Thinking with words

Until language has made sense of experience, that experience is meaningless.

Peter Farb, Word Play

Infants who have not yet mastered language nevertheless seem able to think. If they see a toy  a few feet away from them, they can crawl over and get it. They can distinguish the voice of their mother from that of others. Eventually they may figure out how to climb out of a crib by themselves.

Years later they will have no memory of any of this, however. If what Peter Farb says above is true, perhaps this helps explain why it is true. Perhaps we have no memory of our earliest years because we had no way of putting those experiences into language. Once we learn how to put experience into words, we can more easily remember it,

Language does seem to give meaning and memory to our experiences. Chances are you cannot remember what you had for lunch a week ago. But you might remember it if you told somebody about it, if you put the experience into words, even if only in your own mind. We do remember very special meals because we think about them and talk about them. Even then we probably remember our conversation at that meal more clearly than the food itself.

Dreams dissolve very quickly upon awakening. Yet when I quickly relive a dream in my mind, putting it into words, I find that I can remember it, sometimes for years. We may forget the dreams themselves, but we can remember our mental descriptions of them.

This may also help explain why our memories tend to change over the years. What we now remember may not be exactly what happened, as we can discover if we read what we wrote in a diary or a letter at the time. As we tell the story or relive it in our minds, we embellish it to make it a better story. And then we remember the embellishments more clearly than the actual occurrence.

Thinking, Farb says, "is language spoken to oneself." That may not be literally true, for as I have said, infants can think without language. So can animals. Yet most of us humans, once we learn language, do seem to do most of our thinking with words. Some thinking may be instinctual, as when we suddenly hit the brakes when a deer crosses the road ahead of us, but mostly we do our thinking with language. And we get meaning (and memory) from words more than from the experience itself.

You can't say that

Indeed, freedom of speech does not exist anywhere, for every community on earth forbids the use of certain sounds, words, and sentences in various speech situations.

Peter Farb, Word Play

Peter Farb

Peter Farb makes the point that when it comes to freedom of speech, culture is much more restrictive than government.

All of us all of the time must watch our language. There are words we might use with our friends that we would not use in front of our mother. Or pastor, Or boss. 

There is jargon we use routinely in our jobs that we don't take home with us. And there is language we use when speaking with our small children at home we dare not use at work.

There are things we may say to a spouse or a lover that we would never say to anyone else. And vice versa. One of the gags often used on the ad libbed TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway? involves things you can say about your house or your car or whatever that you can't say about your significant other. It's always funny. And always true.

Mere civility and politeness prevents us from telling people what we we really think about them.

Some things we cannot say because they are too personal, too painful.

Most censorship is, in fact, self-censorship.

Playing with language

Although it was published in 1973 and has become outdated in many ways, Peter Farb's Word Play remains an important book on the subject of "what happens when people talk," his subtitle.

Farb covers numerous aspects of spoken language — why learning languages is easy for children but difficult for adults, criminal slang, playing the dozens (word play common in black communities where the object is to insult one another's mother in amusing ways), lying, jargon, translation from one language to another, baby talk, artificial languages and on and on.

Playing with language is common in most cultures, he tells us. Just as American blacks play the dozens, in many cultures the ability to quickly come up with clever lines, sometimes in rhyme, can be a test of belonging or even of manhood. Hierarchy can sometimes be determined with speech rather than fists. He uses Marx Brothers movies as a prime example of first-rate word play in the United States.

Farb concludes that all human languages are alike in many respects. Yet they can sometimes be very different. In English, for example, we think of the future as being ahead of us, the past behind us. In the Quechua language of Peru, however, it is the past that lies ahead. A Quechua speaker "logically states that past events can be seen in the mind since they already happened, and therefore they must be in front of his eyes. But since he cannot 'see' into the future, these events must therefore be out of sight or 'behind' him."

It is differences like this can make translation so difficult. One place where his book seems dated is when he writes that using a computer to translate one language into another is impossible. Today many people have apps on their phones that can perform at least basic translation of major languages.

Who needs cookbooks?

Book critic Dwight Garner writes in his book The Upstairs Delicatessen that "reading cookbooks is how I unwind." And this is a man who reads books for a living.

Another bookish person, Shannon Reed, also writes about reading cookbooks fo fun in her book Why We Read.

I confess I never read cookbooks, even when I'm cooking. I just throw things together and see what happens. The trouble with recipes is that I never seem to have the necessary ingredients.

It baffles me that some people read cookbooks more for pleasure or relaxation than for help in the kitchen.  Garner says, "I read myself to sleep with them." And thus a cookbook can be bedtime reading, although the size of many cookbooks would seem to make them unwieldy in bed.

