Howlers
High & Low
by Nicholas
Momurray
I recently set out to better myself by reading a few
"serious" novels, where "serious" means books that get a lot of space
in the New York Times Book Review section but very little shelf space at Barnes and Noble.
On page one of the first book I picked up, the author spoke of how
the main character’s parents had been "ex-patriots" in Paris. OK. Maybe she
really meant what she wrote: the parents while in America had been fiercely patriotic, got
fed up, moved to France and became—what else?—ex-patriots. However, on page 2
they were again referred to as "ex-patriots," which is what they still were on
page 3.
At which point I with forced restraint calmly closed the book and returned it to the
library, sad for the writer and disgusted at the editors of the prestigious publishing
house who apparently wouldn’t know an expatriate if he waved a flag in their
face.
Given the vastness and vagaries (or, as one struggling soul put it: the
"vagueries") of English, we’re all subject to embarrassing slips of the
keyboard. But writers are paid to use the language well, and editors are paid to know when
a writer has slipped.
The rest of us struggle on as best we can. Even the best are vulnerable, as witness the
first two examples in our latest collection of howlers gleaned from the Internet:
Jane Austen, from Northanger
Abbey:
Such was Catherine Morland at ten. At fifteen
appearances were mending; she began to cut her hair and long for balls.
|
Henry James, from The Last of
the Valerii:
Next after that slow-coming, slow-going smile of
her lover, it was the rusty complexion of his patrimonial marbles that she most prized.
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Milton wrote "Paradise
Lost." Then his wife died and he wrote "Paradise Regained."
|
| I'm a 20 yr. old who has an
overbearing passion for philosophy. Despite my ardent desire to understand the many
faucets of philosophy, my overall knowledge of some areas is very general. |
| The dodo is a bird that is almost
decent by now. |
| The Earth makes one resolution every
24 hours. |
| The equator is a menagerie lion
running around the Earth through Africa. |
| R.W. Harris, England in the
Eighteenth Century: Harley also
employed Defoe to write the Review, and St John had his own organ in the Post
Boy. |
| Hamlet rations out his situation by
relieving himself in a long soliloquy. |
| The vacuum is a large empty space
where the Pope lives. |
| The octopus wrapped his testicles
round the diver & strangled him. |
| The pistol of a flower is its only
protection against insects. |
| The primary aim of education should
be to equip a man to earn his own living. This is so important that it should be repeated.
The primary aim of education should be to equip a man to earn his own living. Indeed, it
cannot be said too often that the primary aim of education should be to equip a man to
earn his own living. |
| The theory of evolution was greatly
objected to because it made man think. |
| The tragedy of King Lear can be
situated on a timeless platitude. |
| Three kinds of blood vessels are
arteries, vanes and caterpillers. |
| To collect fumes of sulfur, hold a
deacon over a flame in a test tube. |
END
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