Some poor misguided soul ended up at my blog after typing into a search engine the phrase "turnip boggle." What would a turnip boggle be? A game, a device for protecting turnips from the depredations of wild creatures, or an elaborate series of gates installed outside the front door to prevent kindly neighbors from delivering bags of turnips?
Other blogs get queries involving literature and writing; I get someone looking for "poison ivy africa swimsuits," which sounds like an odd sexual fetish. Searchers find my site after asking Google how to wash towels, how to distinguish between a suit and a tuxedo, how many tubes of toothpaste a family of four uses in a year, and "what is the english equivalent of fat free half and half?" Surely there must be a better place to find the answers!
Someone wants "rhyming verse for instructions for contract bridge" and someone else is looking for the World's Best Beef Brisket. Turkey vultures and Javier Marias make regular appearances in searches, along with the Declaration of Idependence and intestinal viruses. However, in the twelve months since this blog began, the three most common search terms leading here are variations on "dead mouse smell," "the banner with the strange device," and "how to cheat on Excelsior exams." A year ago I was not aware that Excelsior College existed or that so many people would be looking for ways to cheat on its exams, but now even more of them will end up here. I am not sorry to disappoint them.
Still, I wish someone would ask a question I can actually answer. I don't have the solution for intestinal viruses or the dead mouse smell, but ask me about semicolons or Stephen Crane, subjunctive verbs or Salman Rushdie, whifflers or William Dean Howells. Nobody ever asks about William Dean Howells. They want to know how to boggle turnips.
Even if I knew, I'd never tell.
5 comments:
Hey, I'll ask you about William Dean Howells! Seriously.
Here goes.
Let's say one is quoting extensively from his review of Paul Laurence Dunbar's _Majors and Minors_ in _Harper's Weekly_ from 27 June 1896. Said review only appears on page 630.
Does one or does one not eschew the use of parenthetical citations in-text or does one not, since the references appear all on one page?
(ok, I realize it's not directly about Howells, but I can't get a consensus on the answer and I couldn't resist the opportunity)
So there! :)
What the heck is a whiffler?
I'd Google it, but since you asked us to ask, I ask you. Pray tell.
Good questions! Let's take the easy one first: a whiffler is a brawny person hired to clear the riff-raff out of the way in advance of a procession. Read more about it...rats, I was going to put in a link here but I can't make it work. If you put "whiffler" in the search box you'll find a post I wrote about it in November.
The citation question is more complicated. The MLA guide says that if a source is fully contained on only one page, you need the page number in the Works Cited listing but you don't need it in the parenthetical citations. (I would give you the page number where it says this, but my MLA guide is at the office.) The problem is that many people are not aware of this exception, so if you leave out the page number, some readers are going to think you goofed while others will admire your precision. Do you want to appease the ignorant or impress the knowledgeable?
On the topic of the Howells review, I use it in my African-American Lit class when we cover Paul Laurence Dunbar, and my students always disagree with Howells. Howells, as you know, lauded Dunbar's dialect poetry as more "authentic," but my students universally dislike the dialect poems, finding them stilted, artificial, and difficult to read. Howells's review always sparks a lively discussion about authenticity, and it certainly shows how literary tastes can change over time.
"Do you want to appease the ignorant or impress the knowledgeable?"
Wow, good to know that I was correct in my thinking that this is what it boiled down to! See, my prof originally noted my lack-of-citation in my paper and I freaked out (minor) and ran the question by a few other profs (friends) who couldn't come to a consensus on if I was correct or not -- but they all universally agreed that should the paper ever go to an editor for publication, the editor would tell me what to do and not to worry about it. :)
When I finally talked to my prof again, he said "shit, didn't notice that, you're right" so it was all for naught anyway.
I'm so glad to hear that you use that review in your class! I think the whole thing is fascinating, for just the reasons you stated (the arguments, the changing literary tastes, etc). My seminar paper was called "Paul Laurence Dunbar and the Guise of Sentimentality" so you can imagine Howells was all through it.
Anyway, blah blah blah, talking your ear off. Pat me on the head and I'll move on. Thanks for the confirmation on the MLA citation!
Wonderful!
I'm sad I'm missed that post when you posted it. I could've used your wit at that ridicuously stressful time.
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