Year of the Rat

The Year of the Rat, in the Chinese Zodiac, began on 25/26 January 2020, and runs to 11/12 February 2021. In Chinese it is 鼠年and in pinyin transliterated as shǔ​nián. 

So it is time to say something about the rat, which is to be expected in a blog about language. 

The Down Under Rat

Rats don't have much of a fan base, although there are rat fanciers in Australia. However, it is forbidden to import rats into Australia, even fancy (i.e. domesticated) rats. So there has been local breeding of fancy rats, and one outcome is the Down Under Rat (pictured), a handsome Australian breed with distinctive colouring. 

According to the Wikipedia, “fancy rats care for themselves and are affordable, even compared to other small pets; ...additionally, they are quite independent. loyal and easily trained. They are considered more intelligent that other domesticated rodents. Healthy fancy rats typically live 2 to 3 years." 

I have two small collections of rat material. One is my collection of rat images. Both are from Paris. One was issued by the Mairie (local council) of the 15^th arrondissement of Paris (a pleasant residential area located in the south-west of Paris between the Tour Montparnasse and the Seine River) as part of its campaign against rats. 

The other was issued as part of a campaign against the “massacre” of rats by the 15^th arrondissement. Zoopolis.fr (Paris Animaux Zoopolis) called for an end to the poisoning of rats. Their campaign in the forthcoming mayoral elections includes a manifesto. Four candidates including the current mayor, Anne Hidalgo, have indicated agreement with all of the manifesto. 

I have also a small collection of three books about rats. Brian Plummer’s Tales of a rat-hunting man (1978) is the story of a man who has been involved with rats since he was 8 anyway. Plummer (1936-2003) was a Welsh dog breeder and ferret enthusiast, among other things, and wrote over 35 books about terriers and ferrets. His interest in rats was in killing them, using a three-species team (Brian, terriers and ferrets) 

The second book, The Rat: a world menace (1929) by Alfred Moore Hogarth, (1876-?) is a serious treatise on the rat. Moore Hogarth was an expert on pests, and a member of the College of Pestology. He was instrumental in putting forward a Bill for Rat Destruction to Parliament in 1908, and was involved in the first Conference Internationale du Rat (1928). He was an implacable campaigner against rats, and his interest in them was eradication. 

Most recently, I’ve read The Enchantment of the long-haired rat: a rodent history of Australia, by Tim Bonyhady (2019). This is the engaging story of a single species – not the common foreign mammal species rattus rattus or rattus norvegicus, with which we are familiar, but Australia’s own rattus villosissimus. This is a distinct species of rat, native to Australia. Bonyhady’s fascinating book, published by Text, is a tribute to the long-haired rat, or Mayaroo in the language of the Diyari people of Lake Eyre, for whom it is a totem. Along with the Polynesian rat, rattus exulans, the mayaroo is an example of the migration of this family of rodents to remote parts of the world, preceding or accompanying homo sapiens. 

Naaman Zhou in the Guardian and Nancy Cushing in Inside Story make out a nice case for its charm and indigeneity. The illustration below is from John Gould’s Mammals of Australia. 

There is a helpful article published by the Australian Museum entitled Is It a Rat? It aims to help us to distinguish between common rat-like animals of Australia - the black rat, the brown rat, ring-tailed possums, and bush rats. Unfortunately, apart from confusion with possums (small ones) Australians do not easily distinguish between indigenous and foreign rats, or for that matter, between rodents and marsupial “rats”. 

As Zhou suggests very eloquently of Bonyhady’s book “In many ways, this book is about that language and literature itself. Like it or not, there is a certain way we talk about rats. There is a rat canon. There are rich stylistic rules. That is part of the fun. Much of the book is quotation, line after line of fantastically vibrant rat reportage from the 19th century.” 

There was a recent debate on Twitter, sparked by @GreenJ (Jonathan Green) about depredations by pests in suburban food gardens. It soon became a debate about whether the possum could be called a “pest”, as rats can be. “No, it can’t be a pest” some said, “the possum is a native animal.” Alas, many Australian native animals are called rats. I remember my father once referring to particular animals as “rat-like things”. These were antechinuses, a charming and protected Australian marsupial. 

There are seven or eight native Australian species of rattus, according to Peter Banks, writing in The Conversation in 2016. They arrived in Australia at least a million years ago. The bush rat, rattus fuscipes is one of these, and there are many other rodents too, as well as rat-like marsupials carelessly lumped in with true rats; here is one of many articles about the difference. As Bonyhady suggests, the now-iconic bilby was fortunate not to be called a rat. 

Banks also dispels what he calls the urban myth that you are never more than two metres or six feet away from a rat. The article cited suggests that the figure is more likely to be fifty metres, which still seems close; the same article suggests that there may be 10.5 million rats in the UK. 

