Word Crimes and Literary Offences

 

When we were discussing Twain’s essay, Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offences, one of my favorite songs came to mind. That song would be “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Word Crimes. Now, I gather that most of you, dear classmates, are English majors, like I am. This song is a GEM for grammar geeks. I, in fact, listen to it at least twice a day because I love it so much. (Save your judgments, please. I know that must seem a bit excessive.)

Right, then, that being said, let’s talk about Mark Twain. His list of flaws in Fenimore’s novels, The Pathfinder and The Deerslayer, are quite descriptive and extensive. He does an excellent job of calmly explaining each of what he considers to be the rules of writing good literature. After he does that, he goes about not-so-bashfully bashing Fenimore’s writings in his usual, classic Mark Twain-ish ways.

A few of my favorite “literary offences” include numbers two, five, and seven:

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.  But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop. (Twain is basically saying, “Not only is this story a piece of junk, it’s not even relevant to my rules, so how could my rules apply?” That’s how I would say it, of course, but as you can see, Twain’s way is much more “polite.”)

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. (Whoa, there, Mr. Clemens! Any chance we could come up for some air at some point in that delightfully long run-on sentence of yours? Anyway….) But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it (Hmm. I find it curious that Twain refers to Deerslayer as a tale, since he mentions clearly in number two that this tale is not a tale. He continues to do this throughout the rest of his essay for reasons only known to him and perhaps some very scholarly scholars who are far more educated than I am.).

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tolled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale. (That. That statement there is why this is one is one of my favorites. Oh, my dearest Mr. Clemens. You classy cat, you. Imagining something being flung down and danced upon paints a witty little image in my head.)

So, have you been able to deduct why I think this song is relevant to Mark Twain’s essay? If not, let me try to boil it down for you. “Weird Al” clearly despises poor grammar usage. As a writer himself, he’s more than entitled to doing so. A man after my own heart, I say! All of the grammatical blunders he weaves into this song are the same ones that really just get my goat, too. I’ll be honest with you. I often find myself wondering how in the world some people can be so stupid. Go back to third grade, people. You’re killin’ me. To us, of course, English comes naturally. It’s our gift, hence the reason we are all selling our souls to the field.

It is clear to me that “Weird Al” and Mark Twain think on similar wavelengths. I hope my ramblings gave you that impression, as well. Cheers and happy reading!