Rules or myths?

Most of us think of dictionaries as authoritative. Whether we are playing Scrabble or just writing a letter, we look to a dictionary, whether online or in print, to tell us how words are spelled, what they mean and even whether they are really words at all.

Yet those who put dictionaries together, if they are any good, look upon the rest of us as the authorities. That is, dictionaries don't dictate what's right or wrong about words. Instead they reflect how words are actually used, what the people who use them mean by them and how most people spell them.

Linguists, if they are any good, do much the same thing. Consider Anne Curzan, a professor at the University of Michigan and the author of Says Who? (2024).

As her title suggests, she doesn't think the traditional language experts are necessarily correct. This is especially true of our English teachers back in the day who chastised us for putting prepositions at the end of sentences or splitting infinitives.

In chapter after chapter, all written with a light touch, Curzan attacks the myths of proper language usage. Her subtitle even includes the word funner, certain to drive a lot of know-it-alls crazy.

Don't get the idea that anything goes with Anne Curzan. The important thing about language is always communicating what you have to say. If the other person doesn't understand what you're saying, you must be doing something wrong. So some language guidelines are necessary.

Yet different standards apply in different situations. You write differently than you talk. Usages that might be fine in a text or email might be out of line in a formal letter or a term paper. She even argues that aesthetics are important. How does it look on the page?

When Curzan uses the word "rule"  she normally puts it in quotation marks, as I just did. Some rules are just suggestions to her. Others are just myths. Whatever works for you works, she seems to be saying. This is your language. You are the authority.

Life with children

There is a passage in Life among the Savages (1953) where Shirley Jackson is asked her occupation. After she repeatedly says "writer," the person asking the question puts down "housewife." That she was both is illustrated in this, one of two amusing books she wrote about her family.

Her fiction consisted mostly of horror stories and ghost stories, and the titles of her family memoirs reflect a similar theme. The other is Raising Demons.

Her children — she gives birth to her third child early in Life among the Savages and a fourth at the end — actually seem typical, especially for the period she writes about. They are rambunctious, imaginative, ornery, sweet and so on, just like the kids in every other family. What's different is Jackson's ability to make the incidents in a typical family's life worth reading about.

She writes about finding a house big enough and affordable enough for her family, about learning to drive (her husband has no interest in driving), about a daughter's imaginary friends, about a son's imaginary and trouble-making classmate, about what happens when everyone in the house is sick at the same time, about the impossibility of finding a reliable housemaid, about trying to go shopping with three children in tow and so forth.

Many of these incidents were excerpted in magazines like Good Housekeeping and Collier's at the time. and deservedly so. Even 75 years later they bring chuckles. For those of us who grew up in the 1950s, they bring memories.

What is a book?

I have an American Heritage College Dictionary, now nearly 20 years old, that lists the first definition of the word book as "A set of pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers."

For most of us, something like that is probably what comes to mind when we think of a book. Yet this definition, or any definition, leaves something to be desired.

If the pages are blank, is it still a book? What if the pages are utter nonsense, perhaps typed by one of those infinite number of monkeys?

Does a pamphlet become a book if it is given a more protective cover?

Does a writer's manuscript become a book when it is published or does it become a book if it is placed in a three-ring binder (a protective cover)?

If a novel is published first in a magazine, as so many Charles Dickens novels were, is it a book?

If we listen to a book on some kind of electronic media, can we still count it as a book? What if we read it on a Nook or a Kindle?

Any definition one can come up with can be either too restrictive or not restrictive enough. With a broad definition, as in the American Heritage Collegiate Dictionary, almost any of us can say we have written a book. Ever kept a diary? Ever put a term paper in a stiff cover? Congratulations, you are an author.

On the other hand, the definition can suggest that one of Dickens' serialized novels isn't really a book, at least not yet.

Emma Smith proposes an interesting definition in her book Portable Magic. She writes, "A book becomes a book in the hands of its readers, It is an interactive object. A book that is not handled and read is not really a book at all."

To me, that is utter nonsense. If she were correct, bookstores and libraries contain no books. Those paper objects do not become books until someone takes them home and reads them. Then, apparently, they cease to be books when put back on the shelf. That's like saying a chair isn't really a chair unless someone is sitting in it.

No thanks. I prefer the dictionary definition, as inadequate as it may be.

Magic moments

Once in a great while during the course of our lives, something happens that seems magical. Sarah Addison Allen packs a lot of those magical moments into Lost Lake (2014).

