It was only when I myself became an
English professor that I came to appreciate the serious confusion that
most Americans entertain concerning my profession. Whenever I was in social situations with what
I shall call normal people—meaning people other than professional academics—I
was nearly certain to hear some version of the following remark. When I revealed my profession to my
conversation partner—which I did only when forced to do so by a direct
question—roughly eighty-five percent of the time this person would respond:
“Well, I’d better watch my grammar.” The
implication was that most of my compatriots thought that what I did, to the
limited degree that I might actually do something,
was to invigilate their grammar.
This is a flattering though faulty
assumption. The slightest reflection on
your everyday linguistic exchanges, or even occasional perusal of our magazines
and newspapers, should be enough to demonstrate that nobody is playing that
role. Progressive educationists have determined that prescriptive grammar is an
offensive idea. Like keeping within the
lines in the coloring book, having decent handwriting, or even knowing the
difference between the written forms of majuscule and miniscule letters, it is a straight-jacket to
be doffed, a limitation on a young student’s individuality, creativity, and
unique expressive “potential”.
Only a few of us dinosaurs are much
concerned about this any more. I cannot
rid myself of the belief that clarity of thought demands some clarity of
expression, and that clarity of expression depends upon the rules, models, and
historical “best practices” of the language of expression. I used to talk about these things with various
dinosaur colleagues, and especially with a close friend of forty years, one of
the world’s leading students of Dante.
We have now been separated by the caprices of age and infirmity. Widowed, he has moved far away to live with
children and grandchildren, who are, as I well know myself, the succor and balm
of senectitude. Of course I miss talking
with him directly, but I recently had the pleasure of what might be called the
satisfying echo of a conversation.
Among the most common of vulgar
linguistic errors is the confusion of the verbs lay and lie. Both of these words, as nouns, have several
meanings; but the basic distinction in their verbal form is that lay is transitive while lie is
intransitive. I lay the table, meaning that I place dishes, cutlery, napkins, etc. upon
it preparatory to consuming a meal. I lie upon, or lie down on my bed. Brick-laying
is an activity; being an outlier is a
passive state. That is the basic
distinction, though of course there are various possible complications and
anomalies connected with the usage of both words, as I have written about before.
As a
medievalist, I have very few anecdotes concerning famous
writers I have known. But I once did
have W. H. Auden in my undergraduate rooms at Oxford. He was inebriated and in pursuit of one of my
classmates, a young Welsh language poet, who was also at the party. Auden told us that his French translator had
rendered his phrase a good lay (“a
perfectly fine American expression” in Auden’s view) as un grand poème!
Anyway, Bob and I used to talk
about stuff like lay and lie in our more general laments concerning
the fall of civilization. In terms of old fogeyism, he is even a
little older and, if I may say so, even a little fogeyer than I am; but he is also way
more productive. Instead of just
griping, he actually wrote a dandy little grammar book! Thereby hangs a tale, though no dangling
participle.
Over his last few years in
Princeton my friend had to do some stints of rehabilitative physical therapy (PT, for short)
in a couple of local facilities specializing in those arts. I visited him a few times in these places,
one of which is called the Saint Lawrence Rehab Center, housed in an old
Catholic hospital or retirement home, and still having some partial or implicit
religious connection. I presume it
derived its name from the fact that it is located in a town called
Lawrenceville, but there are other possible associations. Saint Lawrence is the one who, while being
martyred on a barbeque grill, is supposed to have said to his tormentors, “You
can turn me over now; I am done on this side.”
As I eventually have had to learn myself, that is roughly the experience of
even modest callisthenic activity on a thoroughly deconditioned body.
Saint Lawrence, patron saint of the NFL: They laid him on the gridiron, and he just had to lie there.
But by the time I learned some of the realities of PT,
just a few weeks ago, a good deal of time had passed. My friend moved away from Princeton the
better part of a year ago, and I myself was continuing in ambiguous medical
therapies that preserve one’s life at the necessarily tolerable expense of
certain peripheral inconveniences. In military lingo, the euphemism is “collateral damage.”
For me collateral damage has included neurological deficiencies in the lower
extremities, uncertain balance and gait, and a generally undesirable limitation
of confident ambulatory mobility. So now
it was I who found myself being shipped off a couple of hours a week to Saint
Lawrence Rehab.
It was quite an experience. It is in the first place humiliating to be assigned
modest physical tasks of apparent
simplicity but which turn out to be achievable, if at all, only with great effort and
concentration. One comes to appreciate
anew the extraordinary complexity of one’s human body, and to acknowledge
belatedly the near miracle to being able to perform simple movements one has
never thought about until one is unable to make them. Most of all I was impressed by the staff of
the center—a group of intelligent, knowledgeable, experienced, good-humored
professionals seriously devoted to helping people who need help.
Though various therapists helped
me, there was one very nice young lady designated as the “supervisor” of my
case. I liked her immediately. She made me try to walk toe-to-toe, stand on
one leg with my eyes closed, and perform other impossible circus tricks. Toward the end of the first session she
turned to haunch and back “arching”, to be performed in a prone position, face
down, on a kind of large bed. “For this
one,” she said, “you need to lay down over there.” You remember the scene in the old
Western. Hero comes into the bar through
the swinging doors to find forty-two drunk miners playing cards and one
beautiful young woman in a prom dress.
His line: “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” That was exactly how it was when she told me to
lay down. “Look,” I said “You are obviously a very nice
person and very good at your important job.
But I am an English professor, and I simply have to explain to you the
difference between the words lay and lie.”
I thought this was a little bold, but she took it in stride. “Oh,” she said, “another one. Just so long as you don’t give me a copy of your grammar book.”
