Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut [51]
It is the biographical inclusions and exclusions, in fact, which make this dictionary an ideal gift for the paranoiac on everybody’s Christmas list. He will find dark entertainments without end between pages i and 2,059. Why are we informed about Joe Kennedy, Sr., and Jack and Bobby, but not about Teddy or Jacqueline? What is somebody trying to tell us when T. S. Eliot is called a British poet and W. H. Auden is called an English poet? (Maybe the distinction aims at accounting for Auden’s American citizenship.) And when Robert Welch Jr., is tagged as a "retired U.S. candy manufacturer," is this meant to make him look silly? And why is the memory of John Dillinger perpetuated, while of Adolf Eichmann there is neither gibber nor squeak?
Whoever decides to crash the unabridged dictionary game next—and it will probably be General Motors or Ford— they will winnow this work heartlessly for bloopers. There can’t be many, since Random House has winnowed its noble predecessors. The big blooper, it seems to me, is not putting the biographies and works of art in an appendix, where they can be cheaply revised or junked or added to.
Have I made it clear that this book is a beauty? You can’t beat the contents, and you can’t beat the price. Somebody will beat both sooner or later, of course, because that is good old Free Enterprise, where the consumer benefits from battles between jolly green giants.
And, as I’ve said, one dictionary is as good as another for most people. Homo Americanus is going to go on speaking and writing the way he always has, no matter what dictionary he owns. Consider the citizen who was asked recently what he thought of President Johnson’s use of the slang expression "cool it" in a major speech:
"It’s fine with me," he replied. "Now’s not the time for the President of the United States to worry about the King’s English. After all, we’re living in an informal age. Politicians don’t go around in top hats any more. There’s no reason why the English language shouldn’t wear sports clothes, too. I don’t say the President should speak like an illiterate. But ’cool it’ is folksy, and the Chief Executive should be allowed to sound human. You can’t be too corny for the American people—all the decent sentiments in life are corny. But linguistically speaking, Disraeli is dullsville."
These words, by the way, came from the larynx of Ben-nett Cerf, publisher of "The Random House Dictionary of the English Language." Moral: Everybody associated with a new dictionary ain’t necessarily a new Samuel Johnson.
(1967)
NEXT DOOR
THE OLD HOUSE was divided into two dwellings by a thin wall that passed on, with high fidelity, sounds on either side. On the north side were the Leonards. On the south side were the Hargers.
The Leonards—husband, wife, and eight-year-old son— had just moved in. And, aware of the wall, they kept their voices down as they argued in a friendly way as to whether or not the boy, Paul, was old enough to be left alone for the evening.
"Shhhhh!" said Paul’s father.
"Was I shouting?" said his mother. "I was talking in a perfectly normal tone."
"If I could hear Harger pulling a cork, he can certainly hear you," said his father.
"I didn’t say anything I’d be ashamed to have anybody hear," said Mrs. Leonard.
"You called Paul a baby," said Mr. Leonard. "That certainly embarrasses Paul—and it embarrasses me."
"It’s just a way of talking," she said.
"It’s a way we’ve got to stop," he said. "And we can stop treating him like a baby, too—tonight. We simply shake his hand, walk out, and go to the movie." He turned to Paul. "You’re not afraid—are you, boy?"
"I’ll be all right," said Paul. He was very tall for his age, and thin, and had a soft, sleepy, radiant sweetness engendered by his mother. "I’m fine."
"Damn right!" said his father, clouting him on the back. "It’ll be an adventure."
"I’d feel better about this adventure, if we could get a sitter,"