Category: Advice to Writers

Inkling Linguistics

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, Books, C.S. Lewis, Education, Great Authors, Great Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Middle Earth, Modern Life, Nature, Potentially Useful Trivia, Reading, Words, Writing11 Comments

Last week I wrote about “Learning Languages,” and I promised to follow up with a related theme – the creation of new words and languages. Let’s consider the simple matter first.

Adding New Words

Anyone can make up a new word. The problem is whether we have enough influence to have it adopted and used by another human being. (I add this qualifier to eliminate those who might attempt to skirt the question by simply training parrots to mimic the new word.) As Scientific American relates, 

When parrots are kept as pets, they learn their calls from their adoptive human social partners. Part of their appeal as pets is their ability to sing lower notes than smaller birds and so better reproduce human voices.

So, while you may be able to trick one of your parrots into repeating a novel “word,” that doesn’t count for our purposes here.

Likewise, any other birds who mimic speech, including musk ducks and corvids (ravens, crows and their ilk). In fact, let’s exclude all nonhuman “speakers” from consideration. After all, AZ Animals introduces readers to seven specific animals of different species (only one of which is avian) whose “forebrain is . . . responsible for some animals’ ability to mimic speech.” 

So, animals aside, who embraces and disseminates newly invented new words? Some words, of course, find a partially prepared or receptive audience because they are imported from other tongues. The global influence of English makes other languages especially vulnerable to its influence, which can be deeply resented. The “corruption” of mother tongues sometimes elicits reactionary responses – such as Italy’s current effort to purge English from the Italian Republic.

And some Italians are extremely serious about the task, proposing fines up to €100000. (That is not a typo; at today’s exchange rate it would be $109,857.50.) Their animus toward English follows the path established by the French, who frequently default to Napoléon’s order to refer to Britain as “perfidious Albion.” The Académie Française goes so far as to repudiate specific words, including business, cash, digital, vintage, label, and deadline.

Vocabulary adopted from other nation’s may be “new” to their most recent users, but such importation is certainly not the same as fabricating novel words from the proverbial “whole cloth.”

True Neologisms

I wrote a moment ago that creating words is easy, but persuading others to use them is quite another thing. I’ve discussed this subject in the past, in “Create a Word Today” and “Creative Definitions.” Sadly – and fittingly – none of my personal neologisms have caught on.

Popular creative writers may, however, find their fancies adopted by larger audiences. Shakespeare’s “bedazzled” was birthed in The Taming of the Shrew. The “chortle” was first heard in Lewis Carol’s “Jabberwocky.” “Pandemonium” was revealed as the capital of Hell in Milton’s Paradise Lost. And the first “Nerd” was encountered in Dr. Seuss’ If I Ran the Zoo.

Some neologists were particularly prolific. How about these few additional examples from the Bard: 

Bandit ~ Henry VI
Dauntless ~ Henry VI
Lackluster ~ As You Like It
Dwindle ~ Henry IV

Oh, and Grammarly adds, “Shakespeare must have loved the prefix un- because he created or gave new meaning to more than 300 words that begin with it.” Can you imagine a world without:

Unaware ~ Venus & Adonis
Uncomfortable ~ Romeo & Juliet
Undress ~ Taming of the Shrew
Unearthly ~ The Winter’s Tale
Unreal ~ Macbeth

Before moving on, it would be fair to note that some voices consider this achievement by Shakespeare to be “a common myth.”

It turns out that Shakespeare’s genius was not in coining new words – it was in hearing new words and writing them down before they became widespread, and in wringing new meaning out of old, worn-out words: turning “elbow” into a verb and “where” into a noun. He didn’t invent the words, but he knew how to use them better than anyone.

C.S. Lewis was not a philologist, but he did create a few novel words. The Inkling scholar who pens A Pilgrim in Narnia has written on this subject here and here.

J.R.R. Tolkien was no slouch at inventing English words himself. Some which now reside in our common vocabulary include hobbit and orc. The latter he derived from an Old English word, orcþyrs, a devouring monster associated with Hell. More surprisingly, Tolkien created the modern word “tween,” albeit in the context of hobbits, who lived longer lives than we.

At that time Frodo was still in his tweens, as the hobbits called the irresponsible twenties between childhood and coming of age at thirty-three.

Envisioning novel words is relatively simple, but inventing an entire language, is an infinitely more complex challenge. The universally acknowledged master is J.R.R. Tolkien, whose Elvish tongue has become a “living” language.* But he was not alone in building internally consistent linguistic systems. Albeit, no philologist came near to Tolkien’s expertise, which included elaborate etymologies.

Before considering Tolkien himself, we will note several other efforts of a similar kind. And, following a discussion of Tolkien, we will conclude with a note about his good friend, C.S. Lewis. For, despite the fact that Lewis was not a philologist himself, it is interesting to note that he too dabbled in creatio linguarum.

Inventing New Languages

Some “constructed languages” are formed with practical purposes. Esperanto, birthed in 1887, incorporated elements from existing languages and was envisioned as a common “international auxiliary language.” It boasts its own flag, and claims to be the native language of approximately a thousand people.

One curious use of Esperanto came in its adoption by the United States Army as the “Aggressor Language” used in twentieth century wargames. The curious can download a copy of the now-rescinded Field Manual 30-101-1, which provided guidance for its usage “which will enhance intelligence play and add realism to field exercises.”

Another genuine constructed language is Interlingua. Developed between 1937 and 1951, it is based primarily on the shared (and simplified) grammar and vocabulary of Western European languages. 

In addition to languages constructed for international use, there are a variety of tongues created for fictional applications. “To learn Klingon or Esperanto” describes how linguistic anthropologist Christine Schreyer “invented several languages for the movie industry: the Kryptonian language for ‘Man of Steel,’ Eltarian for ‘Power Rangers,’ Beama (Cro-Magnon) for “Alpha” and Atlantean for ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League.’” While none of these could ever rival the languages of Middle Earth, her bona fide linguistic credentials place her in a context similar to J.R.R. Tolkien. The interview reveals how Schreyer balances her creative impulses with her anthropological concerns.

I teach a course on linguistic anthropology, in which I give my students the task of creating new languages as they learn about the parts of languages. Around the time I started doing that, “Avatar” came out. The Na’vi language from that movie was very popular at the time and had made its way into many news stories about people learning the language – and doing it quickly.

My other academic research is on language revitalization, with indigenous or minority communities. One of the challenges we have is it takes people a long time to learn a language. I was interested to know what endangered-language communities could learn from these created-language fan communities, to learn languages faster.

Other fictional languages that exist include R’lyehian (from Lovecraft’s nightmare cosmos), Lapine (from Watership Down), Fremen, the Arabic/alien blending (from Dune), Parseltongue (ala Harry Potter), Dothraki (from Game of Thrones), Ewokese, etc. (from Star Wars), Goa’uld and others (from Stargate), Minbari and more (from Babylon 5), and the gutturally combative Klingon and others (from Star Trek). This brief list is far from exhaustive.

Tolkien, Lewis & New Languages

The languages forged by J.R.R. Tolkien are unrivaled by any conceivable measure one might employ. They are no mere stage dressing, like some of the aforementioned examples. Even those with developed vocabularies and consistent grammar fall far short of Tolkien’s creation. In terms of the histories of his languages, his diligent etymologies beggar all other such efforts. Of course, for Tolkien this was no competition. He was driven to make his languages as flawless – not “perfect,” but realistic – as humanly possible. It was a linchpin in his subcreative labor.

As a skilled calligrapher, Tolkien devised unique alphabets to complement his languages. The letters in his alphabets were not devised as mere adornments. Tolkien left that to lesser imaginations. Nor were his scripts restricted to Tolkien’s fiction. The Tolkien Estate offers an insightful essay on “Writing Systems.”

