Mountweasel. That’s only one of the many English words, and non-words, I learned from a truly delightful novel by Eley Williams: The Liar’s Dictionary. I had heard about fictitious entries in maps and encyclopedias that were inserted deliberately by the editors to entrap plagiarizers. For example, a map maker might insert a false street called Fictive Lane. Of course this is well before google maps anyway. Another publisher who included included Fictive Lane would be caught. In The Liar’s Dictionary the Swansby’s Encyclopedia is taking generations of editors and bored scriveners to construct. One of them, the fictitious lisper Winceworth goes a bit overboard with his imaginative neologisms secreted away among the slips to be imported years hence into the dictionary. Many years later, a descendant of the original founder Swansby, is trying to complete the marathon project and discovers some of the fake entries. A young intern, Mallory is assigned to root them out. The novel tells of the cat and mouse game between the long passed on Winceworth and the modern day Mallory. The story is a light hearted quick read that I followed enjoying all obscure words both real and fake until the whole shebang goes up in smoke.

Eley Williams mentions in the acknowledgements the book by Simon Winchester, The Meaning of Everything: the Story of the Oxford English Dictionary. I had read Winchester’s The Professor and the Madman years ago and it was a truly compelling tale that has been made into a somewhat dull movie of the same name, available from Hoopla. A book that tells the full story of the OED is a favorite of mine, Caught in the Web of Words: James A.H. Murray and the Oxford English Dictionary written by Murray’s descendant (I think his granddaughter) K. M. Elisabeth Murray.

I sent something like this to The Boys last week: The zoom discussion was why so many voters are true believers in all of the Trump craziness and despite his obvious villainy still voted for that fat fraud. There will always be many authoritarian voters for despotic leaders. But 74 million !?  WTF? So Kurt Anderson’s Fantasyland:  How America Went Haywire, a 500-year History provides some answers.  Anderson writes that USA is uniquely given to waves of powerful but crazy beliefs, many of them enhanced by powerful and crazy religious beliefs.  The Puritans seeking God’s paradise, the witch-trials, the missionaries, P.T. Barnum who, like Pres. Drumph was well aware of how much of a manipulative money-grubber he was.  There is a long list, The Great Awakening, the speaking-in-tongues-ers, Manifest Destiny, Joseph Smith and the engraved plates (where the hell are they anyway and how much would they fetch on ebay?), there was Fr. Coughlin the no-nooky-nites Shakers, the end of time millenarians, the Scientologists, of course Jim Jones and on and on or as the King and I King Mongkut said etceterah, etceterah, etceterah.  The book is not about religious beliefs but it makes the point that beliefs of the kind that defy any common sense need to be propped up and supported by the powerful elixir of a god of some kind.  So now the QAnon guy is apparently a religious figure or is being seen as one, and then there are the followers of Pres Drumph who are much animated by evangelical religious leaders and especially the, what do you call them, the charlatan preachers who preach that if you believe then you will become fabulously wealthy.  What could be more American than that?  In other words, how do you get people to literally drink poisoned Kool-aid if the leader is not some cultish authoritarian who promised afterlife salvation. Several reporters have pointed out that Drumph rallies are like tent revivals and Drumph himself inspires religious fervor among the most ardent supporters. So yes, I think the Boys are right in saying it’s tribalism and emotion but I think that we have to acknowledge that crazy religious beliefs are the glue that holds much of this together.  For me the Anderson book provides some answers but not the whole answer.  Why so many millions?  It will always astound me. There is of course the powerful motivator of racism.  Every thoughtful person can see that the whole birther thing was plainly racist and that was the real kickstarter for the whole Trump cult. I think there was racism but also right-wing fear. I met a birther in the flesh, for real.  This nutcase woman was in charge of a federally funded social program during the Obama administration.  She was a highly paid lady from Louisiana managing a project created by the Bush administration to help strengthen small nonprofit charities particularly church sponsored groups.  (Yes, and I managed to grab three-quarters of a million dollars worth of this stuff and before you say it was government grift, it helped both with cash grants to Sustainable Berea and New Opportunity School etceterah, etceterah.) So this nutcase from New Orleans started in on me at a conference in DC.  “Obama was not born in America! He was born in Africa!  He is a Muslim.  He will turn us into a Muslim country.  Muslim!  We will all have to be Muslim.”  I got the hell away from her because she was clearly out of control.

