Bøger af Skip Eisiminger

A provisional title for this collection was "Fifty Stabs at the Truth of Language," which despite its weight, I remain fond of because of its nod to Montaigne's Essais, which the French master thought of as stabs at the truth of his experience. In some ways, that title is a better description of the book you are holding than "The Pleasures of Language," for the subject is so huge and complex all anyone can do is to take a stab at it in an attempt to unpeel the slippery onion of our tongue. Whatever I choose to call it, this is a book for the general reader who still consults a hardback dictionary and does an occasional crossword. Having never been a glib speaker, despite forty-two years in the English classroom, I turned to the written word long ago. Schopenhauer thought most of us spend forty years preparing the text and thirty on the commentary; with me it's been more of a sixty-ten split. But I come to the commentary phase well prepared. Laying out the text for me largely consisted of taking notes on 3x5 cards and filing them away for the final phase if I was fortunate enough to last that long. Hart Crane wrote that he needed to be "drenched in words..." in order "to have the right ones form themselves into the proper patterns at the right moment." With me, before writing short essays like these ranging from pornography to prayer and concision to tautologies, I immerse myself in the ideas summarized on my cards. Then I try to teach myself something I didn't know before. I trust, gentle verb-adores, I have a few things to teach you as well.

Skip Eisiminger is an academic who still looks forward to Monday mornings, even after thirty-six years of teaching. The collection opens with a secular-humanist essay and closes with a piece that offers speculations about immorality. In between is a wildflower garden of sacred, profane, and always witty efflorescences.

While writing these essays, both of my parents died. When I read that Cicero had left his son a series of brief personal "letters," I was disappointed that my parents had not done something similar. That's when I decided to learn from the "sin" of their omission and salt away some of my essays in a book.Arthur Schopenhauer said that given our "three score and ten" allotment, a wise division would be forty years devoted to the "text" and thirty to the "commentary." My division thus far has been rather less balanced-sixty-five for the text and six for the commentary, but at least I've managed to get a few things in print before shuffling off to Buffalo dragging my mortal coil. To switch the metaphor, I've spent the last six years unpeeling a very large onion. In the process, I've cut my fingers numerous times and occasionally brought tears to my eyes, but once sautéed with a little butter, the result, I think, is a palatable dish. Guten Appetit!-Skip Eisiminger