Tolkien also used invented scripts that were not associated with any of his fictional worlds. An early example is the Privata Kodo Skauta (Private Scout Code), which appears in a still unpublished notebook from 1909 called the Book of the Foxrook. This makes use of a phonetic code-alphabet, as well as a number of ideographic symbols representing full words. . . .

Toward the end of his life, Tolkien made use of the New English Alphabet, a phonetic script that combined the logical structural principles of the Angerthas and the Tengwar with letters that looked more like Greek or Latin. The alphabet has not yet been published in full, but examples can be seen in . . . J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator.

The footnote below links to some resources for those who would like to learn how to speak the languages of the elves. By way of help with pronunciations, remember the following advice:

Use an Italian accent to pull off Quenya speech patterns. In general, you can kind of sound Elvish – even without following the rules of the language – by applying an Italian accent when pronouncing Quenyan words. Native Italian speakers tend to use speech patterns from their native tongues to interpret English words, which can make your Elvish sound practiced even when it isn’t.

Speak with an Irish or Scottish accent to pull off a natural Sindarin accent. Irish and Scottish speakers tend to speak English by emphasizing sounds in the front of a word regardless of the standard pronunciation. This is a pretty good method for pronouncing Sindarin words, since the vast majority of them stress the first syllable.

For those who want to quickly capture some Elvish script without the effort of studying, consider the English to Elvish online translator, which is offered by the company that fashioned The One Ring for Peter Jackson’s cinematic epics. I decided to test the translation tool and posed the question: “Does AI translation of English to Quenya actually work?” The software swiftly complied.

It looks elegantly correct, but unfortunately, I’m unable to personally verify its accuracy. And I must confess to modest trepidation since the site advises:

“USE CAUTION BEFORE COMMITTING TO ANY TATTOOS, INSCRIPTIONS AND ENGRAVINGS” [triple emphasis in original].

The Jens Hansen site sells jewelry, as befits the fasioners of The One Ring. In addition to hosting the translator, they offer a free pdf document called Elvish 101 in 5 Minutes. It’s an interesting document, but it reveals a limitation I assume is shared by the online generator. It is a resource for transliterating, not translating, words. Not quite the same thing . . . but the script still looks elegant. 

Tolkien was the master of creating languages for his subcreation, but C.S. Lewis also used the same technique in the writing of his Space Trilogy. Each work focuses on an individual planet in our solar system, which is referred to in the books as the Field of Arbol.

While a number of languages have developed over time, the original language, known as Old Solar, is retained by some, and learned by the series’ protagonist Dr. Elwin Ransom. Ransom is a philologist at Cambridge, and as he is modeled after Tolkien, it’s no surprise his first name means “elf friend.”

In Perelandra, Ransom describes how a language he learned on Mars was once shared by all.

“It appears we were quite mistaken in thinking Hressa-Hlab the peculiar speech of Mars. It is really what may be called Old Solar, Hlab-Eribol-ef-Cordi. . . . there was originally a common speech for all rational creatures inhabiting the planets of our system: those that were ever inhabited, I mean – what the eldila (angels) call the Low Worlds. . . .

That original speech was lost on Thulcandra, our own world, when our whole tragedy [the Fall] took place. No human language now known in the world is descended from it.”

Lewis’ use of Old Solar is sparing, but a partial lexicon can be found at FrathWiki. There, for example, you will learn that “honodraskrud” is Old Solar for a “Groundweed; an edible pinkish-white kind of weed, found all over the handramit” of Malacandra (Mars).

The accomplishments of Tolkien and Lewis are difficult to compare. These two brilliant scholars shared a great many interests, but wrote with far different goals. We rightfully expect genius to vary between such individuals. This is well illustrated by their differing treatments of constructed languages, as Martha Sammons describes so well in War of the Fantasy Worlds.

Tolkien began with invented languages and then developed an elaborate mythology to create a world where his languages could exist. Lewis’s works began with mental pictures; he would then find the appropriate ‘‘form’’ to tie together the images. . . .

[Tolkien’s] penchant for historical and linguistic detail is unparalleled. In contrast . . . Lewis uses just enough language, geography, and science to make his novels believable.

While either approach may inspire those among us who aspire to writing, we best avoid attempting to emulate either author. Best, I believe, to compose our epics with the language that most naturally flows from our pen.

* While some fans of Klingon and Na’vi may learn to speak in those tongues, the students of the languages of Arda, typically possess greater ardor for the languages of Middle Earth. For example, an online guide to learning Elven languages begins by answering the question, “why study Elvish?” And a free online course for learning Quenya is offered here. Among the Quenya dictionaries, the finest free example is available at Quenya-English Dictionary English-Quenya Dictionary.

Learning Languages

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis & the Inklings, Education, Great Authors, History, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Reading, The Bible13 Comments

C.S. Lewis possessed a gift for languages. Although he was not a philologist like his friend J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis was well educated and read and spoke a variety of languages.

In fact, when he and his wife played Scrabble, they allowed for the use of words from any language! For the record, though, he does confess to a German professor that his grasp of that tongue is “wretched.”

The only bona fide genius I’ve known was a classmate at the University of Washington. While I was struggling with classical Greek, in preparation for seminary, at the age of 23 Bruce already possessed four master’s degrees and was closing in on his PhD in Linguistics. He spoke fifteen languages, but could read nineteen.

Of course, that is still a small portion of the 7,168 languages Ethnologue tells us are in use today.

This enormous number – which doesn’t include unknown languages spoken among untouched people groups – accounts for the fact that thousands of Christians are laboring now in groups such as Lutheran Bible Translators to make the Scriptures available to all people.

Sometimes this involves creating a written language itself, where only an oral version exists. The largest such organization, Wycliffe Global Alliance, reports that “Bible translation is currently happening in 2,846 languages in 157 countries.”

While the Bible’s translation is certainly of utmost importance, it is wonderful to know that other valuable literature is also made available to readers who could not decipher the language in which it was originally composed. 

Lewis, in fact, was a translator in his own right. Beyond the literal translation of works from one tongue to another, Lewis also functioned as a “translator” of complex concepts and eternal truths. I once described this as C.S. Lewis’ bilingualism.

How many extremely intelligent and well educated people do you know . . . who can actually communicate with those of us possessing normal human intelligence? That talent is a rarity.

And it is precisely what makes C.S. Lewis such an unusual man. He was brilliant. Yet he could communicate with the common person – even the child – just as easily as he conversed with his fellow university dons.

C.S. Lewis mastered a number of modern languages, but it was his study of historic languages that especially inspired him. Icelandic, with its similarity to Old Norse, is one example about which I have written. 

. . . J.R.R. Tolkien and his friend C.S. Lewis established a group called Kolbitár which was devoted to reading Icelandic and Norse sagas. The word itself means “coal biter” and refers to those in a harsh environment drawing so close to the fire’s warmth they can almost bite the coals.

Another example is Old English. Along with Middle English, birthed by the Norman Conquest, these were essential elements of his training as one of the preeminent English scholars of Oxford and Cambridge. And these languages were not merely dusty relics. I encourage the curious to read “C.S. Lewis’s Unpublished Letter in Old English,” which appeared in the journal VII.

In 1926 C.S. Lewis wrote his friend Nevill Coghill a letter in Old English, a language also known as Anglo-Saxon. Unreadable for most current readers of Lewis, it understandably does not appear in his three-volume Collected Letters.

In the essay, George Musacchio provides an illuminating outline of Lewis’ diverse expertise with languages, both “foreign and domestic.” Lewis began the letter to his friend with the following salutation.

“Leowis ceorl hateð gretan Coghill eoorl luflice ond freondlice.”
Which translates as: “Lewis the churl bids to greet Coghill the earl.”

Is English Really that Difficult to Learn?

