The
Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making
of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon
Winchester
I've
been enthralled by the idea of the Oxford English
Dictionary since I first
encountered it in an undergraduate course about the history of the
English language, and I figured that Winchester's account of two of
its pivotal figures would be a nice way to learn a bit more about its
remarkable history. While Winchester avoids the pitfalls that plague
dry historical nonfiction (of both the popular and more academic
varieties), The Professor and the Madman
swings a bit too far in the other direction, coming across as
impossibly disorganized despite its obviously good intentions and its
ostensible focus on the quintessentially Victorian impulse to
categorize (and thus make sense of) the world. The author's effort to
interweave stories about editor extraordinaire James Murray,
institutionalized power contributor William C. Minor, and the
dictionary itself is a noble one, but the book and its readers become
repeatedly lost in a seemingly endless stream of internal and
external distractions.
Winchester
seems to be an inherently capable writer, sticking to accessible (but
refreshingly not condescending) prose even when halfheartedly posing
existential questions and resorting to misplaced melodrama. It is,
rather, the book's fundamental narrative incoherence that makes for a
difficult and dissatisfying reading experience. Rambling asides range
from obviously relevant and enlightening (the history of
English-language dictionaries) to tangential, but potentially
interesting (the history of schizophrenia as a psychological
diagnosis) and, unfortunately, incidental and unnecessary (Irish
participation in the American Civil War and possible
post-Emancipation disillusionment with the Cause). Together, these
diversions seem intended to pad an already slim volume instead of
enhancing the story or providing meaningful historical context.
Combined with a narrative structure that is fragmented at best and
baffling grammatical errors as simple as mid-paragraph tense changes
that render the surrounding text nearly incomprehensible, they
contribute to the book's pervading sense of sloppiness.
The
problems proliferate in the plot, such as it is. The book opens,
predictably but reasonably enough, with a compelling anecdote that
the surrounding stories can build up to and upon, but Winchester
relates the same incident almost verbatim in a later chapter, only to
immediately discredit it in favor of a more historically accurate
version of events. I found the effect to be uncharacteristically
condescending and almost infuriating in its pretension; moreover, why
waste readers' time? The book shifts incessantly backward and forward
in time and between plots concerning Murray, Minor, supporting
characters (some of whom clearly don't deserve as much attention as
they receive), and the dictionary itself, to the point where it has
more conflicting and overlapping timelines than many time-travel
stories I've encountered. I certainly don't believe that it is
necessarily imperative to present a historically minded narrative in
strictly chronological order, but the constant whiplash makes crucial
cause-and-effect relationships and historical context nearly
impossible to construct, understand, or follow: the book becomes a
kind of postmodern jumble, isolated from meaning.
Winchester clearly has some good
instincts, and it is possible to imagine the foundations of an
intriguing historical tale herein, as haphazard as the book can seem.
The deployment of well-chosen, straight-outta-OED definitions
as the front matter for each individual chapter is effective and
charming, and those portions of the book that do concentrate on
coherent narratives are usually interesting and often well-told, at
least until they inevitably veer into tangential territory. Both
Minor and the dictionary itself prove to be compelling in their own
right, and Murray provides a nice and necessary link between them. As
Winchester's occasional existential, yet shallow, digressions prove,
Minor's story is rife with opportunities to consider some very
interesting existential questions, such as the morality of
celebrating unmistakably positive events that occurred only because
of a senseless murder. But the book, as it stands, is unforgivably
clumsy and ultimately unrewarding, down to the marooned illustrations
that the author and designer don't bother to caption or otherwise
explain. Despite an interesting premise with plenty of potential, The
Professor and the Madman instead conjures an ironic kind of chaos
out of a story that is inescapably immersed in the history of efforts
to codify and organize the world.
Grade:
C
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