Synchronic is in Chapter 11; the Word Exchange has been dismantled. The president has pledged funding to prevent future cyberlingua attacks and to set up archives and libraries, many modeled on those started here at the Glass by members of the Diachronic Society, lots of whom have stayed on. We gather nearly every night for informal conversation lab, often at Phineas’s favorite pub, the Eagle and Child, where a different literary society once met.
Laird and Brock were taken into custody, but both are out on bail pending further investigation. Floyd has fared less well; he’s in Colorado, awaiting trial on federal charges: conspiracy, fraud, racketeering. Manslaughter. Dmitri is at Rikers Island, as is Koenig. Several hackers were also arrested, including Roquentin. But because he’s a minor (he’ll be fifteen in May), he was released to his family when his father posted the three million yuan bond.
Two weeks ago a memorial service was held at the Capitol for victims of the virus. Doug was asked to speak, and he recited the etymology and meaning of “grief.” Then he took the train to New York for another, smaller ceremony, in memory of Victoria Mark, née Nadya Viktorovna Markova, which was held at the Merc. Phineas gave a very moving eulogy, Doug said, and seemed to have started the long, slow process of mourning. He also appears to have emerged healthy from a three-day quarantine. He’s now joined us here in Oxford. Last week we hosted a small, modest celebration in the Glass’s dining hall to celebrate publication of the NADEL’s third edition.
When Doug was in New York, he saw Vera; they had coffee at a place near our old offices. Doug said it was “nice,” Vera that it was “pleasant,” which I think means it was sad for both of them.
I’ve been talking to Vera, too, once a week. She seems to be doing well. She’s stayed in East Hampton and has been helping care for my grandfather. It turns out he had a microchip, which has now been removed successfully.
I’ve spoken to my friends as well. Ramona still isn’t talking much, but she’s undergoing treatment. They’re otherwise all all right so far, for which I’m very grateful. I’ll be meeting Coco in Paris next month; one of her shows, postponed because of the crisis, will finally be opening at her gallery there, and she’s planning to take the loop back to London with me afterward and to stay here in Oxford for a couple weeks.
Besides writing and talking daily with Doug and other Society members, I practice judo and I draw; I plan to apply to a few grad schools when I’m done with this manuscript. I’ve also started studying Spanish, Arabic, and Chinese. And reading. Lately, aloud—to Bart.
Of course I didn’t write this account alone. But in that regard I’m like Doug, and the other Dr. Johnson, and all the lexicographers who came between, laboring away mostly in obscurity. Dictionary-makers are obliged to work in teams. All writers are, I think. “Creation is collaboration,” as Doug would say. And I find that thought pretty comforting. In the words of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, “Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds.” Language seems like proof that there’s such a thing as meaning. That we’re all connected, now and forever.
Words don’t always work. Sometimes they come up short. Conversations can lead to conflict. There are failures of diplomacy. Some differences, for all the talk in the world, remain irreconcilable. People make empty promises, go back on their word, say things they don’t believe. But connection, with ourselves and others, is the only way we can live.
I don’t agree with all Doug and Bart have to say about language, or love. If Doug has implied we’re mere servants, and Bart that we can be in control, I think they’re both wrong. Or that the truth is somewhere between.
Language may have limits. But it isn’t just a dim likeness in a dark mirror. Yes, gestures, glances, touches, taps on walls mean something. So do silences. But sometimes the word is the thing. The bridge. Sometimes we only know what we feel once it’s been said. Words may be daughters of the earth instead of heaven. But they’re not dim. And even in the faintest shimmer, there is light.
Bart is right that language is the tie that binds us to the dead and unborn. But he’s wrong that words are just urns for holding pure thought. I don’t think he really believes that, or ever did. I hope I’ll know someday. That he’ll be able to tell me himself. But until then—
THE END
Just one last thing.
I’ve visited Bart for the past three nights, since he got out of quarantine. I’ve been reading him this manuscript, and passages from Hegel. Recently I found this:
genuine love excludes all oppositions.… it is not finite at all.… This wealth of life love acquires in the exchange of every thought, every variety of inner experience, for it seeks out differences and devises unifications ad infinitum; it turns to the whole manifold of nature in order to drink love out of every life. What in the first instance is most [one’s] own is united into the whole … consciousness of a separate self disappears, and all distinction … is annulled.