English is reputed to be one of the most challenging languages to learn. (More on this in a moment.) For example, the simple sentence which follows consists of a mere seven words, but holds seven different meanings, dependent upon which word is emphasized.

“I never said she stole my money.”

This example comes from an article entitled “English is Hard, But Can Be Understood Through Tough Thorough Thought Though.”

Rosetta Stone answers the question of how hard it is to learn English by saying “it depends on your first language.” 

In addition to the fact that “spelling is a poor indicator of pronunciation,” English possesses numerous “specific rules,” and complements this burden with the fact that “some rules have lots of exceptions.” The complexity is due to the language’s history, which also gave rise to its mammoth vocabulary.

English has a lot of words—Webster’s English Dictionary includes approximately 470,000 entries, and it’s estimated that the broader English vocabulary may include around a million words. . . .

English has such a broad vocabulary because it’s a blend of several different root languages. While English is a West Germanic language in its sounds and grammar, much of the vocabulary also stems from Romance languages, such as Latin, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

One result of combining these various root languages is that the English vocabulary includes a ton of synonyms . . . And unfortunately, most of these synonyms aren’t fully interchangeable, so the exact word you choose does have an impact on the overall meaning.

It turns out English doesn’t even rank in the top three most difficult languages for the speakers of the five largest language groups. The ranked listings do include, however, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, and Mandarin.

So, let’s reverse the question for a moment. Which languages are the most difficult for a native English speaker to learn? Unbabel lists ten. Fortunately, only one of them is on my wish list.

Babbel Magazine has an article approaching that question from the opposite end. Which language is easiest for English speakers to learn.

This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English! This means the languages share quite a bit of vocabulary, such as the seasons vinter and sommer (we’ll let you figure out those translations).

Another selling point for Norwegian: the grammar is pretty straightforward, with only one form of each verb per tense. And the word order closely mimics English. For example, “Can you help me?” translates to Kan du hjelpe meg? — the words are in the same order in both languages, so mastering sentence structure is a breeze!

Finally, you’ll have a lot more leeway with pronunciation when learning Norwegian. That’s because there are a vast array of different accents in Norway and, therefore, more than one “correct way” to pronounce words.

An article I wrote seven years ago hints at that same conclusion. I made this informative, and mildly threatening, illustration for “Norse Linguistic Invasion.”

Oxford Royale Academy lists several reasons why English is especially challenging to new students. The following issue of “irregularities” also plagues countless native speakers.

One of the hardest things about English is that although there are rules, there are lots of exceptions to those rules – so just when you think you’ve got to [come to] grips with a rule, something comes along to shatter what you thought you knew by contradicting it.

A good example is the rule for remembering whether a word is spelt “ie” or “ei:” “I before E except after C.” Thus “believe” and “receipt.”

But this is English – it’s not as simple as that. What about “science?” Or “weird?” Or “seize?”

There are loads of irregular verbs, too, such as “fought”, which is the past tense of “fight”, while the past tense of “light” is “lit.” So learning English isn’t just a question of learning the rules – it’s about learning the many exceptions to the rules.

The numerous exceptions make it difficult to apply existing knowledge and use the same principle with a new word, so it’s harder to make quick progress.

And even some of the normative “rules” are difficult to grasp. One example is that there’s a very specific order that adjectives must be listed ahead of a noun. According to Rosetta Stone,

The adjective order is: quantity, opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin/material, qualifier, and then noun. For example, “I love my big old yellow dog.” Saying these adjectives in any other order, like “I love my yellow old big dog,” will sound wrong, even when otherwise the sentences are exactly the same and communicate the same thing. Keeping rules like this in mind can be tricky, and it takes a lot of practice to get it right.

Adjective order is seldom considered, in part because it’s not considered good writing to string too many such words together. But apparently there are right and wrong ways to organize any such list.

Royal Order of Adjectives

Most students aren’t taught about adjective order in school and instead learn it through listening and reading. In English, the rules regarding adjective order are more specific than they are in other languages; that is why saying adjectives in a specific order sounds “right,” and deviating from that order makes a statement sound “wrong,” even if it’s otherwise grammatically perfect.

And, since we’re talking about English, even this Royal Order of Adjectives rule has exceptions! 

The hierarchy is not absolute, and there is some wiggle room among the “fact” categories – size, age, and so on – in the middle.

Native speakers are often delighted when they learn about this law and discover how flawlessly they apply it. It even went viral in 2016 . . . The tweet attached a paragraph by etymologist Mark Forsyth . . . giving an example that uses all the categories according to the OSASCOMP hierarchy: “a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife.”

I do not ever recall being taught (or reading on my own) about the “Royal Order of Adjectives.” Nevertheless, I don’t feel too embarrassed at acknowledging my previous ignorance, since even Lewis himself was comfortable in expressing gratitude for being introduced to new words. For example, when he thanked Dorothy Sayers for enlarging his vocabulary with her work on Dante.

So, is English all that challenging? Well, C.S. Lewis did his part to make it less daunting, joining a public debate in Britain, with an unexpected argument. Discussing English’s previously noted problem with inconsistencies and confusion in spelling, the don offered a simple solution.

In a column on Lewis and the history of words, I included an extended passage from a letter Lewis wrote challenging a contemporary British effort to “reform” spelling. Surprisingly, he argued against the necessity for uniformity in spelling. After explaining why our language functions as it does, he advocates:

As things are, surely Liberty is the simple and inexpensive ‘Reform’ we need? This would save children and teachers thousands of hours’ work.

Surely all but the most diehard grammarians would be sympathetic to his argument.

Next week I plan to write about another linguistic matter closely associated with the Inklings – the creation of new words and languages.

Judging by Appearances

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, Books, C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis & the Inklings, Education, Great Authors, J.R.R. Tolkien, Literature, Publishing, Reading, Writing13 Comments

If books should not be judged by their covers, how much more true is it that we should avoid judging people by their initial appearance?

We don’t want others to be hasty in determining who we are, right? We need to take some time to get to know people before coming to “conclusions” about what they are like.

Yet we still tend to look at someone and – right away – assess whether they are trustworthy or not. I confess it is sometimes challenging for me to maintain an open mind. For example, teardrop tattoos (especially when accompanied by neck ink that combines letters and numbers), make me nervous.

First impressions are usually by their very nature superficial. Which means they often prove to be wrong. That’s true about people . . . and books.

Lewis scholar Dale Nelson recently sent me an interesting review of the book The Inklings, written by Humphrey Carpenter in 1978. The fascinating thing about the piece was that it was written by Lord David Cecil (1902-1986), who was himself an Inkling.

One of the things which drew my attention was his physical description of several of the members, especially C.S. Lewis. Without citing the maxim, he declares how misleading first impressions may be.

[Charles] Williams was the most obviously odd. Very tall, and indisputably ugly with a high forehead and with gleaming spectacles, he yet diffused a curious charm that came from an enthusiastic warmth of spirit united to a comic lack of inhibition. . . .

Lewis at first sight appeared less unusual; stocky, red-faced, loud-voiced, he might indeed have been taken for an innkeeper or even a butcher.

Such a mistake would not have displeased him, he liked to think of himself as representing the common man, in contrast to the sophisticated intellectual.

These observations were interesting, but there was something far more thought-provoking in the (excellent, by the way) review. More about that in a moment. First let’s return for a moment to the issue of book covers.

What about the Cover of the Book You are Writing?

I discussed covers, and Lewis’ thoughts thereon, in this post.

It’s unsurprising that with all of their many reprintings, the writings of C.S. Lewis have been published with a wide range of covers. Some of this can be attributed to the artistic fads of the decade in which particular editions saw print. More important, I believe, are the arbitrary tastes of publishers.

