Beyond the Elements of Style

I’m not often moved to write book reviews in these pages, and I’m not actually reviewing one today, either, as my own copy is still on order; but I do want to pass on a pointer to what looks like an exceptional book: a New York Times review that had me purchasing the book from Powell’s within the hour (an impulse I often have but am usually able to resist).

The book? Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages, by Ammon Shea (223 pp. Perigee. $21.95). Yes, Shea did indeed read the entire Oxford English Dictionary, from beginning to end, and chronicled his experience in his new book, noting that the OED is, in fact, “a catalog of the foibles of the human condition.”

From the review by Nicholson Baker:

Shea decided to make the attempt and to record his progress in this book. Each letter gets its own chapter. In Chapter A the volumes arrive, wrapped in the “regal and chitinous gloss” of their dust jackets. Shea sits near the window, his feet up on an ottoman, and begins to read. Difficulties ensue. He gets pulsing headaches and sees gray patches on the edges of his vision. His back bothers him. His neighbors make salt cod, and the odor is distracting. He’s tempted to look things up in his other dictionaries, comparing definitions, which slows his progress.

So he ventures out into the city, reading on park benches and in public libraries. No place is right. Finally he settles on a location in the basement of the Hunter College library, among books in French that don’t tempt him away from the task at hand. He drinks many thermosfuls of coffee. He gets eyeglasses and finds, much to his surprise, that they help him see better. His headaches continue.

That introduction leaves most book people nodding in agreement: Yeah, I can picture myself there, doing that (though I’d choose a language other than French to provide for a lack of distraction — Urdu, perhaps, or Swahili); but I know I’d falter where Shea pressed on.

Shea arrives at another bad patch partway through Chapter U, with the “un-” section — more than 400 pages of words of self-evident meaning. “I am near catatonic,” he writes, “bored out of my mind.” But he doesn’t skip; he is lashed to the tiller, unthimbled and unthrashed.

There is beauty in it nonetheless; as Baker himself concludes, “Shea has walked the wildwood of our gnarled, ancient speech and returned singing incomprehensible sounds in a language that turns out to be our own.”

I’m glad that Shea read the OED and even more pleased that he shared this experience with the world; I’m grateful to the NYT to have opened my eyes to this treasure (one hesitates to think how many equally terrific books have passed one by because one simply didn’t know of their existence!). And I’m looking forward to reading it (Shea’s work, not the OED, thank you very much).

Not to mention Nicholson Baker’s own most recent book … but I’m getting ahead of both my reading and my budget! In any case, check out the possibilities of learning more about your own language and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!