Two things about the 70 plus voters.  They all knew about their holy hero, his racism and I believe they all are animated by fear of an imaginary enemy. Black presidents, Muslim takeover, atheists, liberals, immigrants, speakers of languages other than English with Southern accent. Sorry to go on like this and if you read so far you may wonder why I have thus expounded at such length.  I am on the injured-list, baseball fans. Well, I have a mild stomach bug or something (let’s hope that’s all) and Number 1 granddaughter wanted desperately to come over so I am in lock-down.  Upstairs, and they bring me my food and coffee while I type away on this mierda. 

But wait, don’t go away yet.  There are two other good books that may help us understand, you know, those voters.  One popular and very impressive more or less pop social psychology book by Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.  He explains such things as how tribalism and religion both binds us together and drives others out and, most importantly, how liberals can tolerate crap smells better than conservatives. Or rather that potty-smells evoke more right wing opinions (yes, believe it, it has been tested, it is science). The other book I just started so I can’t say much but it is Liar’s Circus by Carl Hoffman.  Hoffman spent some of the Trump years traveling to the nutter rallies and studying the wild inhabitants of these insane shindigs.  The rallies themselves may explain a lot about the 74 million voters.  There are rally followers who travel all over and attend yes every single rally anywhere and compete with each other for truest believer.  Just let me end by saying the last book by Hoffman is his sort of anthropological journalism titled Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism and Michael Rockefeller’s Tragic Quest. So maybe the many, far too many voters, in the right-wing tribe would fit in both Hoffman books.

I have read James Fallows for years and listened intently to his radio reports from China.  He discovered great hope and vibrant change in a developing China.  As he found in China, there is hope and increasing development in a changing America.  Not in the great cities, but in small town USA, in the rebuilding of rusting manufacturing towns, in college towns, and in the farm towns of the great plains.  For the highly educated urbanites of our country who showed themselves to be so out of touch with “fly-over” country and blue-collar workers, this book is a must read.  It shows the resilience and determination of town and village dwellers to rebuilt the American Dream. 

Two things stood out for me.  First, there is far less nationalism and xenophobia in places where immigrants have settled and have proven themselves the key to a rebirth of small-town America.  I have myself witnessed more immigrant hatred among those who have no acquaintance with refugees and other immigrants. 

Second, I see that college towns and especially those places with career and technical colleges are fueling a revitalized economy and have made small towns livable and attractive.  What we used to call “Junior Colleges” like the excellent Palm Beach Junior College (now Palm Beach College) that I attended briefly are focused not on social class climbing but on the type of education urgently needed in our workforce.

All in all, I think the book works best as a travelogue rather than as social commentary.  It is an enjoyable read but light on making a point.

A good dictionary is descriptive, and we turn to it to see how words are actually used. On the other hand, grammar books are prescriptive and often proscriptive. We look there for the rules of writing.  We look there for the rules of writing. There simply has to be some conventionality in writing otherwise readers would be constantly trying to learn some new scheme of communication.  The problem with the semicolon is that there seems to be little agreement even among grammarians on how it should be used. The confusion over leads some writers to avoid the semicolon altogether.  Cecelia Watson argues that when used effectively the semicolon is an important, maybe even necessary tool of good writing.  Watson reviews the evidence from several writers, but the quoted passage from Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail proves her point.  MLK writes to the white preachers who advise him to slow down his efforts and to wait for change. In a truly astounding sentence, he cites example after example of the daily indignities suffered under racial apartheid.  Each clause is a shameful instance of humiliation and injustice and each powerful statement is separated by semicolon after semicolon like a drumbeat. This is mimesis at its best: the sentence makes the reader wait and wait while the long listing of travesties pound away until the conclusion—”then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.” 