When it comes to self-publishing, authors are in complete control over the image that graces their literary creations. While I make no pretense of being an artist, I must confess at being shocked by the shoddy quality of many such works. Surely they are aware that the very best of writing can be marred by dreadful packaging. By the same token, even weak literature has received wider dissemination than it merited, due to stunning or alluring graphics.

The internet is filled with posts on this subject. These are representative:

“Against Popular Advice, Books Continue to Be Judged by Their Covers” says, “for some, this can be a bitter pill to swallow, because writers want to believe that their work will speak for itself.”

The reality is that every person who steps into a book shop or browses books online is judging books by their cover, even if only subconsciously. I’m not saying that the judgment is always correct. Some books have amazing covers but are comprised of some pretty bad writing. I’d guess that many more amazing books are hiding behind bad cover art. The challenge is to get readers to pick up your book in the first place. That’s where the artwork comes in.

Another writer contends that potential readers do consider a host of matters. In “Why ‘Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover’ is Bad Advice,” the writer nevertheless admits it is the single most important element in winning an audience (short of a celebrity endorsement).

Readers are going to keep on reading and judging based on a whole host of criteria. The cover is just one of the many factors that are taken into account. Like other aspects of a book, it holds valuable information about the story kept inside.

Disregarding it is bad advice. Instead, why not try judging a book by its cover? Maybe next time you peruse the shelves of your neighborhood bookstore or scroll through the numerous titles listed online, you can select books purely based on the cover.

You never know, that could tell you everything you need to give that book a chance.

Covers are not the only factor in enhancing your book’s reception. Consider as well the nature of the paper in printed copies, as I discussed in “The Ugliest Book,” about a Mayan codex.

Now, back to the book reviewer.

David Cecil’s Thoughts on His Own Identity as an Inkling

After graduating from Oxford, Cecil briefly taught Rhetoric in London, before returning to Oxford, where he taught English. During his career, he wrote various works, including a number of literary biographies. These include: The Stricken Deer or The Life of Cowper, English Poets, Hardy the Novelist.

David Cecil was an accomplished man, and a true Oxford Inkling. The curious aspect is how, as the son of a marquess (bearing a courtesy title), socializing with a different caste, so to speak, would bond so well with the rest of the Inklings. Fortunately, Cecil briefly explains why he valued the fellowship in this book review.

Usually one of them would read aloud a piece from some book he was writing. . . . The meetings were also occasionally attended by persons who did not share The Inklings’ distinctive point of view but who liked spending an evening in their company.

I myself was one of these; I found such evenings enjoyable and stimulating; and all the more because the spirit of The Inklings was in piquant contrast to those of the Oxford circles in which I spent most of my time.

A final gift to those who treasure Lewis and his companions comes in Cecil’s incisive understanding of their unifying bond.

The qualities . . . that gave The Inklings their distinctive personality were not primarily their opinion; rather it was a feeling for literature, which united, in an unusual way, scholarship and imagination.

Their standard of learning was very high. To study a book in translation or without a proper knowledge of its historic background would have been to them unthinkable; they were academic in the best sense of the word.

But – and this is what made them different from most academics – they also read imaginatively. The great books of the past were to them living in the same way as the work of a contemporary. . . .

Simply they read their books in the spirit in which they were written. And they could communicate their sense of this spirit to their hearers so that, for these also, these great books sprang to fresh, full life.

This was a unique achievement in the Oxford of their time.

It appears the Inklings would be among the last to judge a book, or a person, by their cover.

Music, Muses & C.S. Lewis

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, Animals, C.S. Lewis, Classics Worth Revisiting, Good Music, History, Literature, Modern Life, Music, Mythology, Potentially Useful Trivia, Writing4 Comments

Why do so many modern musicians – including some who are commercially successful – appear to suffer from amusia?

Well, I suppose that diagnosis is a matter of opinion, since “amusia” has come to refer to a particular medical disorder related to “the inability to recognize musical tones or to reproduce them.” More on that in a moment. First let’s consider the original meaning of the word.

It begins with the Greek Muses. While “muse” has morphed into anything that inspires a creative soul, it did not begin that way. The Muses began as personifications devoted to nine children of Zeus and Mnemosyne (Memory). During Europe’s revival of Classical themes, they were associated not only with the arts, but with culture and refinement in general.

In Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis records his admiration for one of his early teachers. This man taught him to love poetry, and although he practiced corporal punishment (standard for the era), embodied “perfect courtesy.” On an occasion he was sent to the headmaster, who misperceived that Lewis had acted inappropriately. After dispelling the confusion, this teacher, who treated his students as “gentlemen,” matter-of-factly said “you will have to be whipped if you don’t do better at your Greek Grammar next week, but naturally that has nothing to do with your manners or mine.”

The idea that the tone of conversation between one gentleman and another should be altered by a flogging (any more than by a duel) was ridiculous. His manner was perfect: no familiarity, no hostility, no threadbare humor; mutual respect; decorum.

“Never let us live with amousia” was one of his favorite maxims: amousia, the absence of the Muses. And he knew, as Spenser knew, that courtesy was of the Muses. 

Muses, from this perspective, undergird civilization. But the Muses are fickle. One cannot create their own Muse. Inspiration comes to us of its own volition. It can’t be commanded.

Nearly four years ago, I posed this question in Mere Inkling: “Who is Your Muse?” Various literary figures have written paeans to the muses which inspire their work. In that column I also noted how our animal companions* often exert an influence on our own creativity.

The link between inspirational Muses and music itself is strongly intertwined. Consider, for instance, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), who was brilliant, but much to be pitied. He despised God, but he did love music. In “Amousia: Living Without the Muses,” Classicist Stephen Halliwell discusses the importance of music for enjoying a meaningful existence. He begins with a quote from Nietzsche, and points out a Platonic corollary. 

Without music life would be a mistake . . . So, famously, wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in . . . Twilight of the Idols. As always, Nietzsche had deeply personal reasons for the force and pathos of this aphorism; music did indeed help to keep him alive. . . .

[W]e can detect in Nietzsche’s stark utterance, I would like to suggest, a trace and resonance of Greek feeling. We might even wonder whether in formulating his maxim Nietzsche was subconsciously remembering the passage in Plato’s Philebus where Protarchus, asked by Socrates whether music, as one of the ‘impure’ arts, is needed for the mixture of a humanly desirable life, says that he certainly takes it to be necessary – ‘at any rate,’ as he puts it, ‘if our life is really to be a life of some kind.’

Without music, Protarchus . . . seems to take the idea to be practically self-evident, human ‘life’ would hardly be worth the name at all.

Amusia as a Medical Condition

I suggested above that the caterwauling of some musicians suggests they are tone deaf, but in fact there is a genuine medical condition called amusia. It traces its beginning to the Muses we have been speaking about, and suggests their absence.

In “The Genetics of Congenital Amusia (Tone Deafness),” we learn that “congenital amusia . . . is a lifelong impairment of music perception that affects 4% of the population.” What’s more, “the pitch disorder has a hereditary component.”

In amusic families, 39% of first-degree relatives have the same cognitive disorder, whereas only 3% have it in the control families.

As the husband of a gifted music teacher, the father-in-law of another, and the grandfather of a number of extremely talented children, I understand the Greek principle. While I would miss music’s grace if I was stricken with amusia, I know a number of precious people for whom that would be one of the most terrible fates imaginable.

C.S. Lewis and Music

Like most of us, C.S. Lewis enjoyed some forms of music while others left him exasperated. Wagner, bravo. Church hymnody, not so much. A recent article by John MacInnis, a professor of music, goes so far as to claim: “music listening and discussion factored regularly in C.S. Lewis’s relationships, and love for music inspired his creative endeavors and prompted his best thinking.”

I agree with the first part of this, and will attribute the “best thinking” declaration to the hyperbole of one who has devoted his own life to music.

