The Story of Ain't

by David Skinner

8. Ibid., “personal deviations”: 152; writing versus speech: 21; phoneticians: 84; slang: 154; meaning: 140, 146.

  CHAPTER 13

  1. Letter to Leon Scott, June 2, 1936, and letter to James Pilcher, December 20, 1934. Both of these were found in the Papers of William Allan Neilson, Smith College Archives.

  2. See Terry Ramsaye, “Movie Jargon,” American Speech (April 1926), and Albert Parry, “Movie Talk,” American Speech (June 1928).

  3. November 11, 1944, Minutes of the Editorial Board for the Biographical Dictionary, Papers of William Allan Neilson, Smith College Archives.

  4. The wages for Smith girls were mentioned in a letter from Merriam to Neilson dated June 3, 1925, in the Papers of William Allan Neilson. The omission of any titles or characters from the works of O’Neill, Maugham, and Wilde is mentioned in the October 29, 1954, memo on Nonlexical Matter in the Merriam-Webster Black Books, found in the Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  5. December 23, 1954, memo on Subject Orientation in the Merriam-Webster Black Books, found in the Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  6. Fireside Chat 2: “On Progress During the First Two Months,” May 7, 1933, Miller Center’s Presidential Speech Archive, www.millercenter.org/president/speeches/detail/3299.

  CHAPTER 14

  1. Letter to George L. K. Morris, October 16, 1959, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper. Also described in Wreszin’s biography of Macdonald, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition.

  2. I take this comment of Thompson’s from Robert Polito, Savage Art (New York: Vintage, 1996), 250.

  3. Macdonald moved a few times in the 1930s, actually, before and after he left Fortune. See A Rebel in Defense of Tradition, 42, 51, where I also found this excellent use of Lionel Abel’s line, 46; and Mary McCarthy, Intellectual Memoirs: New York 1936–1938 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992), 18–19.

  4. Details taken from the afterword to James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, edited by Michael Sragow, in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, and Short Fiction (New York: Library of America, 2005).

  5. From Dwight Macdonald, “Memoirs of a Revolutionist,” Encounter, March and April 1957.

  6. These appeared in the May 1, May 8, and May 22, 1937, issues of the Nation.

  7. The Hellman material comes from McCarthy’s Intellectual Memoirs, 19. Macdonald’s reading of the Stalin trials transcripts is discussed in A Rebel in Defense of Tradition, 63.

  8. Letter to the editor, The New Republic, May 19, 1937, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 90–93.

  9. Letter to Freda Kirchway, December 10, 1937, from Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 94–96.

  10. New International, August 1938.

  11. “Dear Comrades” letter, July 1, 1941, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 104–106.

  12. New International, April 1938.

  13. Quoted from Sidney Hook, Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the Twentieth Century (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1987), 517.

  14. “Avant-Garde and Kitsch,” first published in Partisan Review in 1939, is collected in Clement Greenberg, Art and Culture: Critical Essays (Boston: Beacon Press, 1961).

  15. “10 Propositions on the War,” Partisan Review, July–August 1941.

  16. Letter to Delmore Schwartz, December 22, 1942, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 107–109.

  17. The material about Rahv and McCarthy comes from McCarthy, Intellectual Memoirs, 68–69, 104.

  18. Letter to the editors of Partisan Review, July 3, 1943, reprinted in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 111–112.

  CHAPTER 15

  1. Time, August 3, 1936.

  2. Time, August 24, 1936.

  3. This comment was made by George Sherburne, chairman of English at Harvard, in a letter of recommendation that is quoted at length in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 35.

  4. I rely here on Morton’s account in The Story of Webster’s Third, 20–23.

  5. Quoted in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 24.

  6. Philip Gove, “The First Week,” Antioch Review (Autumn 1965).

  7. Philip Babcock Gove, Notes on Serialization and Competitive Publishing: Johnson’s and Bailey’s Dictionaries, 1755, Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1940). See chapter 5 in James Sledd and Gwin J. Kolb, Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). Morton also discusses Gove’s view on Bailey.

  CHAPTER 16

  1. H. L. Mencken, The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (New York: Knopf, 1923). See also the 1936 edition.

  2. All quotations (including this one: 27) from this point forward in this chapter come from American English Grammar, English Monograph No. 10, National Council of Teachers of English, 1940.

  3. Ibid., “to whom they were directed”: 29; “standard English”: 30–31; “semi-illiterate”: 31.

  4. Ibid., “colloquial”: 9; standard English: 13; “the great mass”: 31; “Seldom have”: 14.

  5. Ibid., “Six little orphans”: 244; “in hell all the time”: 219; s-less and plus-s: 45; “agreement in number”: 47, 56.

  6. Ibid., doesn’t: 53; “Times is so hard”: 52; “Father . . . don’t”: 53; violations of formal concord: 59; “The people ain’t”: 69; genitives: 76.

  7. Ibid., more and most: 200; adjective–plus–function word: 239.

  8. Ibid., “more nouns in the subject and object”: 270; get, so, and “poverty” of vulgar: 288; “last two hundred years” and “living speech”: 290.