I do not read at bedtime — I may watch PlutoTV if I can't sleep — but sometimes during the day I may want something short and relaxing when I don't have enough time to open a novel or a serious work of nonfiction. I have a few options, other than cookbooks, for these moments.

I have collections of comic strips, for example. I particularly like my Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes books.

I also love books containing movie reviews by Pauline Kael. I always find them enjoyable in short doses — and most of her reviews, originally printed in The New Yorker, are brief.

Early Dave Barry books also serve this purpose very well.  There is nothing like a good laugh for relaxation.

But if other people prefer cookbooks to unwind, that's fine with me.

Mental play

What makes the nursery rhyme so remarkable is that it encourages mental play.

Angus Fletcher, Wonderworks

I am old enough to remember those Dick and Jane readers. Dick, Jane, their sister Sally and their dog Spot were so ordinary. They were so well-behaved. Nothing truly funny, unusual, exciting or strange ever happened to them. I cannot imagine any child ever deliberately choosing to read about Dick and Jane.

Over the centuries most children's literature has been something like this, more instructive than fun. Yet most such books have been quickly forgotten. Nursery rhymes and fairy tales, meanwhile, stick around for centuries, and more recent creations such as Winnie-the-Pooh and the Dr. Seuss books seem to possess immortality, as well.

Angus Fletcher may have put his finger on the explanation — mental play. In his book, Wonderworks, he illustrates this with the nursery rhyme that begins "Hey diddle diddle,/The Cat and the Fiddle ..." He goes on, "What is a diddle? Why is a cat with a fiddle? How is a cow vaulting through space? And where is the spoon planning to go?"

It's all about mental play. Having fun with words. Imagining the impossible, Enjoying sounds that rhyme. Laughing at pure silliness.

Not only are the cat and fiddle more fun than Dick and Jane, they are probably more educational. Exciting minds is a good first step toward stimulating intelligence.

I recently commented on the book Surely You Can't Be Serious about the movie Airplane! That movie, it seems to me, may be a modern equivalent of nursery rhymes. It is amusing nonsense that may actually make us smarter.

Don't call me Shirley

Confronted by a book with the title Surely You Can't Be Serious, the only possible reply is, "I am serious, and don't call me Shirley."

The movie Airplane!, released in 1980, was the first Hollywood movie with three directors, David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, also the authors of this 2023 book about the making of that groundbreaking film. Having three directors was not as difficult as one might think, they say. Majority ruled. Plus, all three of these Wisconsin natives shared the same sense of humor, which nobody else in Hollywood seemed to share at that time.

The key to the success of this comedy, thought by many to be the funniest movie ever made, was being completely serious, they tell us. Hollywood bigwigs insisted they needed someone with the comic stature of Chevy Chase or Bill Murray to make a funny movie. Instead they chose the most serious dramatic actors they could think of — Robert Stack, Lloyd Bridges, Peter Graves and Leslie Nielsen. Nielsen, of course, went on to become a comic genius in film after film, but he did it by always playing his roles seriously, just as this young trio taught him.

Every actor in the film was told to play each scene as if they were in a B-movie drama like Zero Hour!, the 1957 B-movie that it parodied. Having serious actors deliver ridiculous lines seriously worked. Audiences never stopped laughing, and still haven't after all these years. The comedy holds up remarkably well so many years later. (I have been watching several Airplane! scenes on YouTube lately, and each one makes me laugh as hard as I did the first time I saw them.)

The book takes the form of a movie screenplay, but with lots of stills from the movie. It is a compilation of quotes about what happened before, during and after the making of the movie. Many of the comments come from people like Jimmy Kimmel and Maya Rudolph who had nothing to do with making the movie but have fond memories of watching it.

The trio got away with many gags that would not have been allowed in other movies and would certainly be impermissible today. Yet the jokes are so funny and fly by so quickly that nobody seems to mind. Many parents have watched Airplane! with children too young to understand the jokes.

Reading this book is a poor substitute for watching the movie, but it makes a wonderful companion to it.

True, but misleading

In a restaurant the other evening, I saw a tall woman at another table. The adjective that came to mind was striking. Was she beautiful? No. Was she even attractive? Not really. Perhaps she once had been, but now she was simply striking. I don't remember the other three people at her table at all. Just her.

This experience reminded me that there are certain adjectives that can sound more flattering than they actually are. You might, for example, tell a large man that he is imposing. He will likely be pleased. Yet what you actually mean may be that he is tall or overweight.

I recall Olive Oyl in the movie Popeye trying to come up with something flattering to say about Bluto, the man she was expected to marry. The best she could come up with was large.