The author of “A Medium for Meeting God” explores in  detail the effect of Wagner’s work, and the sense of Northernness it imprinted on Lewis’ psyche.

In 1934, Lewis, along with his brother Warnie and J.R.R. Tolkien read Wagner’s operas together in German, in anticipation of attending performances of the Ring cycle. MacInnis points out that Lewis enjoyed the music of Sibelius (also “evocative of Northern landscapes) and likened it to Wagner as an expression of natural or earthy music. This he contrasted to Beethoven, which he also enjoyed, and thought of as “noble” and even spiritual.

As for church music, Lewis had mixed feelings. I’ve written about that in the past, in “Good, Bad and Ugly Hymns.” Most of us would agree that music enriches our lives. Our tastes vary, of course, just as they do with literature.

And, speaking of which, just as there are tone deaf individuals who should avoid recording music . . . most of us have encountered writers who suffer from a literary variant of amusia. And, lacking the influence of anything remotely like a muse, would not the world be a more harmonious place if they simply laid down their pens.

* When we got our youngest border collie as a puppy, I named her Calli. Actually, that’s what we call her, but her given name is actually Calliope. I named her after the Muse of epic poetry with the hope she might inspire my writing.

Since she’s our fifth border collie, I should have known better. The very last thing Calli wants me to do is sit at the computer composing documents (no matter how interesting or edifying). “Get out of that chair and get some exercise with me,” she says plaintively with her body, voice, and pleading eyes.

She’s plenty loving, and her insistence on activity may well add years to my life, but if I look to her to help me write more productively, I’m guaranteed disappointment.

Please Forgive My Sesquipedalianism

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, C.S. Lewis, Education, Latin, Potentially Useful Trivia, Reading, Words7 Comments

Long words can be daunting. Even for native speakers. The illustration above comes from The Japan Times, and reveals how the challenge is magnified for others.

I love learning new words. And, since these treasures frequently drift out of my vocabulary because I fail to use them, I often have the joy of re-learning unique words.

Sesquipedalianism is actually a genuine word which can be validly applied in a variety of settings. After all, haven’t we all encountered a sesquipedalianist or two, who uses especially long, and occasionally obscure words?

How many syllables are required before a word grows too long? To a monosyllabic individual, two might be deemed excessive.

Seriously, it’s not the length of a word that matters, it’s the word’s familiarity. For example, “familiarity” has six syllables, and everyone reading Mere Inkling knows its meaning. (I resisted saying “is familiar with . . .”) On the other hand, “carbuncle” is only trisyllabic, and yet the only people likely to know its definition are either those in medical professions, or unfortunate individuals who have suffered from one.

But it’s not only unfamiliarity that causes confusion; misunderstanding can result from a lack of context. Let’s take “trisyllabic,” a word even an active reader seldom encounters. As used in the paragraph above, the context (along with the prefix and root), provide us with more information than a person needs to recognize its meaning.

In a famous letter from 1956, C.S. Lewis included the following advice:

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say “infinitely” when you mean “very”; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

Great advice, just as one would expect. However, this does not constitute a blanket rejection of “big words.” Lewis is simply reminding us that our prose must not be more complicated than it needs to be. Thus, the title of this column uses a precise word – rather than saying “Please Forgive My Practice of Using Long and Sometimes Obscure Words” – since Mere Inkling readers are quite capable of uncovering a definition if a particular word is unfamiliar.

Plus, as I hinted above, many of us enjoy expanding our vocabularies.

In the aforementioned correspondence, Lewis offered additional useful advice. Another dictum is: “Always prefer the plain direct word to the long, vague one. Don’t implement promises, but keep them.”

Here too the great writer is astute. However, this caution is not actually about the length of words. Lewis’ desire for clarity in communication leads him to reject “vague” words, which coincidentally happen to be longer than those he refers to as “direct.”

Using longer words than necessary is not, of course, always a good thing. While it comprises neuron-stretching play for word lovers, it can easily be misperceived by others as “showing off.” (Note: I’m not defending those cases in which the writer or speaker really are attempting to impress others with their verbal dexterity.*)

You can easily find collections of the longest words in English. While some cheat, including “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,” others are more scrupulous. Despite doing just that, I like the list at grammarly because of their definition of one of the words they include.

Floccinaucinihilipilification
The estimation of something as valueless. Ironically, floccinaucinihilipilification is a pretty valueless word itself; it’s almost never used except as an example of a long word.

I’m not currently planning on adding floccinaucinihilipilification to my personal vocabulary, but don’t let me dissuade you from doing so.

Learning new words often reaps extrinsic benefits. As a historian who enjoys learning about the Latin language, I found the following definition, and illustration, from the Cambridge dictionary quite interesting.

The act of considering something to be not at all important or useful – used mainly as an example of a very long word:

The honor of being the longest non-technical word goes to floccinaucinihilipilification.

The word . . . is “an 18th-century coinage that combines four Latin prefixes meaning ‘nothing.’”

Oh, and one final suggestion. When visiting the Cambridge site, in the likelihood you’ll someday wish to use this word in conversation, take a moment to make certain you learn to pronounce in the U.K. or American manner, as appropriate for your location.

* I am not here referring to the Irish bred Bay Colt for some curious reason named “Verbal Dexterity.”

Inventing Poetry Forms

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, C.S. Lewis, History, Humor, Literature, My Writing Projects, Poetry, Writing22 Comments

Would you like to leave your mark on literary history? Why not invent a new poetic form? It just might catch on.

If it did, you could become as famous as Adelaide Crapsey (1878-1914). She lived a privileged but brief life. Adelaide is remembered today as the creator of the American Cinquain. She also wrote a book entitled A Study in English Metrics which you can download for free.

C.S. Lewis describes the imaginative aspect of writing poetry as a creative act. “For poetry too is a little incarnation, giving body to what had been before invisible and inaudible” (Reflections on the Psalms).

LitCharts offers a description of the form itself, and notes an alternative name for the poetic invention.

The American cinquain is an unrhymed, five-line poetic form defined by the number of syllables in each line—the first line has two syllables, the second has four, the third six, the fourth eight, and the fifth two (2-4-6-8-2). They are typically written using iambs.

In the early twentieth century the American poet Adelaide Crapsey, inspired by the five-line Japanese poetic form of tanka, began to write five-line poems that followed a distinct form. This poetic form soon came to be known as an American cinquain (though it’s also sometimes referred to as a Crapseian cinquain, after its creator).

I think I’ll stick with “American.”

Oddly, one of the reasons Crapsey’s story drew me in is the fact she was the daughter of a prominent Episcopal clergyman. Algernon Sidney Crapsey (1847-1927) had aspirations of becoming a bishop, only to end up defrocked for heresy.

Writer’s Digest offers a list of 168 poetic forms, including “a few fun super new nonce forms.” I advise reviewing this listing so you don’t go to the effort of birthing your own form, only to find out that someone beat you to it.

I’ve written in the past about the benefit of writing outside of our normal styles. As a nonfiction writer, I’ve never desired to be considered a poet.

But I have enjoyed dabbling in a variety of poetic forms as a literary exercise. On occasion, I’ve actually been pleased with the results. And, due to its Inkling inspiration, my personal favorite is probably “A Foreshadowing of Epics.”

In a moment I’ll share my modest attempts at American Cinquains. But first, allow me to offer a Sijo that I wrote to introduce my Cinquains. A Sijo is “a Korean verse form related to haiku and tanka and comprised of three lines of 14-16 syllables each, for a total of 44-46 syllables.”

Immortalize your poetic memory this novel way.
Inventing a new form of poetry is easy to do.
With meter, hyperbole and rhyme – make your fame last for all time.

What follows is a medley of American Cinquains that I composed yesterday while waiting for an optometry appointment. My goal was not to awe readers, but to stretch my writing – what Chuck Palahniuk (the author of Fight Club) refers to as one’s “writing chops.”

