curmudgeon

ONE PEUT-ÊTRE, TWO PEUT-ÊTRE,
THREE PEUT-ÊTRE, MORE
Stan Kelly-Bootle, Author

Puns and allusions

One is always loath to explain a joke. In face-to-face badinage, the joker can judge the comprehension of the jokees from their immediate reactions.

Failing to win the approving smiles, chuckles, or belly laughs, the raconteur has a choice of remedies including the Quick Exit Strategy (“What a dumb crowd. I’m out of here!”). The modest teller will accept the blame (“Oh, I forgot to mention that the mother-in-law was a blond Republican Fortran programmer!”) and order drinks all around. It’s the bore unwilling to accept defeat who embarks on a detailed analysis heralded by an aggressive, “You don’t get it, do you?”

This rhetorical affront, one that has wormed its annoying way into many areas of contemporary polemic, is the ultimate deterrent to goodwill and reasonable discourse. If you don’t “get” something, as opposed to merely not understanding all its finer ramifications, the feeling is conveyed that you are forever outside humanity’s caring fold. Pascal lovers don’t “get” C, and deep C fishers don’t “get” C++. And, naturally, vice-versa, across a chasm of misunderstanding. Moreover, they are clearly never going to “get it,” so brand the mark of the beast on their foreheads as they slink back to their obscure North Country polytechnics.¹

When trying to raise a laugh with my writing, as with, say, this month’s title, I lack the stand-up comic’s instant feedback, forcing me to imagine, from previous reader encounters, what proportion of giggles, groans, and indifferent silences might ensue. Even when writing “straight” Tech Talk, the author and publisher face the ancient “ target audience” problem. Honest publicity for the Intermediate Guide to the Pluperfect Subjunctive in Early-Modern Hittite will tell you up-front: “This book is aimed at all intermediate students of early-modern Hittite grammar, especially those with an interest in the pluperfect-subjunctive verb conjugations and disposable cash to the tune of $79.99.”

Sneaky publishers might chance the additional, generalizing bait: “Beginners and advanced students, even Ph.D.s and professors, interested in other verb tenses of proto- and late-Hittite will surely find this treatment equally useful.” Amazon will provide the enticing information that “those who bought the Intermediate Guide to the Pluperfect Subjunctive in Early-Modern Hittite also bought Cripple Clarence Lofton: Boogie Woogie Pioneer and Algol- 68 on Ten Dollars a Day.” In the competitive IT Conference Caravanserai, we find the most blatant enumerations under the banner, “Who Should Attend?” When you take the set-union of the welcomed invitee classes, it amounts to “any member of Homo sapiens (or related primate species) anxious to enjoy a week’s company-paid vacation in warmer climes with free plastic carrier bags and discreet adult diversions.”

Over the years, I’ve tried to adjust my style and content (and I hate to confess, my professed opinions) to suit what I could glean of the target reader’s expertise and gullibility. What am I saying? A slip of a tongue, a fleeting lapis lazuli. My readers are never provably gullible. Skeptical of my truths, perhaps, yet I’ve never once tested them with intentional lies (with the possible exception of the previous statement). There’s this vital, oft-neglected distinction between ignorance and dumbth.² Clearly, authors can only guess at their readers’ lexical awareness (the old educational lottery?) and powers of deduction and imagination (the old genetic lottery?).

Here we have a case in point. Meeting dumbth, some readers will write to say I’ve used a word that does not exist. One valid linguistic answer (at least in many descriptive, open-minded schools) is, “Well, it does now.” Sometimes when the complainer says, “That word is not in my dictionary,” I can rightly respond, “Buy a bigger dictionary.” Nowadays, I tend to suggest an online search since printed dictionaries can’t keep pace with our neologistic excesses. (I’m proud to mention that my children, to honor (or mock?) my famed omniscience, bought me a T-shirt reading, “F*** Google, Ask Me!”)