Context Cluelessness

 “Certainly Mr. Trump’s fabled étourderie and his inability to staff a cabinet with qualified officials sympathetic to what was ostensibly his agenda are a part of the story.”

                    —“Biden’s First 100 Days Would Make Trump Jealous,” Matthew          Walther, New York Times, April 30, 2021.

For those of you who don’t speak/understand French [raises hand], Google Translate informs us that the fifth word in that sentence translates to “thoughtlessness.” Another translation site suggests “blundering,” which seems more apropos, given the former guy’s propensity for, well, blundering. The point of today’s entry, though, is not to comment on Donald Trump’s ineptitude, nor to discuss the finer points of translation, but rather to take issue with the writer and/or editor of the article in which the opening sentence appears.

Etourderie is not particularly common, not a foreign word or phrase that most moderately well-read English speakers (such as readers of the New York Times) would be familiar with. It’s no eclair or soupçon or joie de vivre.

And don’t get me wrong: I certainly don’t object to writers engaging in vocabularical calisthenics, whether by coining neologisms (like, I presume, vocabularical) or simply by reaching deep into their mental dictionaries to dazzle readers with sesquipedalian pyrotechnics. Indeed, I could argue that a writer has a responsibility to employ le mot juste in order not only to convey precise meaning but to offer the reader a bit of enlightenment. I, for one, now know what etourderie means—though I’m no closer to knowing how to pronounce it—and this piece of knowledge has now taken its place in my mental universe.

(Unfortunately, since I no longer have the capacity to add information to my store of knowledge without removing some equally large piece of information, I no longer know what “crepuscular” means. DON’T TELL ME! I’m trying to hold on to etourderie at least through the end of this afternoon, when the light starts to become. . . something.)

The point, here, is that, when a writer deploys an unfamiliar word, fulfilling the responsibility to enlighten the reader comes with an additional responsibility of providing sufficient context for the reader to figure out the meaning. In this case, in an article describing how President Biden’s actions have occasionally been indistinguishable from what one might have expected from his predecessor, and in a sentence describing some of Trump’s shortcomings, one could guess that etourderie had a negative connotation. But any number of English words or phrases could be plugged into that sentence with apparently equal effectiveness: bigotry, racism, self-aggrandizement, narcissism, thin-skin, megalomania. . .

(DIGRESSION: Donald Trump is a truly horrible and worthless piece of human garbage, isn’t he? EOD)

Using big words for their own sake is not great writing. It’s just rude.

Also, for the record, there’s nothing “fabled” about Trump’s etourderie: The man is unarguably a blundering moron.

In Which Debt Stalks the Oilfields Like Some Kind of Stalking Thing

Sometimes journalists try too hard.  Here is the lede from an article in today's Times about the debt load being carried by many oil companies:

MIDLAND, Tex. — On the 15th floor of an office tower in Midland looms a five-foot-long trophy black bear, shot by the son of an executive at Caza Oil & Gas.

But it is Caza that has recently fallen prey to a different kind of predator stalking the Texas oil patch: too much debt.

First of all, if the bear is "looming," shouldn't it be five feet tall?  Not that a five-foot tall creature can loom over much of anything. . . unless the reporter is a primordial dwarf. . . . (NOTE TO SELF: Check whether the New York Times employs a primordial dwarf reporter.)

But still, doesn't this opening seem like a bit much?  What did the rejected versions look like. . .

The morning sun gleamed on Caza Oil & Gas' oil derricks standing idle in the Texas scrubland.

Bur it is a different celestial body that will crash like a meteor into Caza, wiping out the company's profits as if they were so many ill-fated dinosaurs: too much debt.

Or maybe,

On the desk of Caza Oil & Gas's CFO, a Nolan Ryan bobblehead doll welcomes visitors with a Parkinsonian wobble.

But it is Caza that will be struck out by a different kind of fireballer tossing a no-hitter at the firm's balance sheet: too much debt. 

In Which We Ponder the Oratorical Skills of the New Canadian Prime Minister and Reassure Our Readers that We're Not Totally without Feck

Addressing his supporters, the newly elected prime minister of Canada (like that's anything), said, "More than a hundred years ago a great prime minister, Wilfrid Laurier, talked about sunny ways, he knew that politics can be a positive force and that is the message Canadians sent today. . . . . Sunny ways, my friends, sunny ways, this is what positive politics can do.”

I imagine that, behind him, one of his aides insistently whispered, "Days, Sir.  DAYS."

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Just to clarify, I did write something yesterday but really had no idea what to do with it.  It's not exactly a complete, fully formed. . .  thing.  Rather, it's a half-formed paragraph that feels like it belongs in a story--but it's a story, alas, that I don't know--even if I'm the one ostensibly making it up.  So, for now, this piece resides in my draft folder.  Maybe it will be retrieved someday, maybe not.  Perhaps in the event of my hopefully timely demise it can see light in what is sure to be the mammoth blockbuster collection of the unpublished writings of the Solipsist.  The point is, I didn't want you, my loyal followers to think that I had so quickly abandoned my Sunday pledge to get back on the stick and start writing again.  You've been disappointed enough.

Who IS Gertrude Stein, Anyway?

Gertrude Stein once remarked that "to write is to live is to be."

Or not.  Actually, Gertrude Stein never said any such thing.  Or perhaps she did.  When I say Gertrude Stein never said any such thing I really mean that I myself have no evidence that Gertrude Stein ever said any such thing.  She certainly could have said such a thing.  I know only a small fraction of the things Gertrude Stein ever said--a very small fraction: I've never actually read anything by Gertrude Stein; the extent of my knowledge of her writings extends scarcely further than "A rose is a rose is a rose."  Which, when you think about it, makes only slightly more sense than my hypothetical remark above.

Gertrude Stein also wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and for all I know that book might contain a sentence espousing the equivalence of writing and living and being.  I doubt it, but it's certainly possible. After all, Gertrude Stein presumably possessed a vocabulary that included all the words in my "quote," along with the linguistic ability to arrange those words in that same syntactical order. Maybe I'm wrong about her vocabulary.  She does not seem to have known, for example, what the word "autobiography" means.

The question, then, is this: If Gertrude Stein did, in fact, write a sentence that I assumed she did not write--that I presented merely as a way to add (fraudulent) gravitas to this post--then would what I did nevertheless be considered quotation?  And had I made the statement without stating that Gertrude Stein made the statement that I assumed she had not made, would my statement then be exhibit A in a case of plagiarism that would no doubt have amused Gertrude Stein immensely.  If she were into that sort of thing.  I don't know.  As I say, I've never read anything by Gertrude Stein.  I have no idea what would have amused her.