Wordy Indeed

I'm reading "The Wordy Shipmates". I confess to being a goodreads.com stalker. Lately, I have been allowing this to guide my reading selections with mixed results. I find people I know that I suspect are smart and well-read and I sample the things they like. I think on some level we all have a private criteria for making snap judgements about people. For some it is clothes, or profession, or eating habits, weight, etc. For me, I am beginning to think it is reading habits and preferences. So, in this covert judgemental manner,I stumbled across "Assassination Vacation". Liked it, so onto "The Wordy Shipmates".

Just finished teaching the Separatists and Puritans to my reluctant 5th graders, so it is all fresh in my mind. Wordy indeed. My time in the most likely now-defunct UVA TLC left me with a knee jerk instinct to use primary sources when teaching social studies and the wordiness puts me in a bit of a bind. On one hand, the Puritans loved the words and were pretty impressed with their own endeavor so they wrote EVERYTHING down. Really, everything. So great, right? Lots of primary sources! Except, the Puritans loved words, layered upon words, wrapped in words, nestled next to other words, and playing footsie with still other words. The bigger the word, the better. Seriously, most of their thoughts are indecipherable to the average 5th grade mind. So, five words in and the kids are drowning in a thick and murky stew of words. My students think in text message format, so the Puritanical ramblings require lots of translation. Most give up in despair before the first paragraph wends its way to the next.

So maybe my complaint is not with the Puritans, but with the startling contrast in approach to the language between our country's founders and it's current inhabitants. But that's an issue for another time.

Don't get me wrong. I love words. I remember with great clarity having very strong feelings about words from the get-go. The word "hypothetical" was an ecstatic experience...the word itself popped in my mouth like the explosion of tapioca beads. The meaning is delicious ..."supposing for the sake of argument". On the flip side, the word "moist" makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and almost instantly activates my gag reflex. Ugh.

So, my point being...I can hardly blame the Puritans for their love affair with the linguistic side of life. Still, when that obsession makes your meaning obscure, has it gone too far? Is it too much to ask for words to bridge a gap of over 250 years? Still, as the Puritans were founding their "city on the hill" they had to believe their words would live in infamy, so convinced were they of their own righteousness and superiority, they would delight to think school children would study their words all these years past...did they think they were being clear? Were they eager to prove how enlightened they were? Did they think their words revealed them as being closer to God?

As with so many things, a word is not just a word, it is revealing about the writer or chooser of the word. And so, a life of wading through the "almost right word" to find the "precisely right word". So to craft a lovely sentence, that satisfies like the hum of the sweet spot on a wooden bat, is the point (for me). But what if my sweet spot is your wordy shipmate? Drat...foiled again!