The last story you should write is the most important story. You should start with a story that is just an amusing, entertaining, fun story to write and learn your writing chops with the least important things before you start applying them to the most important things.

I intentionally attempted to write cinquains evoking a variety of emotions. Here you will find examples that are thoughtful and frivolous, serious and sentimental.

Cudgel
Beaten by words
Angry themes beget hate
Eardrums torn by condemnation
Wounds last.

Pet dogs
Each breed a joy
Humanity’s best friends
Frolicking with unbounded joy
Precious.

Just War
Tragic option
For innocents still die
Theology deems it okay
Last choice.

Poets
Can be stuck up
Denigrating others
Counting fine prose lower than verse
Vain pride.

Dinner
Fresh fare tonight
Feasting on each choice cut
Cannibals toast missionaries
Dessert.

Comfort
Love wraps its arms
About the wayward lamb
Carried safely back to the fold
Rescued.

Try your own hand at writing an American Cinquain. Or, better yet, establish your own unique poetry form. If you promote it well – say by getting someone like Oprah to endorse it – you could one day become as famous as Adelaide Crapsey.

Writing a Biography

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, C.S. Lewis, Church History, Great Authors, History, Literature, Middle Earth, Poetry, Reading, Writing14 Comments

What kind of writer are you? A poet, journalist, essayist or, perhaps, a minimalist? (By “minimalist” I mean someone who writes the bare minimum they have to.)

Many readers of Mere Inkling are, in fact, writers in their own right. Even ignoring the profusion of texts ricocheting around the globe (which are, in fact, literary creations), a fair number of Mere Inkling subscribers have blogs of their own.

The preeminent position of physical letters as the medium for correspondence has been usurped by email. People still write to one another, but – to the woe of the struggling United States Postal Service – they do it digitally.

More serious writers gravitate toward a varieties of genres. Often we try our hands at the sort of literature we prefer reading. That’s why I seldom write poetry. (And, when I do, it’s usually because I’m consciously stretching myself.)

My poetic skills may be limited – you can decide for yourself – but I don’t experience any of the disappointment that befell C.S. Lewis when his poetic dreams were dashed.

Poets are fine. Until they become snobs. If they treat other genres with respect, they stand on an equal footing with everyone else. But when they claim primacy for their preference, they lose me. Consider “William Faulkner Makes Us Wonder: What’s So Great About Poetry, Anyhow?”

There’s a reason I can call poetry the highest form of artistic expression without thinking twice about it. And even though most Americans today don’t acknowledge the art form all that much, you’d be hard-pressed to find a sensible person who doesn’t respect or – if only from a distance – admire the magic in it.*

I guess I am one of the Americans who doesn’t possess a special reverence for poetry. And, as for “admiring the magic in it,” please. Wait, I don’t desire to offend you poets out there. Unless, of course, you consider yourself better than everyone else. In that case, consider my words a gentle rebuke (and encouragement to consider the virtue of humility).  

I hope that everyone will read on, and forgive me for maligning “the highest form of artistic expression.”

A Less Honored Literary Genre

I write nonfiction, unsurprising for someone who is basically a historian. Theologically, I neglect the conjecture of systematic theological considerations and focus on what’s usually called “practical theology.” It too, is unpretentious, and intended to make sense to “regular” people.

Recent years have found me dabbling in the memoir, or versions of autobiography, as I consider the potential value of such documents to my descendants.

One arena I’ve never really considered is biography. I suspect it would be a comfortable literary form, for a historian. I mean, you’re simply telling the story of a single life, relating facts and explaining the context of various events. That doesn’t sound too challenging, does it?

I suppose almost anyone could write a biography. The question is, could we write a good one?

Writing a Biography

I have been thinking about this subject ever since my research for my previous post introduced me to the work of David Cecil,⁑ one of the Oxford Inklings who shared the company of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Cecil wrote several biographies. At Internet Archives you can read his lives of William Cowper, Charles Lamb, or Max Beerbohm, or his two-volume biography of Lord Melbourne (1 and 2).

If those individuals don’t tickle your proverbial fancy, you might want to look at the book that piqued my interest: An Anthology of Modern Biography. In it, Cecil explores the work of sixteen biographers. One of the chapters is his own portrayal of the evangelical Anglican cleric, John Newton (an extract from his biography of Cowper).

What intrigues me most about the volume is not the biographical material itself. Rather, it is Cecil’s very informative introduction. Here is his opening, which may whet the interest of future biographers . . . one of whom could be you?

Biography is not an important form of literary art. But it has a special interest to the student of modern literature. For it is the only new form. We can talk of modern poetry and modern novels, but these are only new variations on old forms. . . . Not so biography.

Art is primarily the expression of the artist’s creative powers; he writes to express his personal vision; he chooses as his subject that which he thinks will best exhibit his particular talent.

Now this is not true of the biographer of the past. His aim was not artistic, it was useful; he wanted to give people information. If he was a man of literary talent . . . his book was a work of art. But even if it had not been, it would not have failed. For its primary purpose had been, not to give an artistic impression, but to tell the truth.

This desire for the truth over ostentation resonates with me. But, mind you, he is referring to biographers “of the past.” Now (the book was published in 1936), other influences are at work.

But for the typical modern biographer literature comes first. Mr. Lytton Strachey writes about Queen Victoria, not in order to give us information about her, but because he thinks her life an excellent subject for a work of art. . . .

He does not set out his facts . . . complete with reference and proof, he weaves them into a story, grouping them in order and proportion that will make his picture as vivid and entertaining as possible.

Cecil’s explanation for this transformation is fascinating, and I encourage you to read it yourself, whether or not you are interested in writing a biography yourself. The book is available here, and thanks to the Public Library of India, you can download a complete copy for free.

In a 1932 letter to Arthur Greeves, C.S. Lewis contrasts biographies with the evidence from people’s daily lives. He shares with his lifelong friend a question this raises in his own minid.

It is a very consoling fact that so many books about real lives – biographies, autobiographies, letters etc. – give one such an impression of happiness, in spite of the tragedies they all contain. What could be more tragic than the main outlines of Lamb’s or Cowper’s lives?

But as soon as you open the letters of either, and see what they were writing from day to day and what a relish they got out of it, you almost begin to envy them.

Perhaps the tragedies of real life contain more consolation and fun and gusto than the comedies of literature?

Biography. Considering trying it. And, Poetry, it’s not that bad, either.

* The article does include interesting information about Faulkner. It appears his disappointed poetic dream shifted him to more productive fields. This parallels C.S. Lewis’ literary career.

For all of [Faulkner’s] achievements, his Nobel Prize for Literature, his Pulitzers and National Book Awards, his mug on a 22-cent postage stamp – the man still fell short. And it wasn’t that he dropped out of high school and did only a few semesters of college, or that he was once fired by an employer for reading on the job.

These were small missteps and shortcomings that were basically inconsequential in the long run. The larger issue is that, in his own view, William Faulkner was a failed poet. Failed.

“Maybe every novelist wants to write poetry first,” he told The Paris Review in 1956, “finds he can’t, and then tries the short story, which is the most demanding form after poetry. And, failing at that, only then does he take up novel writing.”

What you may not know is that before his first novel, Soldier’s Pay, Faulkner had written two books of poetry, Vision in Spring in 1921 and The Marble Faun in 1924. While he’d long dreamed of being taken seriously as a poet, the verse was always second-rate and not particularly significant. Eventually he abandoned his efforts as a poet to focus solely on his fiction.

⁑ In the spirit of most colonials who shook off the reigns of monarchial rule, I tend to respect the Queen as a head of state, and disregard the affectations of an aristocracy they once “lorded” it over. Thus, I can take or leave Cecil’s normative citation as “Lord David Cecil.”

