Thoughts on $10 Words

Eleanor Catton's essay at Metro .....On Literature and Elitism inspired an article at Salon by Laura Miller last week: Is the Literary World Elitist?
Laura Miller's piece, and comments beneath it, in turn inspired this post.

Sidelight:
Eleanor Catton, by the way is author of The Luminaries. From Wikipedia
The book was described as "a dazzling feat of a novel" by The Observer. It is unusual for being organized … according to astrological principles, so that characters are not only associated with signs of the zodiac, or the sun and moon (the "luminaries" of the title), but interact with each other according to the predetermined movement of the heavens, while each of the novel's 12 parts decreases in length over the course of the book to mimic the moon waning through its lunar cycle.

The thrust of both articles, and most commentary on them, is the question of whether use of uncommon words in writing - particularly, I guess, in fiction rather than non-fiction or textbook style writing - can indicate elitist tendencies. Uncommon words. Ernest Hemingway called them "ten dollar words": “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don't know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.”

In the articles linked, a word under scrutiny as being of the 10-dollar variety was "crepuscular". If a word is unfamiliar to the reader would the thing to do be to look it up online or in a dictionary if one is to hand? Or decide meaning from context - not always accurate, could be misleading? Or to sigh, read on until another unfamiliar word appears then declare the author "elitist"?

I am, I think, far from elitist in this regard (I could possibly be accused of that in other regards, but we all could in some sphere). I did know the word's meaning: relating to or resembling twilight, from schoolgirl French: crépuscule = twilight. Why wouldn't I know that? When I first ventured online more than 12 yrs ago I chose a screen name: Twilight, and it was long before those films about vampires were even a twinkle in the producer's eye. I did originally actually ponder whether to call myself Crépuscule, but that would undoubtedly have smacked of elitism !

Another word mentioned as unfamiliar to some people, "lupine" = wolfish, like a wolf. Again, schoolgirl Latin would come to my rescue if I encountered the word lupine in a novel. Not everyone had the benefit (or otherwise) of studying that dead language though, but it doesn't make me elitist because I did. I'd never use the word myself, in writing or conversation, in spite of knowing its meaning, that could make me elitist.

Everyone has a different range of vocabulary, assembled throughout life from widely differing sources and experiences. While I value simple over embellishment, always, simple for me, at times, could translate as over-embellished by someone with different experiences. I've been known to use words with which my husband isn't familiar, not because he isn't well-read or educated, but because I lived most of my life in England, he in the USA.

So....it's not easy to distinguish between elitist use of words and use of words which come quite naturally to one person but are unfamiliar to another, in conversation anyway. In writing for a, potentially vast, unknown public, are things a wee bit different? Should the writer consider more carefully the words used? I'd say so, but only up to a point. There are some words known mainly to those with the background of a literary academic. If such a literary academic were to decide to write a novel, they would be well-advised to step away from the ivory towers of academia and consider the words used from a place nearer to the ground - that is if the would-be author wishes to sell books to an audience wider than a minority of fellow academics.

Back to 10 dollar words. I still remember, after more years than I care to count, a sentence taught to me by the owner of a small sweet shop (candy store in American) near my childhood home. This is it:

Gastronomic satiety admonishes me that I have come to the ultimate stage of deglutition consistent with dietetic integrity.

Translation: I've had enough to eat/I am full.

I've just started to re-read a novel I first read back in the 1960s, it's by one of my favourite authors, Howard Spring. I've since read almost every novel he wrote. In the early chapters of this, his first novel, Shabby Tiger, I came across the word "aguish". Hmm, I thought. That looks odd, wonder if it's a misprint. From context I gathered it related to some kind of discomfort. I pondered. Maybe it's derived from the word ague - an illness. I read on, but later looked up the word online.

aguish: of or relating to a fever with successive stages of fever and chills, esp when caused by malaria......of or relating to a fit of shivering.

Another formerly unfamiliar word is now in the drawer marked "familiar" in the memory card-index of my brain.

Other points brought up in the articles and commentary first mentioned in this post related to amateur book reviews found at Amazon or Goodreads websites. Exchanges struck me as petty snobbery rather than anything truly elitist, and really just another version of "team-syndrome", a phenomenon very common in the USA: Seahawks/Brocos, Democrats/Republicans, Leno/Letterman, East/West, North/South, cool/uncool, urban/rural, Woody/Dylan. In this instance it was intellectuals, pseudo intellectuals, or would-be intellectuals against the more average, populist, non-academic mortals who like to read authors who entertain and transport them, in a way each reader finds entertaining and transporting.