The Lives They're Living

Welcome to The Lives They're Living.

I'm your host, Ben Yacoda.

The podcast is about people who
have done amazing things and who,

at this point in their life, are
flying a little bit more under the

radar than they really deserve to be

My guest today is Jack Lynch.

Jack is a distinguished professor
of English at the University of

Rutgers Newark, and distinguished
in both his official title and it's

an accurate description of him.

, In addition to many scholarly publications
focusing on 18th century British

literature, notably Samuel Johnson,
Jack Lynch has written widely and

brilliantly for a general audience in
books including, and, and these are a

bit of a mouthful so bear with me, uh,
the, the subtitles, that is, 'cause you

have to have a long subtitle nowadays.

It's a law.

Becoming Shakespeare, colon, The
Unlikely Afterlife that Turned a

Provincial Playwright into The Bard.

You Could Look It Up, colon, The Reference
Shelf from Ancient Babylon to Wikipedia,

and ju- just three of his many books,
the third being The Lexicographer's

Dilemma, The Evolution of, quote, "Proper
English" From Shakespeare to South Park.

And as I understand it, and you
can correct me if this is wrong,

you are currently working on a book
about the greatest reference book

and perhaps the greatest book of all
time, The Oxford English Dictionary.

Correct?

That's right.

I, I hope I'm finishing
it up over the summer.

Oh, I can't wait.

Well, Jack, welcome to
The Lives They're Living.

Thank you so much.

It's really a treat to be here.

, Is it accurate to say that your work on
Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first

great dictionary, led you to writing about
reference books and battles over proper

English and usage, and from there to the
subject of this episode, Bryan Garner?

Yeah, I think it did.

I'm an English professor.

I've always been
interested in the language.

I've been reading books about language
since, oh, probably middle school,

been reading them compulsively.

But professional study of matters
linguistic and lexicographic came,,

once I was in graduate school, I
became really interested in Samuel

Johnson for a bunch of reasons.

, But that also, that involved digging
into his dictionary in a serious

way, which I'd only flipped through
before, but I spent a long time-

Yeah, yeah … reading it closely and,
and getting to know how it worked.

And that got me really interested
in dictionaries generally

beyond the way I usually had.

As it happens, it was a
Johnson-related event that, , led

me to meet Bryan for the first time.

I don't remember the year, but once a
year, the nerdiest thing I do is attend

the Johnsonians, a black tie dinner where
we raise a toast to the immortal memory-

, and one year Brian was there as a guest,
and that's when I first got to meet him.

Of course I knew his books, , but
that's the first time we met.

That must be a wild party at that,
that Johnsonians, I'm telling you.

Uh- You know, you say
that facetiously, and yet.

Okay.

Yes.

No, I believe that.

I believe that.

Let me just back up, and I, I've
been interested in your comment

that you started reading books
about language in middle school.

Can you remember the first or one
of the first such books you read?

I probab- I don't remember specifics.

I think I came to the fascination with
language through puzzle sorts of books.

Hmm.

I wasn't much of a, … Do
you know the, here's a good

dictionary word, cruciverbalist.

A crossword player.

I've never been much of a crossword
player, but other kinds of puzzles- Hmm

really fascinated me, and some
of them were language-based.

Can you think of a word that does this?

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Or why is this word this way?

And that got me really
fascinated in middle school.

And then by the time I had, I'd made
it to high school, , it was kind of an

obsession, reading usage guides- Mm-hmm

and, , and things like that.

Well, I can, I can relate.

, You know, looking into Bryan
Garner, who we will get some of

his biography in a minute, but he
is a prolific author of- Oh, boy.

Yeah … many, many books.

I would say most notably a book- That's
gone through a number of editions.

It started out being called Dictionary of
Modern American Usage, and now it's called

Garner's Modern English Usage, which is,
uh, clearly a reference to Fowler and his

famous Dictionary of Modern English Usage.

And, and I think you'll agree
with me that, that Garner deserves

that, American Fowler or Fowler
successor garland for Garner.

Do you, you think that's fair?

I think that's fair.

