Sounding out the meaning

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Yesterday evening I came across my copy of Eunoia by Christian Bök. It’s a brilliant book emphasizing the sound of words and the playfulness of language.

The word eunoia means beautiful thinking and is the shortest word in the English language that contains all five vowels.

The book is a lipogram, which is a form used by many Oulipo poets. Each vowel has its own chapter—no other vowels will appear in it. As a result the vowels emerge from their chapters with their own personality (i is more light-hearted, for example). It took Bök seven years to write the 2002 Griffin Poetry Prize winner.

Writers often use words to convey meaning to readers. But words are not always a means to an end. The next time you find yourself struggling to find meaning in piece of writing, stop. Let the words be the meaning.

Social media, slang and dictionaries

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There were many words I didn’t know when I was younger. Whenever I came across an unfamiliar term I’d ask my parents what it meant. They always told me the same thing: look it up. If I really wanted to know—and I usually did—I would take the dictionary down from the shelf in the living room and find the definition.

A couple of decades later and, although I’ve tried, I still haven’t learned all the words. I use dictionaries quite a bit. Sometimes it’s for work, but often it’s for personal use. I usually find what I’m looking for, but things get tricky when it comes to slang.

I don’t use a lot of new slang, but I don’t have anything against it. However, there are many people who don’t think slang belongs in the dictionary.

 

But words aren’t added into the dictionary arbitrarily. Lexicographers conduct thorough research to determine if a word should enter the dictionary or not. A word or term must demonstrate common use and a history within the English language.

 

 

 

Increasing activity on social media sites shows why dictionaries continue to be important. Acronyms are constantly being created. (There was lots of discussion when OMG and LOL were entered into the Oxford English Dictionary in March.) Words already established in our vernacular have developed new meanings. Facebook’s friend and Twitter’s follow are two examples.

Hopefully authoritative texts such as the OED will continue to define slang. I want to understand what people are saying; that’s what it comes down to. But no matter how hard I’m laughing out loud at that funny thing you wrote, I’ll still comment with a ha-ha.

Getting published via Facebook status update

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If there’s something you want to do, you’ll be more likely to do it if you write it down or tell someone. This isn’t exactly how Go the F— to Sleep came to be, but the book exists because of one fateful Facebook post written last June.

It started when Adam Mansbach, a writer, updated his status after his young daughter wouldn’t go to sleep: “Look out for my forthcoming book, Go the F— to Sleep.” The status was just a joke, meant to express his frustration. But the update drew lots of attention in the form of “likes” and comments.

Mansbach made the book a reality. He wrote the story in the style of a children’s book but with adults as the intended audience. Akashic Books agreed to publish it.

What began as a joke became an internet sensation. A PDF of the book was leaked and went viral. It became so popular that the official release date was moved from October to June 14.

It’s fascinating to see social media have an impact like this. While it’s common knowledge that Facebook and Twitter are important tools for marketing and promotion, this shows how they can do even more. Social media was central to the formation of Go the F— to Sleep; it wouldn’t have existed otherwise.

OK, so it’s not Mansbach’s Facebook page that helped create the book, but it’s the people who visited the page who did. Collaboration and feedback are important for the development of any great idea. And social media makes it easier and faster for people to get a discussion going.

If we take a chance and put our ideas out there—even just small nuggets of ideas—someone out there will see them. Our online friends might add to the ideas, suggest a change, or offer informative criticism. They might see the brilliance that we never knew was there.

Poetry and YouTube

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Remember life before YouTube? I do. Things weren’t that much different, but one incident comes to mind. It’s the time I hunted down the audio of one of my favourite poets.

During my university years, I started reading a lot of poetry. But there’s something special about hearing a poet read his or her own work, so I often searched for audio of poets I liked. I had a fair amount of luck with this, finding many recordings of poets on CD or on the internet. But I had difficulty tracking down anything from Philip Larkin.

I asked around, looking for help with my search. I contacted various publishers and stores. In the end, after a lot of time and effort, I came across one audio clip of Larkin reading “Aubade.” A couple of years later, I found out through YouTube that some recordings of Larkin were rediscovered.

 

It’s pretty awesome that YouTube has made these types of searches easier. Every so often, I’ll spend some time on YouTube searching for clips of poets reading their work. At the same time, the months I spent searching for audio of Larkin makes for a bit of a better story, even if does expose the depths of my nerdiness.

Here are some other poets reading their poems:

Frank O’Hara

 

Langston Hughes

 

Mark Strand

 

Sylvia Plath

Revisiting the joy of Joyce, one tweet at a time

Posted in novels, social media by

Even though I studied English in university, I haven’t read Ulysses by James Joyce. I meant to, but it wasn’t in the curriculum, so it’s remained on my “to read” list ever since.

There’s good news for those of us who have yet to read this classic. On June 16, if you can find time to get on Twitter, you’ll have time to read Ulysses.

OK, it won’t be exactly the way Joyce wrote it. Volunteers from all over the world will narrow down sections of the book to a series of tweets to celebrate Bloomsday.

This will be an interesting experiment to see what social media can do for classic literature. I still want to read Ulysses in its entirety, the way Joyce intended. But this experiment has put this more in the forefront of my mind than it was, say, a month ago.

Maybe social media will increase the popularity of reading classic novels. Young people who have never heard of James Joyce will run out to the nearest bookstore or library to get their hands on a book. Maybe not. But they might download the ebook.

James Joyce