Escapism – the practice of seeking distraction from what normally has to be endured. Though humans have always engaged in escapism, this definition from the Oxford English Dictionary didn’t appear until the 1989 edition. The earliest use cited is from 1933, but it takes more than one citation for a word to become firmly enough established for publication in the OED. Blogosphere, for example, just made it in last month, though its first appearance in the citation file was in 1999.
My introduction to lexicography (the art of writing dictionaries) came with some escapist reading over the holidays.
Emily Arsenault’s The Broken Teaglass is set in the cubicles of the Samuelson Company – “the oldest and most revered name in American dictionaries.” This office is a largely silent place where the editors spend hours each day in “research reading,” searching out the new words and new meanings that will someday be officially accepted into the English language.
Emily Arsenault’s The Broken Teaglass is set in the cubicles of the Samuelson Company – “the oldest and most revered name in American dictionaries.” This office is a largely silent place where the editors spend hours each day in “research reading,” searching out the new words and new meanings that will someday be officially accepted into the English language.
New hire Billy Webb flip-flops between excitement and boredom. Lexicographers do some pretty tedious stuff. On the other hand, who else would pay him to read Rolling Stone and Motorcyclist magazines? Billy is starting to settle in when he comes across an unusual and intriguing citation from the 1950s. And then he finds another … and then another. It soon becomes clear that the story of a murder lies buried in the Samuelson Company citations file!
The Broken Teaglass is a delightful combo: a mystery, a coming-of-age novel, and a lexicography short course all in one. Word nerds will love it, but it offers clever escapist fun for all. [By the way, the word nerd first appeared in the OED’s 1989 edition but the definition was substantially revised in 2009.]
Another charming flight of fancy is Adam Roberts’ novel Yellow Blue Tibia: Konstantin Skvorecky’s Memoir of the Alien Invasion of 1986. The plot is a simple one. In 1946, Josef Stalin called together a group of Russian science fiction authors. Stalin believed that America would soon be defeated and that Communism would need a new enemy to keep the people steadfast on the path. The authors were told to develop a convincing scenario of extra-terrestrial invasion and imminent disaster.
Konstantin Skvorecky was a member of this group. Months later, well along with their story line, the authors were abruptly ordered to stop and to forget they had ever been asked. Konstantin spent most of the next 40 years drinking vodka. Then, in 1986, the events concocted by the writers begin to happen!
Roberts reports that Stalin’s interest in UFOs is very well-documented. He wrote the book in an attempt to reconcile “two seemingly contradictory facts about UFOs: that, on the one hand, they have touched the lives of many millions of people, often directly; and that, on the other, they clearly don’t exist.” This is science fiction but not in the way you might think. We don’t meet any aliens – just a lot of KGB agents, a syndrome-afflicted driver, and a beautiful American Scientologist named Dora. [Yellow blue tibia, by the way, is the English phonetic spelling for “I love you” in Russian.]
Mr. Allbones’ Ferrets, my last little gem, grew out of another odd bit of history – this one from New Zealand. In the mid-19th century, rabbits were imported to New Zealand for sport. In a few decades, the rabbit population had multiplied to the point that they were competing with sheep for pasture. The government decided the solution was to introduce their natural predator and hundreds of stoats, weasels, and ferrets were imported from Great Britain.
Fiona Farrell’s novel is the story of one such trip. Walter Allbones is a young man in England. His parents are dead and most of the meat he puts on the table for his younger siblings comes from poaching with the aid of his ferrets. England, in this time period, had little to offer men of Allbones’ class and situation, but Allbones has a special way with ferrets, and the exploding rabbit population in New Zealand results in an astounding opportunity.
The reviewers describe this book as a tender and light-hearted romance. And that’s exactly what it is. But life for most people in England in the 19th century was pretty brutal and ferrets are bloodthirsty little predators. Farrell presents this all realistically and she knows how the story actually turns out. The introduction of ferrets to New Zealand resulted in record extinctions unmatched anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately, unique flightless birds are quite as tasty as rabbits.
Initially I felt uncomfortable writing about these novels just now, given the tragic situation in Haiti. I thought about telling you to read Tracy Kidder’s best-selling book about a U.S. doctor in Haiti, Mountains Beyond Mountains, instead. But I realized that’s not my role. My role is to tell you about books that aren’t being talked about everywhere else.
Escapism is a term with generally negative connotations. It’s gotten a bad rap. Escapist reading can be restorative, energizing, and educational – welcome respite from what normally must be endured. Maybe I’ll write the OED.
(Photograph from tinou bao, Creative Commons, Flickr.com)
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