An Anglo-Saxon Tale
(Poet, Amatoritsero Ede in Conversation with Tom Howell, ‘recovering’ Lexicographer and writer of the Genre-Queer)
Amatoritsero Ede: Tom, it is a pleasure to discuss your hilarious work, The Rude Story of English, and the vision behind it. How would you categorize this work’s genre? Creative nonfiction does not quite do it for me. Please, be elaborate.
Tom Howell: How generous of you to say, ‘be elaborate’! The story itself elaborates on the simple premise that English began one day. That’s directly opposed to how the history of English has been told to me by experts. They present the origins of this language as complex. The more sophisticated the expert, the more complex the origins are explained to be. My complaint is that such a complex start produces a very simple conclusion: there is no ‘story’ of English. The less expert the teller, the closer we get to a tale in the traditional sense. But even the most popular versions missed the mark, or so it seemed to me. I reasoned that a highly simplistic beginning to the tale would evolve into an answer that was complex and lifelike and, you know, more awesome. ‘Elaborating on a premise’ probably isn’t much use as a category, but maybe it gives a rough idea?
A.E.: Could we say you have just invented a new genre right there? Your publisher, McClelland and Stewart, described the work as “Language Arts; Education – Reference; Humor – Essays.” While it is all of that, it is still much more.
T.H.: To be honest, when writing my first draft, it never crossed my mind that the borders of genre still mattered. I thought books had passed that point a generation ago. Later in the process, I realized this was wrong. Most of us need familiar genre names to tune our minds before reading. We want to know when somebody’s words are to be trusted, in which way, and on what grounds. We’re okay with using words for different purposes—prediction, play, or prayer—but if someone else’s intent is inscrutable, that may be annoying. So I strove to be as scrutable as possible, often stating my methods, in the hope that readers don’t feel lost and alone, even as I let the genre itself go kind of haywire.
A.E.: You are a ‘recovering’ lexicographer. Let’s play the asterisking game, which you credit for helping philologists explain the etymology of a word. But in this case we want to create a word or phrase to capture a possible new genre. Unlike the classic situation in asterisking which aims “to plug a hole in real world evidence,” of how a word came to be, we do have evidence here – in this instance your work, Rude Story.
T.H.: ‘Genre-queer?’ Hollywood uses “based on a true story,” which is roughly right but too wordy. “Speculative non-fictional heroic epic” suffers from the same problem. The most common industry term, I think, is “semi-fiction.” That’s not bad. But since you mention it, I reckon “asterisk reality” is a fine term. It was invented by a linguist named Tom Shippey. I’d be glad to see it co-opted to describe works cross-breeding the essay with the novel or poem. I’m sure there are lots of these about.
A.E.: Rude Story suggests that philologists are storytellers. If necessary they create stories to support the etymology of words. In how far can we say that our world then is an illusion, considering that we describe that world with words and because words are arbitrary – are fictions?
T.H.: Well, I envy philosophers but my own background in the field is limited to having had a crush on Richard Rorty (mind more than body) during my twenties, and it’s been a while since I read any of his books. My take on this question may therefore be ‘rude,’ in the sense of ‘inexpert,’ or ‘raw’. One thought pops into my mind, though. To call words ‘arbitrary’ just shows one side of the coin. As you mentioned, words have life stories (whether scholars know them or not) and these pasts give solidity to the present form. A word’s meaning is therefore a bit free and a bit determined.
A.E.: You have made of a boring, dead topic an engaging and exciting readable narrative with central mythological and ancient characters, Hengest, Horsey, Horsehair, Vortigern and so on. What was the impetus for all this?
T.H.: My partner, Helen Guri, owns two wooden dolls named Hengest and Horsa, after a pair of semi-historical / elaborated figures from early English oral history. Horsehair, also semi-historical, may have been Hengest’s sister, or daughter, or both. I liked these people and what they brought to the history. Resuscitating their names and building up their biographies struck me as relevant to the topic at hand—i.e. words, languages, and how these come to be. The needs of the characters helped me explore the point that desiring is part of knowing.
A.E.: I have never been impressed with the effect of graphs, charts, diagrams, and pictorial sketches in narrative. But here, rather than act as distraction, they are, elucidatory visual accompaniments to a fascinating account. And they also underline the humour of the whole work. What gave you the idea of empiric data; and how was it possible for the illustrator to capture humour and statistics so well?
T.H.: The illustrator, Gabe Foreman, is also a very good poet with a playful attitude to language and a deep imagination. That helped him make all the right judgement calls. On the statistics, I enjoy the tug-of-war between empiric data and the more romantic, imaginative drive. Having those two forces wrestle for control of the story seemed… I think I just found it funny, actually. Their rivalry throughout the book makes me laugh. I’m not sure how smart it really is.
A.E.: I wager that a postcolonial reading of this text would yield a lot of insights for how the spread of language is synonymous with the spread of empires. Do you think we could consider the English not only ‘rude’ but also violent?
T.H.: If someone gave The Rude Story of English a going-over from that point-of-view, I’d be thrilled (as soon as I got over the sting). As I see it, what qualifies me to write this book also disqualifies me. My life route goes from British private school to Oxford dictionary department to national public radio, sliding me naturally into the armchair from which a person—usually a man—recounts a wide-ranging cultural history in a jocular tone. I wrote the book because I loved the premise and because I wanted to and was allowed to. Someone who didn’t come by that permission so easily might have done a better job of moving English language’s story beyond its old Anglo centre. The violence relating to British and American empires goes far and deep and has many senses to it, and there is a problem with stretching the word ‘rude’ to envelop the topic. I tried to resolve the problem in the book but I don’t know how well I succeeded. Most in my social circle would acknowledge that British nationals committed extraordinary violence in war, trade, and government over the past half-millennium of world history. But to call the English language violent might strike some as weird if they’ve never read the work of, say, Ngugi Wa Thiongo, or NourbeSe Philip here in Canada, or any number of other poets and scholars who have tackled the point somewhere in their writing. I hadn’t read any of those writers until a few years ago, and before encountering them I would have had a hard time talking about a language’s complicity in violence. I can’t remember, but probably I would have quibbled and protested. Now, however, calling English ‘violent,’ among other things, sounds roughly right.
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