand to learn a paragraph or two about Joni Mitchell? :-) And, for you Naked Singularity fans, no Benitez-level digressions...yet! ...most crucially and delightfully for me as an SDLP fan, the way connections form but you don’t really see them forming initially; They sort of dawn on you. To me this is very cool, and is a big reason all three aforementioned books are among my lifetime favorites.
Anyway, it's halftime, and I'm eagerly awaiting the second half! (....sorry! Couldn't resist!) - - - - - - - - - - - - 11JUL18. I'm wiping tears from my eyes, my gut hurts from laughing; The first game that the Pork play at home—Chapter 25—is among the funniest set pieces I've read in the last several years. Absurd, goofy fun! (Favorite line in the book so far goes to color commentator Slim Janders to his broadcast partner Jim Sanders: "There's maybe four guys alive could have made that throw...and three of them are dead!") - - - - - - - - - - - - 14JUL18. OK, some of the metaverse/alternate reality stuff was more work than I was expecting it to be. But apart from only that, this was just a rip-roaring good time for me, a front row seat to watch a guy bend this language to his will. I'm jealous and grateful simultaneously, as I am whenever I experience someone making brilliance look easy....more
I've wanted a copy of this for many years, since hearing David Foster Wallace and author Bryan Garner chat about Wallace's terrific review/article I've wanted a copy of this for many years, since hearing David Foster Wallace and author Bryan Garner chat about Wallace's terrific review/article Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage (a greatly expanded version of which appears in Wallace's book Consider the Lobster, which, cover to cover, I recommend highly.) I finally got my copy of Garner's a couple weeks ago and it's now part of my home's landscape: It's not going on a shelf. It never disappoints, although it can annoy in that I never can look up just one entry! On any page there are so many entries that merit at least a glance, and then of course once you glance you're reading…yeah. This is a reference book you can curl up with.
Garner's style is that of the very cool english teacher: he will darn well correct your usage, but he'll often do it in such an engaging way that you almost don't mind being corrected. And when he sticks it to your own pet peeves you may (as I often do) find yourself nodding—or even vocalizing—agreement.
Here's an excerpt of Garner's irregardless entry: "A semiliterate PORTMANTEAU WORD[over 200 small-capped terms like this have essay-length entries unto themselves] from irrespective and regardless, should have been stamped out long ago," — then Garner, as he does with most entries, cites several examples of misuse in major American periodicals, and he includes the author's name! — "Perhaps the most surprising instance of this barbarism occurs in a linguistics text, four times on a single page…Although this widely scorned NONWORD seems unlikely to spread much more than it already has, careful users of language must continually swat it when they encounter it." A semiliterate barbarism! CAN I GET AN AMEN!?
OTHER HELPFULNESS AND COOLNESS: - Garner has supplied an index of the aforementioned small-capped essays. (As I mentioned, the the book is peppered with at least a couple hundred of these essays.) - An exhaustive Glossary of Grammatical, Rhetorical and other Language-Related Terms. This alone was worth the price of the book. Here's Garner's primary definition of rhetoric itself: "1. The art of speaking suitably on any subject." See? Understated but firm, lightly stylish, pitch-perfect! (And what's also cool if you ever hear Garner speak—check out the aforementioned conversation with D. F. Wallace—his soft Texas accent and relatively mild manner complement perfectly his gently authoritative writing style.)
PERHAPS THE COOLEST THING OF ALL: THE LANGUAGE-CHANGE INDEX If an entry concerns a usage error (as opposed to simple clarifications) the error is rated on a scale of one to five, which scale Garner calls a Language-Change Index—the key for which is included in the bottom margin of every odd-numbered page. On this scale, a one signifies a complete rejection by all writers, with five indicating that while it may have been an error at one time, it is now fully acceptable. Two examples. 1. Using the word dearth, which means a mere scarcity of something, to denote an absence of that thing is rated one. It is a misuse of the word as defined and therefore to be avoided. While over on the facing page... 2. Using daylight-savings time instead of the technically correct daylight-saving time was considered erroneous recently enough to be included, but is rated five since the only writers today who object to its use are hardcore snoots. (Snoot denotes an arrogant person of course, but is pressed into duty here as the word with which many members of the so-called Grammar Police have begun referring to themselves, and is, in its own entry, defined rather nicely by Garner himself as "a well informed language-lover and a word-connoisseur.")...more
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