Can't Buy Me Bulbs

Am I the only one who loves to read catalogs? Evidently not. From the Morning News, a lovely essay on the language of seed catalogs by Jessica Francis Kane, perfect for a sunny-but-still-cold (sort of) morning in April, when I am lonely for the smell of broken ground. Luckily, she brings it around to books, which I have plenty of:

For a scarlet beauty called the Prince of Austria: “It’s one of history’s most fragrant tulips (violets? orange blossoms?), and on a sunny day it will draw you across the garden.”

I like that poetic parenthetical, reaching yet failing to define the scent. Would that book publishers’ catalogs were sometimes so honest and vague. For the next wunderkind’s debut: “It’s one of the decade’s most forceful novels (sledge hammer? Norman Mailer?), and if you leave it open on your nightstand it will draw you a mongoose.”

Read the whole thing here.

On Reasons

The person can drink sake for
the following five reasons.
First of all, for the national
holiday. Moreover, it fills
with the nectar. Finally, for
reasons. Next, to heal the
dryness of the place. After
that, to refuse the future.

source

While I am amused, in a 4th-grade way, by the shapes English takes on in the hands of people armed with dictionaries but without any knowledge of idiom or understanding of syntax, I am not sure that 4th-grade part of me isn't a bit mean. After all, my [insert language other than English here] is for crap. Even my Pig Latin is rusty, um, usty-ray.

On the other hand, is it right to ignore the work of non-native speakers of English entirely? What of Tom Stoppard? Could a native English-speaker have come up with "There's no need to use language, that's what I always say"? I can't find an online version of Salman Rushdie's essay "Commonwealth Literature Does Not Exist", but I am considering having it printed in religious tract size to force on people who use the word "authentic". A bit of it here:

What seems to be happening is that those people who were once colonized by the language are now rapidly remaking it, domesticating it, becoming more and more relaxed about the way they use it -- assisted by the English language's enormous flexibility and size, they are carving out large territories for themselves within its frontiers.

and

If history creates complexities, let us not try to simplify them.

[note to nit-pickers: he's talking not only about British political colonization but also American cultural hegemony, so Japan counts.]

With all that in mind, this sign -- which is not a clumsy chopstick-wrapper translation, but an ad intended to be printed in English -- has such music in it that it would be unfair to exclude it simply because it was written in Japan. I like it as a double-feature with this e.e. cummings.