So ambivalence and confusion mark our attitudes to rats. Let us hope that the “fantastically vibrant rat reportage” of the 19^th century continues today, as we enter the Year of the Rat.

Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library

The Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, now almost ten years old, moved into new premises in Indianapolis (Vonnegut's birthplace) this November. In one of those ostensible coincidences which Vonnegut appreciated, I was reading an article in The Economist which celebrated this event. It referred to the founder and CEO of the KVML, Julia Whitehead. While it is very unlikely that she is a relative of mine, it is almost impossible to prove that she is not, and I am proud to be connected no matter how tenuously. So I am particularly pleased to congratulate cousin Julia.




Vonnegut mural, Indianapolis, by Pamela Bliss.

What explains Vonnegut's enduring appeal? The Economist suggests: 
"An unassuming candour that is native to the American Midwest, argues Ms Whitehead, a quality that disarms readers and forces them to confront eternal questions. His books are not simply criticisms of war; they are meditations on human nature and the meaning of life, wrapped up in zany plots and deadpan wit."

I started reading Vonnegut's books in the 1960s - before Slaughterhouse-Five made him very famous, I think. Vonnegut sometimes reminds me of another midwestern writer and humorist, James Thurber (1894-1961) identified with Columbus, Ohio, who I discovered even earlier. 

News of the opening of the new KVML led to two thoughts - first that I must re-read some of his books, and second that one day it would be nice to visit Indianapolis - especially now that I'm a member of the Vonnegut Library. The Vonnegut Mural, illustrated above, is at 345 Massachusetts Avenue, and is 38 feet (almost 12m) tall. The mural features on the visitindy.com wesbite, with other attractions. I clicked on "get directions" and found that the best choice in terms of price flies out of Avalon Airport and takes 25 hours. The price (A$1979) includes a trip back home. The best option takes about the same time, and has a single stop, in Los Angeles.  

I've just finished re-reading Vonnegut's novel about how to handle life if you have more money than you can imagine (God bless you, Mr Rosewater). It includes a memorable statement about human nature and the meaning of life - "There's only one rule that I know of, babies 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'" Perhaps echoing Henry James, and many many others.

Inspired by the opening of the new home for the KVML I've taken a census of my Kurt Vonnegut collection (which turns out to include most of his books) and started to re-read them selectively. I started with Cat's cradle (1963) a few months ago, then Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) and last week, God bless you, Mr Rosewater (1965). There are a few which I don't have, and they are all available from the online shop of the KVML. I'm buying Player piano (1952).

I think that next, I'll browse Palm Sunday (1981) subtitled an autobiographical collage. 

Ron Goulart, inventive and funny, on the progress of civilization

Ron Goulart's novel, When the waker sleeps (1975), starts with a quote from Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947, no relation, as far as I know) "The progress of civilization is not wholly a uniform drift towards better things."  In the novel Goulart demonstrates the truth of this in his anarchic way, through the experiences of a group of people who wake up every fifty years, to experience, briefly, the world as it is at the time. Goulart's images of the future of our civilisation are bizarre, unexpected, anarchic.  Artwork for the book is by Michael Whelan, later the first living artist elevated to the SF Hall of Fame.

Ron Goulart (left) re-entered my consciousness last year (2018) when I bought a copy of his novel The Wicked Cyborg, published by Daw Books Inc in 1978. This was an impulse purchase, in the nice Russian Hill Bookshop in Polk Street, San Francisco. I was looking for something else.

Goulart is a prolific author of almost 200 books including many under a variety of pseudonyms. In the 1970s I mainly read his science fiction. In fact, over the last years of decluttering, a small collection of books by Ron Goulart has survived. I still have (including the new book) fifteen of his SF novels.  

Goulart is 86 now, and has written a lot. When one thinks of words, as one does in this blog, no-one has invented more of them than Ron Goulart. It is one of his trademark devices. Some of his themes are prescient - the fallibility of technology, its ubiquity in our lives, the fragmentation of America, the transformation of the artefacts we use, environmental decay, and more. The current interest in the internet of things was preceded by Goulart's often hilarious portrayal of automated devices; they are often on the fritz, as Goulart referred to a malfunctioning robot machine.

Malfunctioning is also a characteristic of the United States in some of Goulart's works, starting with After things fell apart (1970). The United States, in Goulart's imagining, has been superseded by a plethora of new political entities, such as the Frisco Enclave, in Goulart's inventive but still relevant political satires.  