Cecelia Watson doesn’t choose sides in grammar wars over the semicolon or give her own rule but argues for good sense in writing rather than strict laws of writing.  In fact, she thinks a grammar scolding is just an ad hominem attack in disguise, a technique of one-up-manship.   It is much like the silly battles over the oxford comma.  Best to use it when necessary to avoid confusion, otherwise it doesn’t matter.

It’s amazing that there is so much to argue about in a point of punctuation.  There has been not one, but several court battles over the use of a semicolon in a law.  Cecelia Watson has written a whole book about a punctuation mark; it is a good book; it is readable; and it is marvelously wise.

Music historian Norman Lebrecht thinks that Jewish genius, the notable exceptionalism of Jewish leaders and intellectuals, results from the ever-present angst of Jews in the modern world.  I write here in the present tense, which is a little annoying, just as it was throughout this otherwise fascinating book, Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947.  To explain the remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish people some writers have looked for an explanation in genetics or education or perhaps the cultural values of bookishness. Lebrecht makes the case for the otherness, the perpetual state of Jews as not quite fitting in, of not quite losing immigrant status, citizens but never truly accepted.  It is the ability to think differently, to use a Talmudic reworking of common modes of thought that Lebrecht views as keys to Jewish success. 

But all in all, this book quickly moves away from the genius question and proceeds with a compilation of mini-biographies of outstanding Jews during a 100- year period.  There are some surprises here.  Leonard Bernstein of course was a musical genius and a true maker of the modern world of music.  His personal behavior was, well, gross.  “Nice to meet you, Lennie,” would often be reciprocated with a sloppy tongue kiss.  Theodor Herzl, the real father of Zionism was not at all religious, not at all a good Jew and did not circumcise his own son who eventually becomes a Christian.  Herzl flirts with schemes other than reviving a Jewish state in Palestine, such as in Cyprus, and even in Uganda.  I am imagining singing in a temple in Kampala:  Let us forget thee, O Jerusalem! 

The great Jewish genius of this period is of course Albert Einstein.  The surprise of this peaceful man is his loyal friendship with Fritz Haber. Unfortunately, Haber is only loyal to Germany.  Haber was fully assimilated, even jingoistic
German Jew, who is becomes the developmental father of gas warfare. Haber’s research lab even creates the terrible insecticide that, after Haber’s death, is modified into the chemical Zyklon-B which destroyed so many Jews in the death camps.  Haber’s excessive patriotism toward Germany is eventually rewarded with rejection by the state he loved and served as the Nazi movement grows.  I imagine that he did not die a good death as he did not live a good life, but nonetheless, Einstein’s friendship endures.

The most interesting individual in this surprising and engrossing history of Jewish genius, is the little-known Eliza Davis.  A bold 19^th century character, Davis meets everyone’s favorite author, Charles Dickens.  After the meeting, Dickens receives a letter from Davis, who is probably the first Jew he ever met.  The letter expresses, at first, admiration for the great novelist and then proceeds to take him to task for the repulsive and racist depiction of the criminal Fagin.  Didn’t think Fagin was quite that bad?  Well, that may be that Davis eventually convinces Dickens to revise the first edition in order to tone down the character and to stop referring to Fagin as “the Jew”.  Davis asks Dickens if he referred to other wicked characters as “the Christian.”  It seems that Dickens has been afflicted by the common prejudices of the time that can come people who simply have no acquaintance with a culture not their own.  Long before, Shakespeare had created the character of Shylock even though he could never have known any Jews at all.  All Jews had been expelled from England in the 13^th century and were not permitted to enter England until 1657. 

I give the Lebrecht book my highest rating, despite the relentless use of the present tense.  And as I write this, I realize that the author may have used the present tense, not for the sense of drama, but rather to make an important point.  Anti-Semitism exists and now reasserts evil manifestation across the world, it exists in the ever present, it is with us from even before the destruction of the Second Temple, and nonetheless, Jewish genius survives and even prevails.