The Doubter's Companion

The Doubter's Companion
Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Total Pages : 356
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781476718941
ISBN-13 : 1476718946
Rating : 4/5 (946 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Doubter's Companion by : John Ralston Saul

Download or read book The Doubter's Companion written by John Ralston Saul and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-11-06 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A long and distinguished tradition of writers have used the form of a satirical dictionary to undermine the received ideas of their day. Voltaire wrote a sharply humorous "Philosophical Dictionary," while Samuel Johnson's dictionary of the English language was derisive and opinionated. These early dictionaries and encyclopedias were really weapons in a struggle for the soul of civilization between forces of humanistic enlightenment and the forces of orthodoxy and dogmatism. Their authors attacked and exposed the half-truths of their day by showing that it was possible to think differently about the social and political arrangements that everyone took for granted. But as John Ralston Saul argues in this decidedly unorthodox book, modern dictionaries have once again been captured by the forces of orthodoxy—albeit this time a rationalist orthodoxy. Our language has become as predictable, fragmented, and rhetorical as it was in the 18th century, divided as it is by special interest groups into dialects of expertise that are hermetically sealed off and inaccessible to citizens. In The Doubter's Companion, a mar­velous subversive contribution to the great 18th century tradition of the humanist dictionary, Saul skewers and discredits the accepted content of common terms like Advertising, Academics, and Air Conditioning (defined as "an efficient means for spreading disease in enclosed public spaces"); Cannibal, Conservative, and Croissant; Dandruff, Death, and Dictionary ("opinions presented as truth in alphabetical order"); and several hundred others, including Biography ("a respectable form of pornography"), Museum ("safe storage for stolen objects"), and Manners ("people are always splendid when they're dead"). There is much in this volume that will stimulate, offend, provoke, perplex, and entertain. But Saul deploys these tactics of guerilla lexicography to advance the more serious purpose of reclaiming public language from the stultifying dialects of modern expertise.


The Doubter's Companion Related Books

The Doubter's Companion
Language: en
Pages: 356
Authors: John Ralston Saul
Categories: Education
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-11-06 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

GET EBOOK

A long and distinguished tradition of writers have used the form of a satirical dictionary to undermine the received ideas of their day. Voltaire wrote a sharpl
The Doubters' Club
Language: en
Pages: 176
Authors: Preston Ulmer
Categories: Religion
Type: BOOK - Published: 2021-09-07 - Publisher: NavPress

GET EBOOK

The closer we get to the heart of God, the closer we should grow toward the doubter, the skeptic, the differing perspective, even the atheist. And that should m
The Writing Workshop Note Book
Language: en
Pages: 192
Authors: Alan Ziegler
Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines
Type: BOOK - Published: 2007-11-20 - Publisher: Catapult

GET EBOOK

The Writing Workshop Notebook is devoted to making, remaking, and remarking on writing. Ziegler's text is animated by a concern about how we relate to our own a
Voltaire's Bastards
Language: en
Pages: 657
Authors: John Ralston Saul
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-12-25 - Publisher: Simon and Schuster

GET EBOOK

With a new Introduction by the author, this “erudite and brilliantly readable book” (The Observer, London) expertly dissects the political, economic, and so
Companions in Courage
Language: en
Pages: 198
Authors: Pat LaFontaine
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2001-01-11 - Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

GET EBOOK

Pat LaFontaine shares the personal details of his own struggle with depression and physical rehabilitation, as well as those other amazing athletes who were cha