I think he's got just the temperament.

Yeah.

There have been attempts to modernize
Fowler and to adapt Fowler, but

most of them miss Fowler's spirit.

Yeah.

I think Bryan's got Fowler's spirit
and quirks down, Well, I, I think I

can say I'm one of the few pe- well,
I was gonna brag that I've read Fowler

word for word, and that's not exactly
true, 'cause there was some skimming.

But I wrote a long essay about that
book on its 100th anniversary- Yeah

for The New Yorker last year.

I'll put a link to it.

And yes, so I, I think I, I do agree
with you, and I think part of that

is it- it's Fowler's a personal
book and Garner is a personal book.

At the same time, authoritative
and, you know, scholarly, but

the personality comes through.

That's just it.

It's not an objective, neutral
compendium of facts, which

so many reference guides are.

Right.

And I just used the, the singular
antecedent it, but I'm really

talking about both books.

They have a voice.

Both writers know an awful lot.

They're not just ignorant
prejudices, but they are very much

filtered through personalities.

Uh, likes and dislikes
come through clearly.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

And but for both of them, a kind
of playfulness with language,

which I've always loved.

Yeah.

Well, you're playful, and I gotta
say, and I have it in front of me,

um, if this were a video podcast,
which it isn't, I would show it.

Well, the last numbered page is 1,276,
the, which is the final page of the

select index of people mentioned.

Then there's un-numbered
1277 pronunciation key.

There's a … It's not a
slim, it's not a slim volume.

Just a little biography on, on Mr.

Garner, who I call that way,
in part 'cause I've never

met him, part out of respect.

He's, uh, in, in his late 60s.

He was born in Lubbock, Texas,
which I associate- Yeah … with,

you know, Waylon Jennings and
Buddy Holly and people of that ilk.

I think his family might have moved
away,, when he was fairly young.

And he went to the University of Texas
in Austin, and this is a little factoid

that I found that I kind of love.

His senior thesis Shakespeare's
Latinate Neologisms.

I, I don't even know if I pronounced
that right, but, you know, he

was obviously to the manner born.

He was, l- like you and, and
like me, he was interested in

this stuff fairly early on.

Very much so, yeah.

He's, he's talked about that project,
, and how it, it lit up a lot of things in

him to, to be able to write , that thesis.

And then he went on to law school and
I, I guess his early career, and tell,

tell me if this is correct, focused
and concentrated on legal writing,

, language, , argumentation, rhetoric.

I, I was interested that he took
up the cause of footnotes in legal

writing, and he, uh, was against what
he called or what might be called

interlarding of the footnotes and
wanted them separated out, which, y-

that sounds good as far as I know.

… of his many, many books, the
first bunch were about legal

writing, legal language, right?

Yeah, very much so.

They were written by a lawyer
for lawyers about legal language.

Obviously his interests are always
cosmopolitan and urbane, but they

were very practical works early on
about constructing legal arguments.

Some of that is just the purely arbitrary
stuff that legal style requires.

How do you cite this sort of thing?

Um, but a lot of it was motivated by the
things that make legal writing special,

which is to say great care for evidence,
the need to marshal an argument precisely,

to lay out your facts carefully- Mm-hmm

and to be extremely precise because
imprecision loses cases in law.

So his, his early work lays all of
that out, um, systematically, and

I think from there he just kept
going beyond the legal profession.

Yeah.

And I, I guess clearly had, had an
interest in the more general thing.

And I should note that among your
many books and his many books

is one that you co-authored in

was published in 2024, also with
a short title and a long subtitle.

Hardly Harmless Drudgery: A
500-Year Pictorial History

of a Lexicographic Genius's-

Scialists?

Scialists I'll know how to pronounce
it and what it means when, when

I'm done with the subtitle.

Plagiarists and , obsessives
who define the English language.

Scialists are people with
superficial knowledge of something.

Uh, y- my superficial knowledge
does not extend to that word,

so I'm glad I know that.

And the title Hardly Harmless Drudgery,
now that's, a reference to a quote,

and again, it escapes me, but wh-
where does the term harmless drudges

or harmless drudgery, come from?

