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Friday, June 13, 2008

Summer Reading Project: ABD

Posted by Rohan Maitzen on 06/13/08 at 10:20 AM

Rich put this in the comments thread below the announcement of our summer reading project; I think it’s too good to stay buried down there.

From Book One, Chapter 1 of ABD:

The concert of the key presses and the low mumbling of voices was at last broken by Seth, who, saving the file on which he had been working intently, placed it in his My Documents directory, and said, “There! I’ve finished my dissertation today, anyhow.”

The grad students all looked up, and Adam said to Seth, with a sharp look of surprise, “What! Dos’t think thee’st finished?” Seth waited interminably for Microsoft Word to reopen the file. “What’s a’wanting to it?” Seth said with answering surprise tempered by dread. A loud roar of laughter went up from the other onlooking students. Adam, smiling slightly, had to break it to him, “Why, thee’st forgot the footnotes.”

The laughter broke out afresh as Seth contemplated another year or two of documenting his sources. The others turned back to their grinding labor, but one of them, Weirdy Ben, was bent on making sport of Seth, enlivening the drudgery of his own years with success in nitpicking.

“Why, ‘tis an important comma, that one!” cried Weirdy Ben. “Is it part of the text or ‘tisn’t it?”

“Nonsense!” said Adam. “Let it alone, Ben. Some text hai’ it, some don’t, and if they don’t, it was likely a slip ‘o the pen or ‘o the printer to begin with.”

Ben, however, had now got the “red light” in his eye, and was seized by unholy inspiration. “It’s the Mark of PKD!” he declared. “Why, that comma changes the way we’d read the whole book. Is this a writer hu’d skip a splice for effect, or not?”

“‘’Tis anachronistic rot-” Adam said firmly, striding up to seize Ben.

“But it changes how we read the text!” raved Ben. “Did you know there’s a whole book of fanfic that uses PKD as a character, written after his death?”

“Let it alone, will you?” said Adam sternly, shaking Ben by the shoulder. “Let it alone, or it’ll shake the wits out of your body.”

[to be, hopefully, not continued]

Bill responded, “I’m waiting for the part where Adam goes to hear the Theory Lady give a lecture.” Me too.

Comments

Thanks for promoting, as at were, this comment. Outside of its thread, people may not know which mysterious comma is being talked about, so the phrase “‘tis an important comma, that one!” can be imagined as being linked to the comment here.

By on 06/13/08 at 01:35 PM | Permanent link to this comment

Excellent point; duly linked.

By Rohan Maitzen on 06/13/08 at 07:31 PM | Permanent link to this comment

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Friday, June 13, 2008

Summer Reading Project: ABD

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