  9. This detail comes to me from correspondence with Peter Fries, July 21, 2011.

  CHAPTER 17

  1. “Diamond of Death,” Time, March 7, 1927.

  2. Quoted in James Parton, “Air Force Spoken Here”—General Ira Eaker and the Command of the Air (Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, 1986), 118. Except where noted, all following quotations—and airplane numbers and other details about Eaker’s command—in this chapter come from this book.

  3. Ibid., speech to city council: 154; Churchill quote: 138; Harris quote: 140; description of bombers coordinating: 156; ER visit: 194; Parton’s diary: 218; account of Eaker’s meeting with Churchill: 220–221.

  4. Mencken and Maverick material taken from H. L. Mencken, The American Language, chapter “Jargon and Counter Words.” American Speech also published several essays on the subject of military language, some written by returning veterans, during the 1940s.

  5. James Parton, “Air Force Spoken Here,” Vegesack and Churchill’s congratulations: 244; bombing doctrine: 250.

  6. Beirne Lay Jr. and Sy Bartlett, Twelve O’Clock High (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), 251.

  7. Quoted in Parton, “Air Force Spoken Here,” 309.

  CHAPTER 18

  1. J. P. Bethel memo on Biographical Dictionary—undated—gives background on Webster’s Second policies. Decision making comes out in the Minutes of Editorial Meetings, May 24, 1938, and June 2, 1938, William Allan Neilson Papers, Smith College.

  2. Letter, September 18, 1944, from General Editor J. P. Bethel to William Allan Neilson containing G. & C. Merriam Company memo of July 24, 1944, and supplement.

  3. Minutes of a Meeting of the Editorial Board of G. & C. Merriam Company, October 11, 1944, William Allan Neilson Papers.

  4. See “Excerpt, relevant to New International Dictionary Third Edition, from Mr. L. H. Holt’s Minutes of a special meeting convened by Mr. Munroe,” April 18, 1945, William Allan Neilson Papers.

  5. “William Allan Neilson,” New York Times, February 15, 1946. The “skirts” comment was learned in an informal phone conversation with Professor Daniel Aaron of Harvard University, former longtime member of the Smith College faculty.

  6. Gove’s employment inquiry to Merriam-We
bster is quoted at length in Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third (34–36), from which this summary and quotations of Gove’s military career are also taken.

  7. Robert C. Munroe letter to Gove, August 27, 1946, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  8. “Memorandum to Mr. Munroe,” November 27, 1946, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 19

  1. Bethel memo to Robert Munroe, February 5, 1947. It contains a summary of and quotations from the views of other people, including Percy Long and Harold Bender, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  2. This capsule history of scientific publishing and practically all of its details are derived from Kaestle and Radway, eds., A History of the Book in America, vol. 4. See Marcel Chotkowski LaFollette, “Crafting a Communications Infrastructure: Scientific and Technical Publishing in the United States.”

  3. Memo dated February 27, 1948, summarizing recommendations from Max Herzberg, signed “I.E. McL,” Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  4. See Kenneth B. Clark, “The Impact of a Personality,” in From Parnassus: Essays in Honor of Jacques Barzun, edited by Dora B. Weiner and William R. Keylor (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

  5. Jacques Barzun, Teacher in America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday/Anchor, 1945). All quotations in this section come from chapters 4 and 5.

  6. Merriam letter to Frederic G. Cassidy, August 16, 1949, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  7. The comment about how to spell his name comes from Archibald Hill’s memoir in the September 1976 issue of Language. Marckwardt’s extension and commentary on Leonard’s study was called Facts About Current English Usage, a publication of NCTE cowritten with Fred G. Walcott (New York: Appleton-Century, 1938).

  8. Albert H. Marckwardt in collaboration with Frederic G. Cassidy, Scribner Handbook of English, 2nd ed. (New York: Scribner, 1948).

  CHAPTER 20

  1. Norman Podhoretz makes this point in his memoir, Making It (New York: Random House, 1967), where he describes Macdonald as one of the more delightful and generous members of “the family.”

  2. Dwight Macdonald, Henry Wallace: The Man and the Myth (New York: Vanguard Press, 1948), 24.

  3. This essay was reprinted in Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (1950). I quote from the 1978 edition published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

  4. Dwight Macdonald, “A Theory of ‘Popular Culture,’ ” Politics, February 1944.

  5. Letter to George Orwell, April 23, 1948, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 149.

  6. Mary McCarthy, The Oasis (New York: Random House, 1949), 5.

  7. Letter to Nick Chiaromonte, April 7, 1949, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 161–162.

  CHAPTER 22

  1. April 20, 1951, memo to J. P. Bethel from F. W. Twaddell, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  2. Letter from Acting President Robert C. Munroe to Philip Gove, June 17, 1951, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 23

  1. All quotations from “A Parent’s Signature,” an unpublished essay in the Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 24

  1. All quotations from this chapter were taken from Minutes of a Meeting of the Editorial Board of G. & C. Merriam Company, November 20, 1951, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. Since elsewhere I note my reliance on Herbert Morton’s book on Gove and Webster’s Third, it seems appropriate to mention that here I am departing, on a major question, from Morton, who totally ignored all the drama and perspective offered by this particular document, which he cited but made little use of. The words of Gove, recorded in this meeting, simply wreak havoc with the view uttered by Morton and many defenders of Webster’s Third that the new dictionary was really not so different from Webster’s Second. Here Gove himself is declaring that his dictionary will, in fact, be very different from Webster’s Second.