Goulart makes up new words. His works provide the language for an eccentrically dystopian world, an often cheerful world of the ersatz and the new, words like neowood, the airfloat bed, naugahyde (an actual product), plazpaper, pixphone, landmobile, pros (prosthetic limb), syntin box (synthetic tin), Nondenominational Gift Day ("it used to be called Christmas"), hypogun, leisuresuit, stungun, pseudoplateglass, plyoball, simwickerchair, syncaf, jamsub (on soytoast), syntin sling chair, and pixwalz (or pixwalls).

One thing to observe is that most of the neologisms are runtogethers. I discussed these in a post twelve years ago.

You can obtain Goulart's books still. The best way to do this is to go to the extremely comprehensive list from Fantastic Fiction, and this also includes links to places which sell copies of these books - mostly Amazon. 

The elephant in the room

"The elephant in the room" is a wonderful English expression, partly because it relies for its usefulness not only on the visible presence of an elephant in the room, but also the fact that no-one mentions this.

The Wikipedia defines the expression as "a metaphorical idiom in English for an obvious problem or risk that no one wants to discuss." It is said to derive from an 1814 fable by Ivan Krylov (1769—1844), poet and fabulist, entitled "The Inquisitive Man"; the protagonist notes many small details of his visit to the museum, but fails to notice an elephant. The same approach might be taken with this photograph of the cats on my mantelpiece.

There are many suggestions about the origins of the expression in English, but my favourite is from a 1935 Broadway musical, Jumbo, in which a police officer stops Jimmy Durante as he leads a live elephant and asks, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply, "What elephant?" was a regular show-stopper. Durante reprises the piece in the 1962 film version of the play, Billy Rose's Jumbo, with Doris Day.

The Jimmy Durante example reflects most clearly the true significance of the elephant, which is to deny, tacitly or explicitly, that there is an elephant, despite the fact that its presence is obvious to everyone.

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the first recorded use of the phrase, as a simile, in The New York Times on June 20, 1959: "Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room. It's so big you just can't ignore it."^[4] This is not a great example, since our experience tells us that there is pretty much no problem, no matter how large, that can't be ignored by most people.

There is a nice example in press release from the Climate Council recently. “The leaked COAG agenda paper indicates Federal Energy Minister, Angus Taylor wants to ignore the elephant in the room. Reducing emissions isn’t even officially up for discussion,” said the Climate Council’s energy expert, Petra Stock.

The artist Banksy illustrated the elephant in the room in this charming artwork, in which the elephant blends nicely into the room.

The poet Terry Kettering has a nice poem about the elephant in the room. 
    "Can I say his (her) name to you and not have you look away? 
    For if I cannot, then you are leaving me.... 
    alone.... 
    in a room.... 
    with an elephant"

There are many books - an example is The Elephant in the room: silence and denial in everyday life, by Eviatar Zerubavel (2006). The review in Library thing by devil_llama suggests, rather oddly, that the book tends to ignore the real elephant in the room: "The author spends all too much time on issues like sex (especially presidential sex) which is really no ones business to know about anyway, and all too little time on the real denial issues that are creating serious problems" such as global warming.

The elephant in the room is a much loved, essential and over-used expression. For something which happens so frequently (that is, agreeing not to discuss a plain reality) it is surprising that we do not have a word. The expression is used for book titles, gifs, cartoons, wines and most recently, a Nigerian movie directed by Asurf Oluseyi. The Kilivila language, spoken on the Trobriand islands of Papua New Guinea, has a word, mokita, which means "truth we all know but agree not to talk about."

Other expressions carry similar messages, and the most common relates to the emperor's new clothes. 

Why not mention the elephant? The Wikipedia suggests that "the term is often used to describe an issue that involves a social taboo or which generates disagreement, such as race, religion, politics, homosexuality, mental illness, or even suicide. It is applicable when a subject is emotionally charged; and the people who might have spoken up decide that it is probably best avoided."

All the same, there are some elephants in the room which cannot be ignored.

They have even ignored the clear sign "Please keep to the path."

Idiom of the day - A Cat May Look at a King

The Oxford dictionary defines the term a cat may look at a king as meaning that even a person of low status has rights. Wiktionary defines the expression as meaning ”A purported inferior has certain abilities, even in the presence of a purported superior.” 

The interesting www.idioms.in website has a longer treatment. This is an Indian website about idioms, and carries advertising. It also has a competition, Mention idioms.in on your blog and Win a Prize. 

Here’s a better statement from another website, Writing Explained (Slogan: “Write better. Write now.”)

“A cat can look at a king is a proverb which implies that no matter how high your status is, you can’t control everything. Others will always be your equals in some way.” And I guess it might also have added, no matter how much the king resents it. 

This idiom is first known in a 1562 collection of proverbs, The Proverbs And Epigrams Of John Heywood. Here is the full quote from the book 

Some hear and see him whom he heareth nor seeth not

But fields have eyes and woods have ears, ye wot

And also on my maids he is ever tooting.

