While many of my posts will be book and film reviews in the form of critical articles, my reading program this year will be based again on books about the Self as a phenomenon. Interest exists in how we experience ourselves and how we might articulate that more precisely. To say how we might articulate it objectively poses already the usual questions about objective truth and the likelihood that we are sufficiently aware of our biases, so I hope to disclose mine.
I'll start with holiday reading over my winter break for Christmas and New Year's- my reading of books given to me by my children, in this case. I also worked on a chapter for an edited book but I'll let the chapter speak for itself, eventually.
I read Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1998). The story of Dr. William Minor, a major contributor to the dictionary during his confinement as a mental patient, mainly in the U.K and then in the U.S., is told through anecdotes about his correspondence during the long editorship of James Murray in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the eventual diagnosis of dementia praecox, aspects of the mental illness suffered by the American, starting most apparently after his service as a Civil War surgeon with the Union Army, remained mysterious. He had many paranoid episodes and a disordered sexual preoccupation that gave rise to self-loathing. None of this prevented him from amassing a large library in his mental institution using his independent wealth and the assistance of relatives. He focused with fierce concentration on creating well-organized lists of word definitions and their occurrences from tireless perusal and analysis of his book collection. The final product, the OED, is certainly indebted to him.
However, and here I disclose my own bias and background, it seems that the real fascination of the story would have been better exploited by more focus on his method and on the full reaction of Murray, if such was recorded, upon learning that this contributor by post was confined as mad after committing a murder under a delusion of persecution by Irish nationals because of his order to brand a prisoner of war with a hot iron while serving as the battlefield doctor. Otherwise, for me as a psychiatrist's daughter and perhaps for many others in this post-Freudian age, the book comes off more as a case history. We know much more on a popular level about mental illness, but Murray and others did not. However, I kept forgetting that the main focus of the book was supposedly Murray's relationship with Minor. What did he do with his astonishment and curiosity? A story is told but the psychological and scientific context felt thin.
A major and disturbing flaw of the book was the lack of footnotes or endnotes, at least in the Harper Perennial paperback reissue of 2005 I received and read. I honestly have no way to know how accurate Winchester's research was, although he thanks many people and describes all his hard work. It is not a scholarly book and not meant to be, but still...if we are to be astonished by an odd set of circumstances, we need to know a great deal about its factual details and the sources of same. HE wrote a 2003 book on the same topic of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Meaning of Everything, The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary and at Amazon it also shows no notes but does have an extensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading section.
Anyone with a serious interest in the topic should seek a work published by the rival Cambridge University Press, and new for 2013, namely Sarah Ogilvie's Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary. The preview shows an extraordinary bibliography but also a list of letters and other sources that for me, at least, make the entire treatment look more worthy of its painstakingly researched subject, which is after all, another work of research. I have not read it but have it now listed in my books to read on LibraryThing.
I'll start with holiday reading over my winter break for Christmas and New Year's- my reading of books given to me by my children, in this case. I also worked on a chapter for an edited book but I'll let the chapter speak for itself, eventually.
I read Simon Winchester's The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary (1998). The story of Dr. William Minor, a major contributor to the dictionary during his confinement as a mental patient, mainly in the U.K and then in the U.S., is told through anecdotes about his correspondence during the long editorship of James Murray in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Despite the eventual diagnosis of dementia praecox, aspects of the mental illness suffered by the American, starting most apparently after his service as a Civil War surgeon with the Union Army, remained mysterious. He had many paranoid episodes and a disordered sexual preoccupation that gave rise to self-loathing. None of this prevented him from amassing a large library in his mental institution using his independent wealth and the assistance of relatives. He focused with fierce concentration on creating well-organized lists of word definitions and their occurrences from tireless perusal and analysis of his book collection. The final product, the OED, is certainly indebted to him.
However, and here I disclose my own bias and background, it seems that the real fascination of the story would have been better exploited by more focus on his method and on the full reaction of Murray, if such was recorded, upon learning that this contributor by post was confined as mad after committing a murder under a delusion of persecution by Irish nationals because of his order to brand a prisoner of war with a hot iron while serving as the battlefield doctor. Otherwise, for me as a psychiatrist's daughter and perhaps for many others in this post-Freudian age, the book comes off more as a case history. We know much more on a popular level about mental illness, but Murray and others did not. However, I kept forgetting that the main focus of the book was supposedly Murray's relationship with Minor. What did he do with his astonishment and curiosity? A story is told but the psychological and scientific context felt thin.
A major and disturbing flaw of the book was the lack of footnotes or endnotes, at least in the Harper Perennial paperback reissue of 2005 I received and read. I honestly have no way to know how accurate Winchester's research was, although he thanks many people and describes all his hard work. It is not a scholarly book and not meant to be, but still...if we are to be astonished by an odd set of circumstances, we need to know a great deal about its factual details and the sources of same. HE wrote a 2003 book on the same topic of the Oxford English Dictionary, The Meaning of Everything, The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary and at Amazon it also shows no notes but does have an extensive bibliography and suggestions for further reading section.
Anyone with a serious interest in the topic should seek a work published by the rival Cambridge University Press, and new for 2013, namely Sarah Ogilvie's Words of the World: A Global History of the Oxford English Dictionary. The preview shows an extraordinary bibliography but also a list of letters and other sources that for me, at least, make the entire treatment look more worthy of its painstakingly researched subject, which is after all, another work of research. I have not read it but have it now listed in my books to read on LibraryThing.