I know he understood. Because when I was done reading, he squeezed my hand and smiled.
Each night I’ve kissed him on the forehead and held my breath as he’s tried to talk. I stare at a spot on the wall, my gaze unfocused. Pretend I’m not listening. That I don’t see the tears of frustration welling in his eyes.
Last night he motioned for the pen. Held it tightly. Made a wobbly green X on the bottom of the page. I whispered, “What is it?” But he just shook his head. When I tried to kiss him, he turned away. But he kept the pen.
Tonight when I went into his room, I saw mounds of crumpled paper like dead flowers in the trash. When he dozed off for a few minutes, I opened one out on my knee. Saw it was just an endless series of green squiggles: dead flowers’ dead stems.
Just now I finished reading these pages to Bart. I read to the end. And Bart waved for me to hand him the last sheet. Fished out the pen.
“It’s okay, Bart,” I said.
But he got up and took the paper from my hand. Brought it to his desk and marked it.
He just crossed the room. Just kissed me on the mouth.
Gave me back the page. And it says:
THE END BEGINNING
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have a real community of minds to thank.
I’m enormously grateful to my many brilliant and big-souled teachers: Francisco Goldman, Mary Gordon, Gabe Hudson, Heidi Julavits, Sam Lipsyte, Jaime Manrique, Ben Marcus, Carole Maso, Stephen O’Connor, Mark Slouka, Meredith Steinbach, and those at Carolina Friends School.
I’m more indebted than I could ever say to all my friends. Thank you especially to Claire Campbell, Rivka Galchen, Susanna Kohn, Reif Larsen, Nellie Hermann, Tania James, Maggie Pouncey, Karen Russell, and Karen Thompson Walker for reading so many of my words, so closely and kindly, over so many years. Huge thanks, too, to Sophie Barrett, Stuart Blumberg, Charlie Capp, and Jennie Goldstein for offering your essential thoughts on earlier drafts of this book.
To Field Maloney, who years ago gave me a copy of Henry Hitchings’s fantastic book Defining the World: The Extraordinary Story of Dr. Johnson’s Dictionary, and who encouraged me to begin writing this one, you have my lifelong gratitude. Thank you, too, for giving me vital advice about both the business of writing and how I might improve mine (if only I could, in fact, write more like Bolaño and Hemingway, or you). Thank you, too, for lending a few of your aphorisms and mannerisms to these pages, which have been scattered over several characters (none of whom resemble you in any other way, clearly).
Thank you to Alison Callahan, whose large-hearted and rigorous edits made this book immeasurably better; to the very gracious, inventive, and funny Gerry Howard; and to the heroic James Melia. Thanks, too, to Michael Collica, Emily Mahon, Jeremy Medina, John Pitts, Nora Reichard, Alison Rich, and all the other wonderful people at Doubleday, working away in that big glass building on Broadway.
My deepest appreciation to Robin Desser and Bob Gottlieb for being extraordinary mentors on literature, the art of editing, and life.
I’m
immensely grateful to Susan Golomb for believing so ardently in this book. Enormous thanks, too, to Soumeya Bendimerad and Krista Ingebretson.
Thanks to the Corporation of Yaddo, the Jentel Artist Residency, the MacDowell Colony, the Ucross Foundation, the Vermont Studio Center (where I began the first draft of this novel in 2008 and the final draft in 2012), and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. My greatest appreciation, too, to my former colleagues at PEN for being so supportive when I left to finish the book at these various Shangri-las.
Thank you to the philosopher Jim Vernon, whose brains are rivaled only by his benevolence, and whose book Hegel’s Philosophy of Language was indispensable to me. He offered vital guidance on sections of this book having to do with Hegel. Many of the Hegel translations cited herein are his, as is the theory Bart alludes to about Hegel and universal grammar.
For invaluable information about how computers and the Internet work, my hat is always and forever off to Will Roberts, and especially to the eternally patient David Wu, whose help to me should constitute a life’s worth of mitzvahs.