People often asked to write recommendations for others probably become masters at words that sound better than intended. They may want to say something about the job applicant that can be interpreted as positive. A word like personable might actually mean that the person spends more of his or her working hours talking than working. A word like commanding might suggest leadership qualities, when the word bossy may be what the writer actually has in mind.

Real estate agents are also masters at words and phrases that sound better than what is actually being described.

Most of us want to be truthful without giving offense, and we may need a few such words in our arsenal for certain occasions. And thus had I been asked, I could have described that woman in the restaurant as striking and slept very well that night.

In love with books

Once you've fallen in love with books, their presence can make you feel at home anywhere, even in places where you shouldn't belong.

Kristin Harmel, The Book of Lost Names

Kristin Harmel

I like the above comment about books found in the middle of Kristin Harmel's novel about a book-loving young Jewish woman who during World War II helps smuggle Jewish children out of France. I would like to comment on it phrase by phrase.

Once you've fallen in love with books ...

Just as you can date men or women, whatever your preference, without falling in love with them, so you can read books without falling in love with them. You can even enjoy reading books for pleasure without falling in love with them.

Harmel includes the word once, suggesting that there was a time when you were not in love with books. Perhaps falling in love was a gradual process, as it was for me, or perhaps it came suddenly. Whatever the case, it happened beyond your control. It was not a choice. It just happened.

... their presence can make you feel at home anywhere ...

I am struck by her use of the word presence, which suggests that it is not just reading a book that is significant but merely the fact that it exists in one's vicinity. Thus this phrase can have two meanings.

1. Books give comfort. When I am in someone's home or office for the first time, I can feel ill at ease, as if I don't really belong (to skip ahead to the next phrase). Yet spotting a shelf full of books instantly seems to comfort me. I am immediately interested. I want to review the titles of those books. I want to hold some of them in my hands and turn some pages. Frankly, I would sometimes prefer to ignore those whose home or office it happens to be and devote more attention to their books.

2. Books take you places in the comfort of your own chair. They can take you to other planets, to other countries, to other periods of history, just as Harmel's novel takes her readers to France during World War II. Wherever one travels in a book, one soon feels at home.

... even in places where you shouldn't belong.

This phrase underlines the fact that fiction allows readers to experience people and places you not only will never experience in your own life, but people and places you would never want to meet or visit. In Harmel's novel, there are Nazis, for example. One can read a thriller and feel danger without ever actually being in danger. In a love story you can have an affair with someone you wouldn't dare have an affair with in real life.

All this is yours when you fall in love with books.

Unputdownable

I don't know who invented the word unputdownable, but they must have had David Baldacci in mind.

Baldacci usually writes long novels, but they don't seem long because the pages fly by so quickly. Such was the case with The Innocent (2012), a story about Will Robie, a 40-year-old man who kills people for a living. At the beginning one doesn't know whether to root for him or not. By the end he is the greatest of heroes.

Robie works for the U.S. government, eliminating bad guys around the world. In this new assignment, however, he discovers his target is a sleeping woman with two small children. When he hesitates to pull the trigger, a second assassin fires through the window, killing the woman and one of her sons.

On a bus, trying to escape the scene, Robie saves the life of a 14-year-old girl, whose parents, somehow connected to the woman he was supposed to kill, have also been killed. The two of them flee the bus, just before it blows up, and go on the run together, not knowing who to trust.

The plot gets more and more involved, yet Baldacci skillfully keeps everything clear enough so that readers can follow, in most cases, what is going on. And even if they do get lost, the nonstop action will keep them turning the pages anyway.

Animals at play

Animals play. Anyone who has ever had a dog or a cat knows this. And it is not just young animals. Even an old dog enjoys a game a fetch, as long as it's a short game.

Yet for a long time animal play was virtually ignored by science. In his 2024 book Kingdom of Play, David Toomey reviews what researchers from Charles Darwin to present-day scholars have had to say on the subject.

The observation of wild animals leads to surprises. Who knew that turtles play? Or fish? Can you imagine adult elephants sliding down muddy hillsides and delightfully crashing into each other at the bottom?

Mostly scientists are curious about why animals play. What are the benefits? Does it help with mating or self-defense? Some studies suggest play helps animals prepare for the unexpected. Piglets have been observed running wildly and deliberately tumbling. Does this help prepare them for the unexpected when they are being pursued?

The most obvious explanation for play seems to be the one scientists most want to avoid: Play is fun. It breaks up the routine. Perhaps some birds play catch in the sky — dropping objects so others can catch them — for the same reason children play catch — or hide and seek, Monopoly or whatever. It's fun. If animal play helps with hunting or mating or escaping predators, perhaps that's just an unintentional bonus.

Two of the most interesting findings in Toomey's book are these:

First, play among animals, as with humans, seems to lead to innovation. Play can help with problem-solving.