The term famously comes from
Samuel Johnson's dictionary.

, Some people who are scialists with respect
to Johnson's dictionary, who know just

a little bit about of it, about it,
tend to think of it as a kind of funny,

quirky dictionary, maybe something like,
, Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary.

It's not.

It's a very serious, very sound,
scholarly dictionary, 43,000 entries.

The full text is three
and a half million words.

But in there, Johnson does manage to
sneak in, oh, maybe a dozen jokes and

personal, , digs that he manages to
get away with, and one of the most

famous is the entry for lexicographer
the entry begins, "A writer of

dictionaries, comma, a harmless drudge."

Yeah.

So this was his way of making
fun of his own profession.

It, it's, that's wonderful,
and very, very meta.

, A- another funny one that you'll tell
me the exact wording on, I trust, that

I came upon , in writing my forthcoming
book about irony, that you were very

helpful in the, , in the process
of, to put a preposition at the end.

Was his definition of irony where he
got in a dig at someone, Bolingbroke,

was- Yeah, at Lord Bolingbroke, yes.

Yeah.

Where, uh, I can't remember the
beginning of the definition, but

a, a use of words contrary to their
applica- uh, something like that.

Uh, but then he gives an example
as Bolingbroke was a holy man.

And Bolingbroke was famously,
from Johnson's point of view

at least, atheistic, so that's
one of his examples of irony.

That, uh, that's, that's great.

I love that.

Well, , let's talk a little
bit about Garner as a person.

Is, is he a drudge?

I'm, I'm guessing not, just from his
writing and seeing pictures that he has

a little bit of a twinkle in his eye.

But, uh- He's- … what's he
like to work with as a, person

to hang out with and so forth?

He is charming.

He's always got the twinkle in his eye.

Not the least hint of drudge about him.

Um, rather than drudgery,
he goes for mania sometimes.

People like to say that I've
published a mountain of books,

and yet while I'm straightening my
desk and getting ready to write the

next one, Bryan's written two more.

So, um, yeah, he, he churns
them out- Yeah … impressively.

But it's not through
drudgery by any means.

He's just got a, a real
intellectual energy that he

brings to just about everything.

And- And you can feel that in person.

Yeah, yeah.

I would think also, , work
ethic, clearly, and a facility.

I mean, he, he can't be the kinda
person who's laboring over just

the mot juste and the right word.

As you say, churns them out, . Yeah,
I mean, that's a lesson I've learned

from a few good writers I have
worked with, that, that writer's

block is often just an excuse.

Mm-hmm.

Get something on the page.

Mm.

Even if it's not good yet, put
something down and fix it later.

So by no means does Bryan or does any
good writer get it right the first time.

, In fact, Bryan and I are now
co-writing another book, and we're

bouncing the typescript back and
forth revising each other's work.

, So there's an awful lot of
revision that goes on, but he

doesn't let anything paralyze him.

When it's time to write,
he sits down and he writes.

Right.

Right.

, In the world of the usage guides
that you started reading in high

school , and are still out there,
there is this duality, uh that is-

Framed in, in these two words, the
descriptivists and the prescriptivists,

and that's an overgeneralization,
but there's some truth to it

that, , people in this world tend
to be on one of those two sides.

The prescriptivists being the ones
tend not to be, the academic linguists,

but more the William Safire and
Edwin Newman type who say, "Don't

say hopefully to mean I hope that.

Don't say decimate to mean
anything other than eliminate

10%," and so forth and so on.

And, and anyone who reads
about language comes upon…

Well, anyone who kind of works, walks
around in the world comes around people

like that, , who tsk-tsk at the sign in
the supermarket that says 10 items or

less- Yes … in this aisle, which, which
Garner actually defends interestingly.

So those are the, the prescriptivists,
the sort of finger-wagging.

And then the descriptivists are the
often academic linguists or grammarians,

like someone that I've worked
with, Geoff Pullum, author of- Sure

the Cambridge Grammar of the English
Language, it's even longer than, than

Garner's book, who supposedly, and
this is an overgeneralization as well,

is sort of like whatever is is right.

