The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester. 2 stars
Do you make gunpowder or just grow it?
So, here are a few things you may not have known.
A Civil War Army surgeon named W.C. Minor, was committed to a psychiatric institution in 1872 after killing a stranger in a state of paranoid delusion that led him to believe the stranger had been sneaking into his room. While institutionalized, Minor helped write The Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Minor was able to do that because the widow of the man he killed, recognizing that Minor was insane and not evil, befriended him and gave him books and writing materials. Years later, Minor cut off his own penis while in another state of paranoid delusion. Though, come to think of it, I’m not sure exactly what you’d have to be paranoid about before you’d do that to yourself. Perhaps he thought that particular organ was also sneaking into his room while he was out. Still, Minor did help write the most complete historical dictionary of the English language ever assembled. As people do.
There are things that can be classified and understood, and things that will forever be beyond us. The OED is an attempt to make sense of the world by listing the first time every ever word ever spoken appeared, its history and how it evolved. But a fair amount of it was written by an incredibly damaged person after the widow of the man he killed somehow found a way to forgive him. That level of compassion and grace goes far beyond comprehension.
You really have to wonder sometimes; how much of what we know do we really know at all?*
*I sounded a bit like Carrie in Sex and the City just then, didn’t I?
Most of what I know I can’t explain, which means I don’t really know it at all. That’s part of what makes writing a dictionary so difficult. I’d be hard pressed to define ‘cat’ without just saying the word, ‘cat’ over and over. And, of course, there are things I interact with every day that I have no genuine understanding of at all.
In Mark Twain’s, A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court the main character travels back in time and astonishes medieval knights with his practical knowledge of things like gunpowder. But I haven’t a clue about how my phone or the internet actually work. I know that electricity has something to do with Ben Franklin and a kite, but honestly, that’s about it. I just pay the utility bill and then flip switches. If I went back in time, I’d be absolutely useless, except for my wonderful ability to tell stories about Ben Franklin. Also, I have no idea how to make gunpowder, assuming you make gunpowder and don’t, you know, grow it
.
Nor, could I come up with adequate definitions of compassion, grace, or love. The woman who forgave Minor for killing her husband had six children she had to raise on her own in the 1870’s. How did she find it within herself to make sure Minor was able to write and research and live well after what he’d done? Is that level of grace a feeling? Is it a decision? Where does that come from? I haven’t a clue.
The people who created the Oxford English Dictionary were proud Victorians determined to make sense of the world. In the end, perhaps all they succeeded in doing was proving that was impossible. There are times when clarity only makes clear how little we see.
One last thing: on Tuesday I asked anyone reading that essay to send me a dollar, so I could call myself a professional essayist, just like the author of the collection I was discussing. Well, a few people came through. To that end….my card.