Thrills, Chills, and the Oxford English Dictionary

The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester, read like a novel (it even had illustrative sketches). The narrative focused on two men: Professor James Murray, who led the team of compilers for the Oxford English Dictionary, and Dr. W.C. Minor, a Civil War veteran. Minor was imprisoned as an inmate of an asylum for the criminally insane in England after he murdered a man in a fit of paranoid delusion. Dr. Minor’s insanity concentrated itself on nighttime delusions. For example, he thought that little girls made him perform “appalling actions” during the night and though mostly rational by day, he would baracade his bedroom door at night because he believed that intruders were pouring poison into his mouth through a funnel. He would insist on being weighed each morning to see if the poison had made him heavier. His madness finally led him to a desperate act of self mutilation that I will leave out, just in case you want to read the book and be unpleasantly surprised. 

Winchester’s portrayal of this “madman” is insightful, tragic, and complex. Though enslaved by madness for much of his life, Minor was also a keen academic, a surgeon during the Civil War, and a collector of antique books. From his cell in the Broadmoor Asylum for the Criminally Insane, he submitted over ten thousand words to the OED project.

While Minor is an extremely interesting character to read about, I was also impressed by enormity of the the OED project. I’m so used to having a Dictionary at my fingertips that the idea of not being able to find a concise definition for a word, let alone being responsible for compiling, defining, and finding examples for all of the words in the English language is hard to conceive. It took over 70 years to complete the Oxford English Dictionary. 

The only reservation I have about this book is that a lot of it seemed based on conjecture. Phrases such as, “might it be possible....,” “perhaps,” “one wonders if,” and “it seems reasonable to think” abounded. If it weren’t for these signal phrases one could easily assume that everything Winchester wrote was based on flawless, factual research. It’s clear, however, that he felt free to “fill in the gaps” and as long as you’re comfortable with a bit of fiction mixed with fact, you shouldn’t feel annoyed by the liberties he took in writing this book. 

The Book Jacket Conspiracy

Though the first book in this series came out in 2007, as of last week I had never heard of Michael Scott or The Alchemyst: The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel. My interest was piqued when I read on the dust jacket that Michael Scott is “a master of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and folklore, he has been hailed by the Irish Times as ‘the King of Fantasy in these isles.’” The King? What a powerful recommendation! I bought the first two books in the series and fully expected to be amazed.

Once again, The Great Book Jacket Conspiracy, fueled by crafty publishers, duped me. 

The one really positive thing I can say about this book is that Scott’s love of mythology and folklore is ever apparent. According to the author, every character, with the exception of the twins, is “based on real historical characters or mythological beings” (371). That’s something. 

The constant references to iPods, Hummers, computer games like Myst, etc. were beyond annoying. Am I really supposed to believe that the Morrigan (a warrior goddess from Irish mythology) is addicted to eBay and online strategy games? He might as well stick full-page color advertisements in between the chapters. Perhaps Scott is hoping that such blatant commercialism will lead to a movie contract. Whatever the reason, these product shout-outs made his magical world much less magical. 

The fact that the twins were constantly trying to be convinced that what they’re seeing is real also made the story less convincing. The blending of the magical world with the non-magical world just didn’t work. Why would someone be surprised that they can’t get a cell phone signal or find a power socket when they’re in a Yggdrasill (the “World Tree”)? That’s less believable than the tree itself. 

Finally, Scott’s narrative often digresses into long bouts of theorizing about the beginning of the earth. Not surprisingly, he is a proponent of evolution and the dull spiels about our ape descendants grated on my nerves. There was too much of an agenda for me. 

Despite all this (or maybe because I’ve already bought the second book), I’m actually hoping that these books will improve. Series can be unpredictable. Sometimes the first book hooks you and the rest let you down. Other times, the author is just getting warmed up and you have to wait for them to build their plot. The verdict is still out.