Interesting bit from the NYTimes:

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Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes.

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans.

The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one.

Oops, that probably doesn't belong in Literary.

But let's pretend it did!

Irvine Welsh, Jane Austen and James Joyce = The Same.

Discuss.

Jane Austen and James Joyce = The Same.

My brain may explode. Although Trollope set some of his early novels in Ireland.

Irvine Welsh, Jane Austen and James Joyce

FCM?

Actually there's a bit in that article about the historical linguistics of English that has already been debunked by the blog Language Log, which I found funny and interesting. Because, basically, what the article attempts to do is tie genetic heritage and language heritage together, which is a huge no-no in linguistic circles.

(Considering how often people from Parts conquer people from Other Parts, and convince them to speak a new language, languages travel at quite a different rate from genes, and in different patterns.)

(Also, it smacks of the history of tribalism/racism that linguistics tries to downplay, as it strives to be considered a formal hard science.)

One of the things Language Log points out is that we have Old English attestation as soon as about 800 CE, which means that Old English was being spoken (but not written down) for quite a while before that. that is always the trouble with historical linguistics -- the number of illiterate peoples in history about whom we can attest nothing.

Isn't Beowulf only around because of a single written version of it that was discovered in the 17th century?

Yes, and the original ms. was a wee bit charred at one point, having been rescued from a housefire. That's why there are "...and then something happened. Skipping ahead!" notes in the narrative.

The same is true of one of the six extant originals of the Magna Carta, which I saw under glass in the British Museum years ago. Five of the copies are all officious Germanic-looking lettering, presumably done with painstaking care by monks of some order; and the sixth is all screwy with the letters shrunk and sent sideways by the paper as it contracted on exposure to the heat of a fire. It got rescued before it actually burned, but, I think it is a good thing that fire-suppression methods are a major part of archiving and museum studies, these days.

I was looking at an edition of Raymond Chandler's notebooks during lunch.

It had some great stuff in it, including lists of similes that he'd go back and poach from. Some ones I remembered:

"A mouth like wilted lettuce"

"Lower than a badger's balls"

"A thready smile"

"He was a great long gallows of a man with a ravaged face and a haggard eye."

(Beautifu rhythm in that line too, hitting on the G's.)

There were also lists of slang for San Quentin, shooting craps ("Ada from Decatur" for eights, "Little Josie" for four.) and pickpockets ("Hanger binging" is stealing things from a woman's purse without taking the purse. Presumably while hanging from a strap in the subway.)

Which inevitably brings us to:

Write a Chandlerian Simile

Here I'll prime the pump...

"She had eyes harder than...."

::taps foot impatiently:: C'mon slackers.

"She had eyes harder than Karl Rove's heart."

"She had eyes harder than Chinese calculus." (a venerable old trope)

"She had eyes harder than an untenured English professor at a small state university." (to steal from myself)

"She had eyes harder than..."

"She had eyes harder than the ancient gum petrifying under the movie house seats."