Thank you to John Simpson, who was Chief Editor of the Oxford English Dictionary until October 2013. He very generously met with me for several hours in the OED’s Oxford offices, and answered my many questions with equanimity, humor, and grace. Huge thanks, too, to Jesse Sheidlower. He likewise kindly met with me, in the OED’s New York offices, and later read an inordinate number of this novel’s pages. Would that I could have incorporated all his excellent advice.
My tremendous gratitude to the incomparable Seyed Safavynia for giving me far more of his time than is in any way reasonable. It’s thanks to Seyed that the Meme exists in its current form, and that I know a little something about how the human brain works.
While researching this book, I read a lot of other books. Among them: several of Simon Winchester’s, including The Professor and the Madman; Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows, which significantly informed many of Doug’s disquisitions on how our changing relationship to technology has reshaped our thinking; Cyber War by Richard A. Clarke and Robert K. Knake; and Sol Steinmetz’s Semantic Antics, which was especially helpful when I was writing Bart’s ruminations on language. I read a lot about pneumatic tubes, too. Especially helpful was the report Development of the Pneumatic-tube and Automobile Mail Service published by the U.S. Congress in 1917. I also regularly consulted the online edition of the OED (which cannot be blamed for the improbability of my own “definitions”), and I read parts of Sidney Landau’s Dictionaries: The Art and Craft of Lexicography. I’m particularly beholden, too, to David Foster Wallace’s extraordinary essay “Authority and American Usage,” which in some ways got this whole ball really rolling, and to Rivka Galchen for directing me to it.
Thanks also to: Steve Duncan for all things spelunking-related. Max Kardon for bequeathing me a crucial sentence. Mark Kirby for amiably uncrinkling the Deep Springs section.
Plaudits to Onnesha Roychoudhuri for providing critical, eleventh-hour guidance, including information about key architectural elements of the Center for Fiction (also known as the Mercantile Library).
My huge appreciation, too, to the Center for Fiction’s Kristin Henley.
I’m indebted to Cressida Leyshon for offering thoughtful counsel at a decisive time.
Warm encomiums to Amanda Valdez, and once again to Jennie Goldstein, for being art-history geniuses.
My gratitude to Amy Barefoot for sharing her considerable musical expertise.
Thanks, too, to the inimitable Dave Graedon for more things than I can name, including fielding dozens if not hundreds of bizarre inquiries with good humor, wisdom, and heart, and introducing me over the years to much of my favorite literature, art, and music. I.e., for being the greatest brother imaginable.
Thanks to all the friends who sheltered me and offered every form of sustenance during the peripatetic year when I was finishing this book. I’ve mentioned many of you above for other kindnesses. I’d also like to thank Emily Alexander and Vernon Chatman, Vivian Berger and Michael Finkelstein, Julia Bloch, Jill Fitzsimmons and Josh Watson, Danielle and Alex Mindlin, Lauren Waterman and Andrei Kaullaur, Reilly Coch, and especially Flannery Hysjulien, without whom I would be an entirely different person.
Thanks to Anna, Yotam, and Finnegan Haber, Nam Le, Emma Schwarcz, and all the satellite members of the Hancock house. Thanks to Anna in particular for coining so many ingenious metaphors, e.g., thoughts that pop up like corks.
Thanks to Annie Fain Liden, Georgia Smith, Shala, and Cathy and the girls for buoying me through all the beautiful months in Asheville.
And to Dan-Avi Landau, thank you for everything. I couldn’t have finished this book without you. Thank you for helping me invent the Nautilus, for explaining retrotransposons and logic gates, for introducing me to Spiegel im Spiegel and to so many other things. Thank you for letting me attribute some of your ideas to Dr. Barouch. Thank you for your unrivaled and unbridled creativity, and for reading this book with such tenderness and brilliance. Thank you for teaching me about everything that matters.
Finally, my gratitude to my parents is so profound that for once, it has left me without words.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alena Graedon was born in Durham, North Carolina, and is a graduate of Carolina Friends School, Brown University, and Columbia University’s MFA program. She has worked at Knopf and the PEN American Center. The Word Exchange, her first novel, was completed with the help of fellowships at several artist colonies. It has been translated into eight languages. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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