Can ye judge a man, (quoth I), by his looking?

What, a cat may look on a king, ye know!

My cat’s leering look, (quoth she), at first show,

Showeth me that my cat goeth a caterwauling;

And specially by his manner of drawing

To Madge, my fair maid.

The best-known use of the proverb is in Alice in Wonderland, in this passage which presents things from a king's viewpoint. Why should that cat be able to look at me?

"Who are you talking to?" said the King, coming up to Alice, and looking at the Cat's head with great curiosity. "It's a friend of mine–a Cheshire Cat," said Alice: "allow me to introduce it." "I don't like the look of it at all," said the King: "however, it may kiss my hand, if it likes." "I'd rather not," the Cat remarked. "Don't be impertinent," said the King, "and don't look at me like that!" He got behind Alice as he spoke.

"A cat may look at a king," said Alice. "I've read that in some book, but I don't remember where.""Well, it must be removed," said the King very decidedly; and he called to the Queen, who was passing at the moment, "My dear! I wish you would have this cat removed!"The Queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. "Off with his head!" she said without even looking round. "I'll fetch the executioner myself," said the King eagerly, and he hurried off.

Since then, of course, most of the world’s kings have fallen or faded, and been replaced by other figures of authority. Although the hereditary principle is far from gone, modern kings have chosen to assume other titles. But a cat can still look at them, whether they like it or not.

Resentment at being looked at by cats is perhaps one of the original inspirations for the legal concept lèse-majesté – see the Wikipedia for an explanation. These are the kinds of laws designed to stop cats from looking at kings just whenever they want to. And not just looking, either - once allowed to look at kings, cats may move on to even less acceptable actions. The hypersensitivity of contemporary rulers to contradiction, criticism, or failure to kiss the hand of a president or pope, has become a feature of our lives, but it is not new.

An article in Conservativehome, a UK journal for Conservatives, pointed out that the campaign to rescind the invitation to Donald Trump for a state visit to the UK was not based on his policies and actions as head of state, such as his ban on entry to the US people from certain predominantly Muslim countries. The article quotes from the petition and then makes a comment

"“Donald Trump should be allowed to enter the UK in his capacity as head of the US Government, but he should not be invited to make an official State Visit because it would cause embarrassment to Her Majesty the Queen.

“Donald Trump’s well documented misogyny and vulgarity disqualifies him from being received by Her Majesty the Queen or the Prince of Wales. Therefore during the term of his presidency Donald Trump should not be invited to the United Kingdom for an official State Visit.”

Such a marriage of left-wing gesture politics with a typically right-wing preoccupation with the dignity of the monarch is unusual, to say the least. Perhaps it’s an attempt to build broader support for a ban?"

Either way, there's no way a vulgar misogynist is going to be allowed to look at our Queen.

Translation through the ages

Most of us are engaged with translation in many ways - think about your own use of translation in all of its variety, such as the last translated work that you read.

My friend Marie Lebert, a linguist, is researching the history of translation and has written a short, accessible, and interesting article on this history. The article includes a plea for translators to receive better recognition and higher visibility in the 21st century.

Now, Marie's current research project "focuses on the sea change brought by technology in the professional translators' working conditions, that have become a major issue in recent years." In pointing out the precarious lives of professional translators, Marie says

"As surprising as it may be in our society, bilingual people need more skills than two languages to become good translators. To be a translator is a profession, with the relevant training and a thorough knowledge of a given discipline. While this was obvious for centuries, this seems less obvious now. After being regarded as scholars alongside authors, professors and researchers for two millennia, many translators, to their dismay, see no mention of their names on press releases and book covers, and sometimes even on the articles and books they spent days, weeks or months to translate.

Are there some solutions to reverse this trend? Our society should acknowledge (again) the translators’ major impact on knowledge, science, literature and culture. My work will be based on many interviews conducted online and on-site.

Marie is also speaking at the FIT Congress (International Federation of Translators) in Brisbane on 3-5 August 2017. Please forward this to people who may be interested in supporting this work - Marie would like to advance her project, working in Australia if possible.

Motto of the day: Nullius in verba

Surely the organisation with absolutely the best motto is the Royal Society? Nullius in verba, according to the Wikipedia, means “Take nobody’s word for it”; it is Latin for “on the word of no-one”. John Evelyn and other Fellows of the Royal Society choose the motto soon after the Society was founded, 350 years ago. The Royal Society explains the motto this way:

It is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand the domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment.

The phrase came from Horace's Epistle to his benefactor Maecenas. These are his words

Nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri, – quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes.
("(being) not obliged to swear allegiance to a master, wherever the storm drags me to, I turn in as a guest.") 

It is hard to think of a better motto – a challenge to make us all sit up and think, as the Royal Society says.