, They just want to describe the way
the language is used and changes-

Yep … and so forth and so on.

So where would you put Garner in that
scale of prescriptivist, you know, on

the one hand, descriptivist on the other?

I think most people in the biz would put
him very solidly on the prescriptive side.

And as you say, a lot of people
with an academic background

view that as a shortcoming.

But this is something
Brian and I have discussed.

I think I'm pretty much on the
same place on the spectrum.

Actually, I'm gonna say spectrum is the
wrong, wrong metaphor because I think

fully informed prescriptivism will
look like fully informed descriptivism.

They, they wrap around
and meet at the other end.

When most people talk about the the
shortcomings of prescriptivists,

the problem with prescriptivists
is they're giving advice, they are

prescribing, they're giving orders,
but they're not based in facts.

They're not based in
what people actually do.

, There may once have been a day when
saying you may not use decimate to mean

anything other than the destruction
of one in 10 was a useful injunction.

It's not now.

That's simply not what the word means,
and to be fair, I don't think many

of us have occasions to refer to the
destruction of one out of 10 of anything.

No.

It's not something that happens often.

Bad prescriptivists are the ones
who make those proclamations without

any attention to actual usage.

Mm-hmm.

Good prescriptivists end up giving
just a longer version of the

descriptive argument, which is that
this is the way people use them,

and they just describe a bit more.

This is sort of the social
effect- Sure … of these words.

A full description of any word, any
usage, any grammatical construction

has to include the way it is
received in the larger world.

So a full description would have at
least implicit in it some prescription.

Sure.

Which is to say, if you do this, this
is how you're going to be received.

If you do this, this is how
you're going to be received.

And fully engaged prescriptivism should
know everything the descriptivists know.

So that's the sort of
spot Bryan aspires to.

Yeah.

He has no hesitation about giving
advice, but always tries to ground it

in what are people actually saying.

And, you know, nowadays in the digital
age, we can make generalizations about

that with a lot more accuracy- Yeah

than we ever could before.

I, I think that's exactly right.

I, I'll add one thing to it, which is-
One of the differences between those

two camps is their internal clock.

When language changes, no one can
deny that, no one can dispute that.

Yeah.

But wh- at what point in the process
of change is that usage, is that

word, is that meaning okay or kosher?

Yeah.

And the prescriptivists
tend to wanna wait longer.

Like, uh, a word like disinterested-
Right … which traditionally

meant, , something along the lines of
impartial or, uh, did, did not have an

interest in the outcome of something.

And, and just looking up Bryan's, uh…

Now, now I'm calling him Bryan.

I feel like I'm his buddy now.

, Yeah, he's got one, his
columns are, are quite long.

He's got a long column on
disinterested and uninterested.

, But to start off, just to
give a taste of the way he…

, well, before I read him, I'll say what I
was gonna say, that the prescriptivists

are much longer to disapprove of
disinterested to mean uninterested.

Yeah.

And the prescriptivists,
it's okay with them sooner.

Eventually they're all gonna
come around and- Yeah … like

decimate is a great example.

Hopefully might be there.

And I'll say another thing about Bryan
Garner, two brilliant innovations

or discoveries or things he did.

One is for every one of these usages,
he's got a language change index.

Yes.

Which is a scale of one through five-
That using some of those tools that you

mentioned, Ngram Viewer and all sorts
of other corpora and databases, he will

label the usage one is rejected, two
widely shunned, three widespread but

dot, dot, dot, f- stage four ubiquitous
but dot, dot, dot, five fully accepted.

Yeah.

And it- that's a really
helpful … And it's grounded , in

his research , and studies.

, And the other is a term he coined
I think back in 1998, and this

relates to something you were
saying earlier, a skunked term.

So it's okay, it's been established,
but certain people are gonna

look at you funny if you use it.

I was just waiting for the chance
to get in and say Brian coined

this great term, skunked words.

It's, it's a wonderful idea.