Lost Lake is a small resort in Georgia that has seen better days. Eby, who bought it years before with her late husband, believes it's time to sell. Hardly anyone comes there these days. Then the magic starts.

Kate, her niece who hasn't been to Lost Lake since she was a little girl, returns with her daughter, Devin.  Kate is a young widow whose mother-in-law has been controlling her life for the past year. Now both she and her daughter want to escape.

At Lost Lake she finds Wes, with whom she had played when they were children. He still pines for her.

Meanwhile the few regulars return for a summer stay and decide to throw a goodbye party for Eby. When the town hears about it, everyone shows up, including the man who wants to buy Lost Lake.

The novel has an alligator that only Devin can see, a box hidden for decades in the lake, an aging woman down to her last charm that enables her to seduce any married man she wants and a mute French woman who keeps a chair in her kitchen for the ghost of the boy who killed himself years ago after she rejected him.

There's magic aplenty in Lost Lake, but perhaps the most magical thing about the novel is the way everyone just takes the magic in stride. Magic, like death and taxes, just happens.

Black and blue

The title of Eowyn Ivey's 2025 novel Black Woods Blue Sky was inspired by Marcel Proust. In Swann's Way he wrote, "Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue. May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend ..."

Those words fit Ivey's novel very well, for it is a story about black woods and blue skies, life at its best and at its worst.

Arthur, raised at first by bears, then adopted by a human couple, doesn't seem to know what he is. Sometimes he wears a bearskin and lives a bear's life. At other times he lives as a man, even if an odd one, in the Alaskan wilderness.

Birdie, a bar maid who drinks almost as much as she serves, lives a wild life while trying to raise her little girl, Emaleen, at the same time. She falls in love with Arthur, a wild man whom she thinks might be able to tame her, and takes Emaleen to live with him. The girl realizes before her mother does that Arthur may be more bear than man.

In the last portion of the novel, Emaleen is a grown young woman who returns to Alaska and, against the advice of others, tries to find Arthur.

Ivey gives us a powerful story of hope and love, while taking us through the black woods at the same time.

Migratory books

Books' intrinsic portability means they are always on the move, always migratory, always displaced.

Emma Smith, Portable Magic

Most of us hate to throw out old books. Instead we give them away when are done with them. We donate them for library book sales. We take them to used book stores.

The condo library, which I oversee, depends upon this difficulty people have to throw out old books, even well-worn books. Instead they donate them to the library, providing "new" books for our shelves, while also leaving me with the responsibility of getting rid of older books. Most I donate for resale elsewhere. Some I must reluctantly recycle.

I hate to write in books, but wouldn't it be nice if each person left a record in each book owned? That is, we could write our name, along with the date the book was acquired and the date it was passed on. At one time, public libraries did something like this. Those who withdrew a book left their names and dates on the library card.

For some books, I think this trail might be very interesting. I own a number of books that were used when I got them. Who owned them before me? How far have these books traveled?

Emma Smith hints at this when she writes above about the portability of books, about their migratory nature. Books remain for years on one particular shelf, but then when their owners die or decide to downsize, they are passed on somebody else, and then perhaps to somebody else. The best books end up in collections, in university libraries, in museums.

Sometimes there have been attempts to save books by destroying them, photocopying them, digitizing them or whatever. Yet the books themselves, though made of paper, can last a very long time with proper care. Books hundreds of years old can still be read. Paper lasts much longer than modern media, which can become outdated within a few years.

If only we could know the history of old books.

Books are for reading

Those who collect books rarely read them. If they want to read the book, they will buy a cheap reading copy. They may not ever open the collectible. Any wear at all decreases its value.

It is something like the person who collects Star Wars action figures. A true collector never takes them out of their boxes. They are toys that are never played with.

This is how I knew I could never be a book collector, even though at one time I had several books worth a little bit of money. I owned a book because I wanted to read it. When I finally sold my first edition of A Is for Alibi for $1,000, the buyer wondered why it was so worn. To me it was never a collectible. I read it, and I loaned to other people to read.

At the same time, and this may sound contradictory, I acquire books I may want to read but know I am unlikely to ever read. But I don't own them because I expect them to increase in value. I own them because I like having them in my library. I like the thought that I might actually get around to reading them someday. I like the sight of them. I like owning them. Some books seem to make me smarter just by being on my shelves.

Perhaps this doesn't make sense. But then neither does keeping a Star Wars action figure in its box.