Second, dreaming may be a form of playing. Sections of the brain that are active during play are also active when we dream.

Forced apologies

Kat Timpf

Every time we apologize for something that we don't really think is wrong, especially publicly, we're just adding another nail to the plank that someone is going to be forced to walk off of someday."

Kat Timpf, You Can't Joke About That

In our ultra-sensitive society today, in which everybody perceives themselves as victims, demands for apologies are commonplace. Any joke, any comment, any action that someone finds offensive can lead to a demand for an apology. And many comedians, politicians, commentators, whatever, often quickly offer these apologies, which are then usually ignored. Insincere and forced apologies are not much better than no apologies at all. Such apologies rarely satisfy those who claim offense, and those who supposedly gave offense just appear wimpy. And their careers can be irreparably harmed.

This is what happened to me a number of years ago.

I was editorial page editor of my newspaper in Ohio, One of my tasks was choosing a cartoon to run on the editorial page each day. Sometimes I purchased cartoons from local artists on local issues, but usually I chose from a number of syndicated cartoons.

During a slump in automobile sales, I selected a timely, if not very funny, cartoon showing a car salesman trying to seal a deal with a hesitant customer. The caption read something like, "For an extra $500 I will throw in the entire dealership."

The next day our publisher told my editor to fire me. The latter put his own job on the line and demoted me instead to the copy desk with a big cut in pay. To my mind, the cartoon suggested that it might be an excellent time to get a good deal on a new car, but one or more local car dealers found it offensive and complained to the publisher.

Because I was no longer editorial page editor and did not start on the copy desk until the next day, I left early that day. Unknowingly, I avoided being forced to write an apology for offending car dealers with a lame cartoon. The editor was angry because he had to write it himself. I was pleased, however. I don't know if I could have brought myself to do it.

The incident later drew national attention when it was reported in a magazine. My career never recovered, but of course I received no apology.

Lost identities found

Eva is an old Jewish woman in Florida in 2005 with a secret past her late husband and her son knew nothing about. She revisits that past in Kristin Harmel's fine World War II novel The Book of Lost Names (2020).

Eva's past, although she doesn't want to talk about it,  was more heroic than shameful — well, except for her love affair with a Catholic man in France during the war. 

She lives in Paris with her parents when the Nazis and their French sympathizers start rounding up Jews. They take away her father while she and her mother are away. Eva turns out to have a gift for forgery and manages to create papers good enough to get her and her mother out of Paris and to the Swiss border. Yet they don't quite make it all the way to freedom. In Aurignon she is recruited by a priest to help smuggle Jewish children out of France. Her forgery skills prove indispensable. In this underground network she meets Remy, the Frenchman she falls in love over her mother's strong protests.

As for the Book of Lost Names, this is a name give to an old book found in the priest's church. Eva and Remy use a code to list in this book the real names of the children they must give non-Jewish names to when they sneak them across the border. Eva fears the smallest children may forget their real names if they are not recorded somewhere.

When she learns of the discovery of the book 60 years after the end of the war, she knows she must return to claim it — and to see if Remy, whom she learns died in the war, left a final message in it for her.

Harmel's plot may be a bit too neat and tidy to be totally believable, but that will be OK with her readers. Who doesn't love happy endings?

Fair game

Jordan Peterson has argued that comedy is like a canary in a coal mine — the less freedom comedians have to make jokes, the less freedom there will be in society at large. Kat Timpf makes the same point in her book You Can't Joke About That (2023).

Timpf, best known as a witty regular on Gutfeld! weeknights on FoxNews, struggled as a standup comic early in her career. Many of her jokes were about the most difficult parts of her own life — the death of her mother, her many health issues, her poor choices in men — and she says laughing at such trials actually helped her cope with them, even though others sometimes thought her humor insensitive. "How can you joke about that?" they wondered. She defends the right to joke about anything — death, rape, disease, natural disasters, corruption in your own political party, whatever.

"Actually, I've found that the harder something is to talk about, the funnier the jokes about it can be," she writes.

Her personal trials have continued since the publication of this book. She says that she once "joked with friends that my bra size is 'Double Mastectomy.'" Since writing those words she gave birth to her first child, but then was diagnosed with breast cancer — and had a double mastectomy. She has not yet returned to her TV program, but it will be interesting to see if she can joke even about that.

Timpf goes beyond the personal into the political in her book. That is the real coal mine. Are comics free to joke about the government? During the Biden administration most of the late-night comics avoided joking about President Biden, apparently out of fear for their careers, focusing their humor on Donald Trump instead. But the canary remained very much alive on Gutfeld!, where anything and anyone is fair game, thanks in part to Timpf.