Just as the smell of a skunk, once,
once it's on you, ain't never coming

off, there are some words that,
you know, are perfectly justifiable

by all of the rational reasons,
but there is a hatred of them.

Yeah.

And a smart writer should at least know
that, um, if you're going to use some of

these words or some of these constructions
or usages or whatever that people get

upset about, at least do it knowingly-
Yeah … because you're going to be judged

for it whether you want to be or not.

And I don't know about you, but I do
the I, I'll f- I'll haul out a skunked

term knowingly just to kinda- Of course

get their goat or whatever.

Yes, and that's something
worth bearing in mind.

Um, so many of the so-called
rules of English have certain

assumptions about them.

You and I have both taught
writing to college students.

And we've both probably taught rules,
so to speak, that we routinely break

just because, well, people know enough
about us, the fact that we're publishing

things or our professional position or
whatever, to know, look, if we use those

words, we're doing it intentionally.

We're doing it wittily or with a wink.

, Whereas a 19-year-old who hasn't
yet earned that assumption from the

world has to be careful with it.

Yeah.

So sure, I, I love using skunk terms
and all sorts of constructions that

make people grind their teeth and so
on, but yeah, that's just playing.

I'm now remembering that

the book I wrote that was a
sort of guide to writing, I

called it How to Not Write Bad.

Yes.

And literally, Jack, half the time
when I'm giving a talk and someone

introduces me, they edit the title to-
Oh, wow … to read, uh, How Not to

Write Bad, or sometimes they say Badly,
and they kind of don't, don't get it.

Um- Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah.

I wonder how much of that is conscious
and how much saving you from your

error- Right … and how much of that is
just, that's just the way they see it.

Now, the thing that would, I would
think provoke people the most,

and I, I once in a while dare to
use it, is saying something like,

"Thanks for inviting my wife and I."

Ah, yes.

People really hate that, but,
but let's not get into that and

stir up too much controversy.

I- So I did wanna read just the
beginning of Garner's entry on, uh,

disinterested and uninterested, just
to give a little sense of his approach

and his, his scholarship Uh, given
the overlapping nouns, writers have

found it difficult to keep the past
participial adjectives entirely separate.

Many have given up the fight to
preserve the distinction between them.

But the distinction is still best
recognized and followed because

disinterested captures a nuance
that no other word quite does.

Many influential writers have urged the
preservation of its traditional sense.

The typically understated A.

R.

Orage rhapsodized over the word.

Quote, "No word in the English language
is more difficult than disinterestedness

to define or better worth
attempting to define.

Somewhere or other in its capacious
folds it contains all the ideas of ethics

and even, I should say, of religion."

And Garner goes on to say, "A
disinterested observer is not merely

impartial, but has nothing to gain from
taking a stand on the issue in question."

So yeah, I think that is an example
of what you describe as, well, you

didn't use the term, but kind of
enlightened- Yeah … prescriptivism.

He's got a s- you know,
an opinion on the matter.

He's grounded in scholarship.

It's not finger-wagging, but it's, it's
legit Yeah, and I mean, frankly, that's,

that's my approach to this as well.

I would not bother to correct
someone who used uninterested and

disinterested, quote, "incorrectly."

I don't think correct
is even the right term.

I do, however, think it's a
useful distinction sometimes.

Mm.

It's one I choose to observe myself,
and if I'm editing prose, I might

nudge things in that direction.

Right.

Because as Bryan points out, we just
don't have another word that does that.

So if you really wanna make the point,
you have to spell it out at great length.

It's a similar pair of words
is, is presently and currently.

Yeah.

I think that's a little farther
down the presently accepted to mean

currently instead of traditional
meaning of shortly- Soon, yeah

which I think meant something
else originally too.

One thing I did wanna mention is in
addition to having a relationship

with you, a professional relationship,
he also had one with the, the writer

David Foster Wallace- Yeah … who
originally wrote a long piece in

Harper's about one of Bryan's, reference
works, and ended up working on a

book together, which I thought- Yep

was kind of amazing.