  CHAPTER 25

  1. The English Language Arts, prepared by the Commission on the English Curriculum of the National Council of Teachers of English (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1952), viii.

  2. Comment by Peter Fries, April 19, 2011, recalling stories his father told about NCTE in the 1920s.

  3. The English Language Arts, v–vi.

  4. Ibid., nonpromotion: 190; reading: 194; “Men communicate because”: 196.

  5. Ibid., discussion of grammar and five principles: 274–279.

  6. McDavid, who was certainly in a position to know, said that Pooley wrote the five principles in his report “A Review of the Reviews of Webster’s Third,” a 69-page account and analysis of the release of Webster’s Third written for Merriam. A copy with the notation “sent . . . October 1966” can be found in the Papers of Philip Gove. In section 4, the “Journalistic Assault,” McDavid described the principles as “written by Robert Pooley, a rather conservative but objective student of the English language.” McDavid’s description of Pooley is curious: Perhaps by the mid-1960s Pooley qualified as a conservative but in the years leading up to 1952 he was as much an enemy of the status quo in English teaching and classroom grammar as Charles C. Fries was.

  7. Mrs. Fries’s reaction I know about from Peter Fries, April 19, 2011.

  CHAPTER 26

  1. Minutes of the Editorial Board Meeting, February 18, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  2. Minutes of the Editorial Board, May 14, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  3. Minutes of the Editorial Board, February 18, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  4. The exchanges between Weidman and Gove and Munroe and Gove are found in the Minutes of a Meeting of the Editorial Board, February 18, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  5. Minutes of a Meeting of the Editorial Board, May 14, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  6. Morton gives Sleeth’s résumé in his third chapter.

  CHAPTER 27

  1. This comment comes from Sidney I. Landau’s Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Details about the feel at Merriam in the 1950s come from conversations with E. Ward Gilman.

  2. Memo from Gove to Gallan, June 19, 1952, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  3. “Marking Instructions,” August 28, 1952, Black Book, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  4. Herbert Morton, The Story of Webster’s Third, 98.

  5. “Marking Instructions,” Black Book, July 15, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  6. “Usage Orientation,” Black Book, December 20, 1954, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  7. See letter to the editor by Herbert C. Morton, New York Review of Books, December 12, 1995, where Morton discusses the circumstances of this entry.

  8. “Subject Orientation—Orientation by Verbal Illustration,” Black Book, November 30, 1954, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  9. “Defining—Editorializing,” Black Book, April 2, 1953, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  10. Miscellany Department, American Speech (February 1967).

  11. “Subject Orientation—Verbal Quotation,” Black Book, December 23, 1954, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  12. Herbert Morton qu
otes the letter at length in The Story of Webster’s Third, 71–72.

  13. Minutes of a Meeting of the Editorial Board, November 20, 1951, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. Gove distributed and discussed this chart at this meeting.

  14. “Nonlexical,” Black Book, October 29, 1954, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  15. “Capitalization,” Black Book, March 29, 1955, Papers of Philip Gove, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming.

  CHAPTER 28

  1. In this chapter and elsewhere in this book I used the search-by-date function on the Merriam-Webster website to sort words by year of earliest citation. Of course, the year of earliest citation is different from when a word is entered into the dictionary: One reflects a word or phrase’s appearance in the language, the other when lexicographers thought the word or phrase had passed beyond some invisible threshold of ephemerality and thus needed to be included in the dictionary.

  CHAPTER 29

  1. Michael Wreszin, A Rebel in Defense of Tradition, New Yorker, job: 275; divorce: 295–297.

  2. Dwight Macdonald’s essay “A Theory of Mass Culture” was published in the Summer 1953 issue of Diogenes, funded by the Ford Foundation. Macdonald’s four-part series on the Ford Foundation was published in the New Yorker between November 26 and December 17, 1955.

  3. Letter to William Shawn, November 1955, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper. See also letter to William Shawn, April 17, 1958, saying, “I’ve just read West’s Baudelaire review and, while I suppose it’s bad taste for one staff writer to complain to the editor about another, I feel this review is such a scandal that I must do so.” Dwight Macdonald Papers, Sterling Library, Yale University.

  4. The essays discussed in this chapter are collected in Dwight Macdonald, Against the American Grain (New York: Random House, 1962).

  5. I am quoting Macdonald on McCarthy from A Rebel in Defense of Tradition, 298. In chapter 23, Wreszin also discusses the possible job at Encounter, introducing material that I have summarized.

  6. The line about London English comes from “The Decline and Fall of English,” in Macdonald, Against the American Grain. The Henry James line comes from a letter to Esther Hamil, July 20, 1935, in Wreszin, ed., A Moral Temper, 61.