Create a Word Today

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, Animals, C.S. Lewis, Christian Life, Humor, Likely Useless Trivia, Literature, Narnia, Reading, Theological Matters, Words, Writing20 Comments

What could possibly be more fun than making up a witty new word?

Well, to be honest, lots of things. But inventing words is still an enjoyable creative exercise. I made up several in less than an hour this evening, while half-watching an old movie. A few may be lame, but I hope you will discover one or two you enjoy.

I’ve touched on the subject of inventing words in the past. But this approach involves a different process.

This article from The Guardian asks, “English speakers already have over a million words at our disposal – so why are we adding 1,000 new ones a year to the lexicon?” That’s certainly a fair question. However, it doesn’t pertain to my thoughts here. I’m not attempting to birth any neologisms. These are simply humorous tweaks to existing words. A form of wordplay.

I got the idea when I read a short article, “The Best Made Up Words Ever,” by Bill Bouldin.* He admits to including a number of words from an online site I won’t name here (due to its preponderance of vulgar terms). While Bouldin doesn’t indicate which examples are his own contributions, and which are reproduced, I found a couple of the words quite entertaining.

The first of these reminded me of many group meetings where we consider all sorts of opportunities and possibilities.
Blamestorming – The act of attempting to identify the person who is most at fault for a plan’s failure.

As a pastor I couldn’t resist modifying this gem.
Sinergy – When performing two bad acts make you feel as guilty as if you had committed three.

This one struck home since it’s a play on one of the words in the title of the Narnian classic, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Chairdrobe – A chair on which one piles clothes that belong in the closet. Not to be confused with a floordrobe.

The final example will resonate with everyone who enjoys reading and writing.
“Illiteration – The mistaken impression that you know more about rhetorical devices than you really do.

At the risk of revealing myself to be an illiterator, I’ve included below some of the words I conjured up during an idle hour. I don’t claim any are masterpieces, but you may find one or two that bring a smile to your face. And, who doesn’t need an extra smile during these trying times?

My Initial Experiment

Caution: Before proceeding, keep in mind these are not real words. As genuine and utilitarian as they may appear, I advise you not to use them in conversation or composition. They are offered by Mere Inkling purely for entertainment purposes. Feel free to add some of your own in a comment.

Miscellaneous Vocabulary

Subbatical: the period when some temp like you is hired to fill in for some privileged person who has a job that has sent him or her off for an extended paid vacation.

Dippididude: Confused men who use hair gel designed for young girls and women.

Cemetarry: The unwillingness of some people to ponder the reality of their own mortality.

Mannekin: A boring, sedentary relative, who rarely rises from the couch.

Candlelablouse: The name for candlesticks with multiple arms in the homes of prudes.

Carnivirus: Individuals who strive to draw blood from those who view the coronavirus and its implications differently than they do.

Brigadeer: A domineering deer who tries to order all the other members of its herd around (antlers optional).

Altruistick: Actions that appear on the surface to be selfless, but include a hidden agenda.

Monumentill: Descriptor for someone of little worth who builds a significant reputation with the sole purpose of lining their pockets.

Blasphemee: An individual’s personal inability to consistently observe the Second Commandment.

Concupiscents: Hollywood’s obsession with including graphic sexual themes in all of their productions, resulting in the selling of their souls for pennies on the dollar.

Cathedroll: A large church led by a senior minister given to quaint and unintentionally comic humor.

Cadaversary, pl., cadaversaries: A member of the endless hordes of the undead during a zombie apocalypse.

Writing Vocabulary

Literasee: The capacity of one’s imagination to visualize what you are reading.

Bloggrr: An essentially angry person, given to writing unbridled tirades on various digital formats.

Gerdprocessing: When whatever you are typing just doesn’t work, and causes you severe heartburn instead.

Manuskipped: The sad condition when the article or book into which you poured your blood, sweat and tears has been tossed into a slush pile to lie forgotten.

Editteen: The maturity level of the editor who did not recognize the merits of your manuscript and rejected it without comment.

Subliminil: When the word you are reading or writing possesses no hidden or subconscious message.

Proofreaper: Someone you invited to read your manuscript for misspellings who advises you to delete entire sections of your precious creation.

Skulldigory: Misbehavior by the English professor, Digory Kirke, who, as a child, introduced evil into Narnia.

I will close now with two words that cat-lovers may find objectionable. If you are a devoted feline-fancier, you are advised to cease reading now.

Lucifur: The anonymous leader of that faction of felines devoted to serving evil.

Purrification: The activity of forgiveness and restoration that occurs when any cat makes a sincere confession of its sins.

* This columnist cites various words from the Bouldin’s piece, and others from a book entitled The Emotionary: a Dictionary of Words That Don’t Exist for Feelings That Do.

Writing Styles Revisited (What is Yours?)

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, C.S. Lewis, Cartoons with a Message, G.K. Chesterton, Great Authors, Humor, J.R.R. Tolkien, Writing23 Comments

If you were to liken your personal writing to that of a famous author, who would you name? Are you similar to Emily Dickinson, or are you an echo of Charles Dickens?

Perhaps your words flow like Shakespeare’s or erupt in staccato, like Hemingway’s. If you are a member of a writing critique group – which I highly recommend – your friends may have offered their own suggestions about authors you resemble.

It just so happens there are a couple of tools that can offer hints as to the answer to this question. When I looked back at an earlier post on this subject, I was shocked to find I had written it all the way back in 2012. Yes, I know some of you were in grammar school then.

I shared then a site which was relatively new. The “I Write Like” site invites you to submit samples of your writing, which it compares to a range of famous authors. I am curious to try the process today, since the programmer continued to update it until 2016. Perhaps my results will be different than those from 2012.

Programs such as this are frankly quite limited. For those of you interested in the programmer who designed this one, you can check out an interview conducted when it was initially released. In the interview, Dmitry Chestnykh explains how his “algorithm is not a rocket science, and you can find it on every computer today. It’s a Bayesian classifier, which is widely used to fight spam on the Internet.”

My Own Results

I’m unsure how many authors our Russian friend has included in the comparison files. It does include historical and contemporary authors. I have no idea whether my favorite author, C.S. Lewis, found his way into the database or not. My results do reveal, however, that at least one of his fellow Inklings did make the cut.

Without further conversation, allow me to share the results from my experiment nearly a decade ago.

Make sure you include lengthy selections from your work. Also, testing the program with different genres (assuming you write in different styles) will actually give you new matches. (That is, of course, as it should be.)

I tried a number of times (no, not fishing for results I wanted, but using a variety of types of my writing) and here were the repeated results:

For my blog posts: H.P. Lovecraft or J.R.R. Tolkien
For my more formal essays: J.R.R. Tolkien or Jonathan Swift

These were admirable results with which I have been happy to live. Thus, it is with some trepidation that I revisited the astonishing program today. And the results – For my blog posts: Arthur C. Clarke – For my more formal essays: Ditto.

Very interesting. Aside from the possibility that the program has been contaminated by some spaceborne virus, or intemperate Clarkean fans, I have to assume that Clarke may have been added after my initial venture into the unfathomable world of I Write Like.

In case any of you try out the program, I’d enjoy hearing your results – especially if they are someone other than a science fiction writer who died in 2008.

Another Way to Look at Writing Styles

There are a multitude of different elements involved in assessing a writer’s style – that which constitutes your “voice.” Vocabulary, sentence length, cadence, tone and a myriad of additional elements meld together in unique ways.

As David Downing’s fine article on C.S. Lewis’ advice to writers points out, the skilled writer considers how their words “sound.”

Lewis also believed that one should always write for the ear as well as for the eye. He recommended that a piece of prose be read aloud, to make sure that its sounds reinforce its sense.