A- and the w- a term that Wallace coined
referring to both himself and Garner,

it's kind of better than prescriptivist,
is snoot, S-N-O-O-T, meaning- Oh,

yes … syntax nudnik of our time.

Yes.

And then I'll also mention another
collaboration he had with Antonin Scalia.

They wrote at least two books together.

They did, and yes, I sometimes like
to joke, "Oh yeah, me and Nino, we're

like this" . I'll just say there is
a little bit of distance between me

and Antonin Scalia ideologically,
but yeah, um, I think we both enjoyed

working with Bryan as a co-author.

And both of you are stylists.

In fact, one of the, the reasons I
found it productive to work with Brian

specifically as a co-author, not merely
co-editor or something like that,

we're both stylists and we have many,
many of the same stylistic habits,

preferences, ticks, whatever else.

I've sometimes heard people who get
busted for plagiarism, professional

writers might get busted for
plagiarism, and a common excuse was,

"Oh, it was sloppiness in note-taking.

I copied that passage down and
then thought it was my own."

And I always thought, "Oh, bullshit.

You did not."

Because I might not remember having
written something of mine, but I

always recognize my own writing.

You could never show me someone else's
writing and tell me that it was mine.

And yet, when I look over the things
Brian and I have written together,

I often have no idea which of us
is responsible for a paragraph.

Um, that might be because it went back
and forth so many times- Mm-hmm … it

just ended up an average of the two of us.

But I think on thing after thing,
we've got the same- Mm … stylistic

habits and the same sense of humor
and the same register of vocabulary.

So I sometimes honestly
don't know which- Yeah.

It's amazing.

I've, I've co-edited a book, with, with
one of my colleagues, Kevin Carrane,

and that, that was a great experience.

But I guess I'm- I don't know, I felt
too possessive about my writing, but it,

y- your description of finding that sort
of kindred spirit is very appealing.

May- maybe, maybe you and I
could do something at some point.

Oh, it'd be fun to try.

Keep me in mind.

I'd love it.

Okay.

I mean, the way we, the way Brian
Garner and I ended up as co-authors

is we are both members of the Grolier
Club, the, the book collecting

society based in New York City.

Um, Brian was a longtime member.

He has a stunning collection of books.

I have a little amateurish
collection of books.

But he got in touch with me in
2019 and said, "Hey, would you

like to do an exhibition on the
history of dictionaries together?"

Which would mostly come
from his collection.

As I said, he's got a
remarkable collection.

Um, and I said that'd be fun, and
then we had to write a catalog for it.

But early on I thought, , the
, exhibition catalog by its very

nature is in little discrete chunks.

For each item, there
will be a little section.

There'll be a paragraph or two paragraphs
on this book, and then you go to the next.

So I thought division of
labor would be simple.

We would just say, "These are yours,
these are mine," and they would

essentially be not so much co-authored
as just independently authored and

interleaved or, or shuffled like cards.

But once we did that and we started
revising each other's works, we got to the

point where at the level of almost every
sentence we were, um, revising each other.

So now we've got this book in
progress which is entirely co-written.

We did not divide sections
or anything like that.

Um, and that's a novel experience.

I did not expect it to work well,
but it, it's, it's been a treat.

, I can't wait to see it.

Well, Jack Lynch, , thank you so
much for talking about Brian Garner.

It's been a delight.

Oh, it's a treat.

Thanks for having me.

. And now here's your
moment of Brian Garner.

Good writing, the very definition of
it, uh, are two things that go into it.

Really good ideas, number one,
with really good expression.

You must have both really good
ideas and really good expression.

If you don't have both, the
writing is not, is not good.

The ideas need to be clear, and the
language you use needs to be clear.

Clarity is the touchstone.

A vague, fuzzy idea is going to be
expressed in a vague, fuzzy way.

A clear, solid idea can
be expressed clearly.

It's possible to write, by the way,
many pages with never a clear idea.

People who do that, and people
do it all the time, but those

people are not writing well.

They're writing poorly.

To be intelligible, to make yourself
understood, to actually get your

point across effectively is the
fundamental aim of all serious writing.

Thanks for listening and
we'll see you next time