edith wharton is dead; long live the semicolon!

when i was just a wee lad in high school -- tenth grade, to be exact -- we were taught a book in english class by mr. pierce, my hero of the teaching profession, a lifelong friend of mine, & undoubtedly the source of my love of he subject of english. the "theme" of the class was stories of transformation or change, especially those that might relate to teen-agers [read: pubescent boys & girls]. we read "the odyssey," & we read "the catcher in the rye." i remember him reading parts of "catcher" out loud, & i can still hear the gasps when he said "fuck" & "goddamn" out loud [i also developed a lifelong radar for anything or anyone that could be considered "phony" -- you'll have to read the book to understand, just like you ought to read "the stranger" to fully grasp the cure song "killing an arab," or how "wrapped around your finger" mentions part of "the odyssey"]. 

but one of the texts that we read was "ethan frome," by edith wharton. there were more than a few of us that absolutely could not stand this book. i mean, we hated it. one of those few people was mr pierce himself -- you see, he had never taught the book before, & he had actually decided to teach it without reading it. well, about half the class [there were only 15 of us or so, 37 people in my entire high school graduating class 2 yrs later] absolutely HATED that book. led by me, i must say, though my respect for mr pierce forced me to read it [prior to his teaching, if i didn't like a book on page three, that was it. . . i ain't readin' this sh*t]. interestingly, one of the more vocal anti-"Ethan Frome" contingents was none other than. . . Mr. Pierce himself. we weren't sure why we hated the book, we just did. the story was okay, it's about unrequited love, cold new england winters, & sledding accidents [russell banks, where are you? if you wanna read "ethan frome" but GOOD, try "the sweet hereafter" by banks, & check out the movie by, i think, atom egoyan.

then, one night, after stealing some of dad's courvoisier & mixing it with diet coke, & maybe smoking a little green tobacco, i realized what the problem was. edith wharton has a problem with semi-colons. they are literally on every page of that book. i ran into class the next day shouting "i got it! i got it! it's the punctuation!" pierce looked at me like i had nineteen alien heads, & i just said, "go ahead, open 'er up, any page you want. . . go ahead, do it" & he did. i then said "alright, count the semi-colons. . . . trust me."

he found five in the first three random pages that he looked at, eyes ever-widening, as did the rest of the class. the laughter was amazing, outside of the 4 people that really like the book. they thought we were being "over-analytical."

bottom line: now that edith wharton is no longer using up the english allotment of semi-colons, we can have them all back! so, get crackin', people; we gotta lotta semi work to do!

more posts to follow, this one's for dave felton.

Comments

[FekreinnY]

It took me 1 hour to create it, please rate it :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqnobvEWTag

[Ken]

This is totally off topic, but I just found something pretty cool - the Bishnoi religion is not quite as old as Islam but it's quite extraordinary - it's environmentalist. The Bishnoi people believe in sharing the land and resources equally with animals - including letting them graze freely in their fields - and they refuse to kill animals or chop down trees. In fact, they defend them to the death, if it comes to that. Keep in mind these sensibilities seem revolutionary or strange to us, but they are perfectly normal for the Bishnoi, who think that we, with our lifestyle, are all insane, and possibly monstrous.

http://www.bishnoi.org/index.php

[Ken]

Hear hear on the Catcher in the Rye. I've often had the phony radar up too. "Damn that guy's a phony!" except the problem is I catch myself being that way too, getting away from my roots; it's all of those outside influences, creeping into the brain, the fumes of the rancid imperialist plastic button up cuboculture. Funny thing was, first time I met Mitch, I thought, "Well there goes just about the most non-phony guy I ever met." Noting, almost immediately, he was, for lack of a better term, 100%.

Ethan Frome bites the dead donkey in a big way. Damn. Maybe you're right. Maybe it IS the semicolons. Makes it sound phony, maybe. I mean, there's a difference between sounding "old style" & sounding Phony. Poe sounds old school, so does Verne, & Emerson gets melodramatic or very-very-rosy (to the point you can just inhale that fragrant pollen) sometimes...but they don't sound phony, do they? No. No, they fucking don't. Intangibles.

I read an articule recently about the semicolon, how most people do not understand how to use it & therefore they do not use it at all. It is, it seems, slowly dying, along with the &.

[David Felton]

P.S. thanks for the dedication

[David Felton]

I heart Edith and Ethan. I read that in high school (for a teacher I despised) and I loved it. I wrote a paper on it. I still have that paper around somewhere. I should read the story again. Check out the Semicolon Appreciation Society at www.dictionaryevangelist.com.

[tom evans]

Poor Edith. Remembered only for her semicolons! You shouldn't blame her for the national punctuation debt. She was a Henry James groupie, after all. She ought to be remembered for that. And blame Henry for the shortage.

[Joe]

I'm all over some semicolons. I use them all the time. But I'm not going to sue one here, because that would be derivative. :)