Naturally, when we write for different audiences or purposes our voice can shift accordingly. That is why I fed the program selections from my blogs and my more considered essays. And, if they differ somewhat, you can imagine how distinctive my devotions are from my catechesis, or my fiction from my satire.

Speaking of satire, check out my recent report on Chinese Olympic results and the Uyghur people published last week in the Damascus Dropbear, a site similar to the Babylon Bee from the Land Down Under.

Back now to a second online program for assessing one’s writing. It can be found on a curious site called MySocialBrain. There you can participate in a variety of “research projects” that forfeit structured controls for broader access. The scientific benefit is obviously debatable, but the personal insights may well be beneficial.

One study entitled “Who do you write like?” compares the writing you submit with a number of famous authors. (As with “I Write Like,” your text is not retained on the system. Likewise, neither site requires that you enter your name or any other identifying information.)

This research project focuses narrowly on one dimension of stylometric study, a field explored in great depth in “Quantitative Patterns of Stylistic Influence in the Evolution of Literature,” available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

MySocialBrain bases its study on a reasonable premise. “Despite the seemingly ineffable qualities of style, great progress has been made in measuring writing quantitatively. This process, known as stylometry, can identify the influence of one writer on another or reveal the author of unattributed work.”

You can have your writing compared to that of others at this site.

I used two different samples of my writing (blog, then essay) and came up with fairly similar results. I haven’t read much from every one of these authors, but my gut suggests there may be a valid correlation here. And that impression is reinforced by how little correlation my submission had with the writing of Beatrix Potter, R.M. Ballantyne and Baroness Orczy (of whom I had never heard).

If you have a few free minutes, and are curious about what this stylometry tool might conclude about your writing, give it a try.

The cartoon at the top of this column is used with the permission of its talented creator, Jonny Hawkins. He is both talented and prolific. Enjoy a humorous jaunt through his personal website today.

On the Nature of Digressions

On By robstroudIn Advice to Writers, Animals, C.S. Lewis, Christianity, Classics Worth Revisiting, Great Authors, History, Humor, Literature, Nature, Poetry, Writing4 Comments

It’s nearly impossible to avoid digressions – those temporary departures from the current subject of conversation. While many digressions are interesting in the own right, they occasionally cause the speaker (or writer) to lose track of the actual point they are attempting to establish.

It’s like when I would be reading something the Emperor Constantine the Great, and at the mention of the Persian Empire, I would put the current article on hold while I explored the subject of just how the current regime in Iran reflects the religious fundamentalism of Zoroastrianism as it resisted during the Abbasid Caliphate. Ah, but forgive me, I digress.

The reason I am thinking about digressions today is because I recently encountered a massive one in one of Mark Twain’s works. But before we look at it, let’s consider a more recent example, in an article about C.S. Lewis.

In “The Uses of Ignorance,” literary critic Alan Jacobs explores a number of themes, including the way Lewis’ presentation of Christianity’s core resonates with believers from diverse theological backgrounds.

One lesson to be learned . . . is just how carefully Lewis articulated his “mere Christianity” so that it seemed “mere” indeed – recognizable to Christians from many different traditions as the faith they understood and practiced. But we also see . . . “that the lasting appeal of Mere Christianity is not based so much on Lewis’s genius as on his ability to point readers to the luminosity of the gospel message itself.” Which, I might add, is a kind of genius in itself.

The article is well worth reading, but the specific reason I mention it now, is because the author includes a lengthy (315 word) departure from his main theme which he brackets with the words “A digression:” and “End of digression”.) It’s rare to see something this straightforward.

C.S. Lewis as a Digresser

If the average woman or man is prone to digression, it seems apparent a genius – with voluminous knowledge on diverse subjects – would occasionally succumb to the same temptation. For someone like C.S. Lewis this is not a major problem, as he would never lose his place in the original conversation. On the contrary, Lewis’ digressions would invariably enrich the discussion, as they illuminated his points.

One of the only books written by C.S. Lewis which has entered the public domain is Spirits in Bondage. When it was published in 1919 (while he was an atheist), Lewis wrote to a friend: “The sub-title ‘A cycle of lyrical poems’ was not given without a reason: the reason is that the book is not a collection of really independent pieces, but the working out, loosely of course and with digressions, of a general idea.” (You can download a free copy of Spirits in Bondage at Project Gutenberg.)

Mark Twain’s Masterful Digression

I’ve written about Mark Twain in the past. In one column I shared his humorous reflections on the nature of editors. Writers will find the post particularly entertaining.

Editors played a major (usually unwelcome) role in Twain’s existence. Thus, it is unsurprising that a major digression in “How to Make History Dates Stick” involves these denizens of the publishing world.

One book I was reading this week includes an extensive and, of course, intentional example of digression. Although he doesn’t bracket it with the word “digression,” it is probably one of the best examples in existence. (We would expect nothing less from Samuel Clemens!)

In his novel Roughing It, Twain describes a pervasive blight to the western frontier, sagebrush.

I do not remember where we first came across “sage-brush,” but as I have been speaking of it I may as well describe it. This is easily done, for if the reader can imagine a gnarled and venerable live oak tree reduced to a little shrub two feet high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all complete, he can picture the “sage-brush” exactly.

Often, on lazy afternoons in the mountains I have lain on the ground with my face under a sage-bush, and entertained myself with fancying that the gnats among its foliage were Lilliputian birds, and that the ants marching and countermarching about its base were Lilliputian flocks and herds, and myself some vast loafer from Brobdingnag waiting to catch a little citizen and eat him.

Twain’s description of his daydreaming about sagebrush is entertaining, but this is not the quintessential digression I wish to share. After this brief digression, Twain writes a page and a half about the plant’s actual physical attributes and utility (e.g. for fires and tea). But then, when the reader least expects it, Twain goes off on another extended ramble.

Sage-brush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters for dinner. Mules and donkeys and camels have appetites that anything will relieve temporarily, but nothing satisfy.

In Syria, once, at the head-waters of the Jordan, a camel took charge of my overcoat while the tents were being pitched, and examined it with a critical eye, all over, with as much interest as if he had an idea of getting one made like it; and then, after he was done figuring on it as an article of apparel, he began to contemplate it as an article of diet. He put his foot on it, and lifted one of the sleeves out with his teeth, and chewed and chewed at it, gradually taking it in, and all the while opening and closing his eyes in a kind of religious ecstasy, as if he had never tasted anything as good as an overcoat before in his life.

Then he smacked his lips once or twice, and reached after the other sleeve. Next he tried the velvet collar, and smiled a smile of such contentment that it was plain to see that he regarded that as the daintiest thing about an overcoat. The tails went next, along with some percussion caps and cough candy, and some fig-paste from Constantinople.

And then my newspaper correspondence dropped out, and he took a chance in that – manuscript letters written for the home papers. But he was treading on dangerous ground, now. He began to come across solid wisdom in those documents that was rather weighty on his stomach; and occasionally he would take a joke that would shake him up till it loosened his teeth; it was getting to be perilous times with him, but he held his grip with good courage and hopefully, till at last he began to stumble on statements that not even a camel could swallow with impunity.

He began to gag and gasp, and his eyes to stand out, and his forelegs to spread, and in about a quarter of a minute he fell over as stiff as a carpenter’s work-bench, and died a death of indescribable agony. I went and pulled the manuscript out of his mouth, and found that the sensitive creature had choked to death on one of the mildest and gentlest statements of fact that I ever laid before a trusting public.

At that point, the writer pretends to realize he has digressed and concludes the chapter in the persona of the naturalist he has earlier assumed.

I was about to say, when diverted from my subject that occasionally one finds sage-bushes five or six feet high, and with a spread of branch and foliage in proportion, but two or two and a half feet is the usual height.

Well, that’s probably more than enough of a diversion from your day’s responsibilities. I hope you enjoyed reading these words, and that your own skills as a digresser will be correspondingly enhanced.