April 19th, 2017
To the New York Times Book Review,
In her review of Brian Doyle’s novel about Robert Louis Stevenson, The Adventures of John Carson in Several
Quarters of the World (April 14th), Jenny
Davidson uses the phrase “abuse of the dictionary” to deride Doyle’s stylistic
choices. It’s funny that Davidson’s jab should involve reference to a bound
volume of meanings, for “abuse of the dictionary” has hardly any meaning at all.
I don’t think she’s saying that Doyle burned his dictionary, or tore it up, or
stabbed holes in it with a sword, or threw it at someone, or used it in some other
perverse physical way. If Davidson’s phrase is meant as a quip, it’s an oddly
joyless one — especially when aimed at a fellow writer whose medium is, well, words. She swipes at Doyle for daring to
perpetuate Stevenson’s dictional excess (i.e., permitting “perspicacity,”
“assiduously,” and “parsimonious” to occupy a single sentence). She seems to be
alleging that Doyle has shamelessly, joyfully deployed vocabulary. Maybe Doyle did look to a dictionary, or maybe he just
relied on the lexical databank in his own head, but why should a writer be held
under suspicion of using a reference book that is a tool and inspiration for those
who live and work in words?
Davidson’s professed
annoyance raises questions about dogmatic attitudes and perceived
mandates in book reviewing. For example: where’s the statute, in New York or
anywhere, against a writer’s exuberant love of language? And why do we insist,
every season or so, on forgetting that the finest writers have always been, as
Cynthia Ozick noted, besotted with words, words in themselves? Stevenson was
among these, and if Doyle is besotted too, may the great ghosts of literature
bless him.
—M. Allen Cunningham
Portland, Oregon
