The Professor and the Mad man by Simon
Winchester (1999).
The story of two men who
essentially give the world the first ever complete English dictionary,
“Oxford English Dictionary”!!
Just think about the magnitude of
it.
This is a truly extraordinary
story.
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layers. –Dr. W. C. Minor aka
MAD MAN.
A gifted surgeon and a war hero. He was a
great student and a brilliant doctor until he joined the Union Army during the
civil war in America. It was in this war, more specifically, during “The Battle
of the Wildness” which is arguably the most brutal campaign of entire civil
war, he lost his sanity.
From there, everything slowly goes downhill.
Then, on final night of Feb, 17, 1872, he finally puts himself away forever
from reality (mental asylum, that is) by shooting an innocent man three times
with revolver.
After
spending 10 yrs doing nothing significant in quite comfortable jail room in
mental asylum, he starts collecting/amassing vast amount of words for OED as a
way of redemption for his crime.
James Murray aka The Professor. Another exceptionally smart gentleman (Scotsman)
and a professor who is directly responsible for OED.
When the
society which starts OED project needs someone to carry on the entire project
on his shoulder, Murray is the only man in the vast British Empire who can take
over the impossible task.
He is a
self-taught genius who made his name with number of famous English language
studies and being an excellent English teacher in private school.
Their first
meeting which took place at Jan, 1891 becomes a modern myth with scholars and
English historians.
Oxford English Dictionary aka OED. It is essentially the main character in this
book.
It took more
than seventy years to assemble over half million words and millions of characters
and here’s why. Instead of just gathering words, OED goes out with ultimate
total package: it includes not just a meaning but quotations and references of every single
words it contains so that by showing examples, it can show the full
meaning/history/origin of every spoken/written English word.
By
the time the first edition comes out at 1927, it consists of
1. 12 huge
volumes.
2. 414,825
words.
3. 1,827,306
quotations.
4. Over 220
million letters and numbers.
One of a
true triumph of human history.
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lace. – Mainly
England because it all started in London. There are brief scene in America for
Minor’s war experience. But other than that, it all happens in London, the
center of English world at that time.
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lot. – The
concept is very simple. How, when and by whom the OED is created. However what
makes it complex , therefore providing great materials for Simon Winchester, is
the persons behind of it.
I honestly
thinks the main characters, the professor and the mad man, are chosen not just
by their enormous contribution to the OED, but by their extraordinary life
stories. Especially, Dr. Minor who went through at least 3 films worth of life
before age 35!!
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erdict. –One thing
is very clear. Every single person who made difference in Great Britain, hence changing the world ‘cause they used to own half the continent, is
pure psychopath!
None of them
are normal! They are compulsive, obsessive, either outrageously arrogant or
just plain crazy!! But of course, brilliant, too.
If you have
either class(=money) or talent, you could got away with almost everything possible. Only
because 1. they(=Britain) used to own half the continent and 2. more importantly, it
seems to me that they held higher tolerance toward those privileged
people (with either money or mind).
Anyway,
enough with crazy people. Let’s get back to the book. This book is probably one
of the most entertaining non-fiction, history book I’ve ever read. The author,
veteran journalist Simon Winchester, obliviously has a good idea what people
want to read about and delivers exactly that: a few big historic events
surrounding OED with bunch of non-important but fascinating trivia in between
them.
He mixes
facts and imaginations so masterfully, even if this book is actually a biography
of OED which is just a thick, really boring, almost incomprehensible dictionary,
it starts building the tension from the beginning!! Imagine that!
Other than
Johnny Cash’s Man in Black and Bruce Campbell’s If Chin’s Could Kill, this
could be the most entertaining biography I’ve ever read.
