Speaking of Pynchon... (SPLAD)

[Arthur Fuller]

Might I remind you all that language is a verb, not a noun -- a flowing
river, never the same twice. c.f. Steven Pinker, "The Language Instinct",
for abundant examples, one of my favourites being the use of the double
negative. In "English" this is supposedly not permitted, yet in several
other languages it is almost necessary. But even in English, it is,
depending on the context, not only permitted but encouraged... "I ain't got
nobody."

Without doubt, two slices of the sword occur here: race and class. There
are dozens of flavours of English, from Oxford to Brixton to Newfoundland
to Harlem to Boston to N'Orleans to Texan to Birmingham (both cities)... I
could go on, but you get the point. In China, there are thousands of
dialects, of which English speakers can name only two, and possibly three.
I'll start with Mandarin, Cantonese and Shanghainese, but if you've any
sense of history, you must also include Hakka -- if only to acknowledge how
the British managed to addict the Chinese masses to opium (and if you can't
follow that thought-train, read a little history about how the Chinese
refused to trade tea with England for anything but gold, which Queen
Victoria would not consent to, so instead the Royal She chose to smuggle
opium across the mountains into China, and create millions of addicts, and
hence leverage in the tea trade). But I digress.
My original point was that there are a hundred flavours of English. Some
snotty professors here and there might object -- and I too rail at the
outright butchery of the language, but I also understand that "English" as
understood as a language has long since departed from the shores of a
windswept, damp, often frigid island -- thanks to the spirit and
actualization of Colonialism -- to embed itself in places distantly removed
from its origin. This was followed by, again, thanks to the "English
Language" and its ladies in waiting, English Law, Property Rights, and a
dozen other atrocities -- the embedded belief that the Euro way of conquest
was the only path to Civilization for these backward nations. Originally it
was the Spanish and Portuguese that pioneered this vision, but then came
the much more powerful Netherlands and Belgium, and eventually France and
England.
I am mixing histories here, and didn't mean to do so. Let me refrain from
politico-linguistics and return to geo-languistics.
One of my favourite examples is Jah-English. When I saw "The Harder They
Come" I could only understand about a tenth of the English spoken there. I
had the same experience when visiting a jazz club in NYC at 125th and Lex,
at 4am, to hear Ornette. Two things happened that morning: a white boy in
the middle of the summer is here at 125th and Lex, in the middle of the
summer, obviously unarmed, and two: he is either crazy or here on a
mission, but he's unarmed, so there's only one other reason: he is here to
hear Ornette. No one threatened me; the opposite -- I was welcomed, because
they understood I was there to hear Ornette play. Stupid white boy, willing
to take such risks, to hear Ornette. Nobody touched me or threatened me
that early morning, and some folks even asked my name. I went back to that
club and that hood about 100 times that year, and got a Walk and guaranteed
safety. Eventually they learned that I was a journalist writing about jazz
and that won me another credit or two -- but nothing ever happened to me. I
was somehow Protected. Safe to write about the jazz culture without threat.
I appreciated that.

On Thu, Feb 16, 2023 at 1:34 PM Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:

> A  “righter” way?  Is this classic Kohut or what? He is appproving of a
> belief about correct diction by calling it righter? Is this word in a
> special dictionary I can’t find? Really,  righter?
>
>
> Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com  <mailto:
> pynchon-l%40waste.org
> ?Subject=Re%3A%20%3D%3FUTF-8%3FQ%3FRe%3D3A_Speaking_of_Pynchon%3DE2%3D80%3DA6_%3D28SLPAD%3D29%3F%3D&In-Reply-To=%3CCALAvXn34fxX4hePGYQrPbo-9PGmeSf67QaDYJ-hVhooGscHEWA%
> 40mail.gmail.com%3E>
> Thu Feb 16 08:49:15 UTC 2023
>
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> On Wed, Feb 15, 2023 at 3:05 AM Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com <
> https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l>> wrote:
>
> >
> > And the way TRP writes 'dwell upon", older righter way than 'dwell on'.
> >
>
>
>
> Really? Before I look it up, may I ask how so, in your estimation?
>
> I admit to using them interchangeably.
> “Upon” tends to make me start humming “up on a rooftop, way up high” so
> that’s fun.
> “Up” is nice and brief, also good.
>
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>


-- 
Arthur