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Crackpot authorities | page 1, 2, 3
The genre, not surprisingly, suffers constantly shifting boundaries, and weeding the crackpot authorities from the mere cranks is no easy task. A good crackpot authority will have dreamed up a thesis that explains virtually all of our everyday experience at one shot. And he will manage to do it with style. A favorite read that didn't make the cut was "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," by Michael Baigent, et al. Though there is certainly an entertaining conspiracy theory here -- that the history of Christianity is a big lie and that Christ's descendants went on to form secret societies that exist to this day -- the book is not ambitious enough in its scope to warrant inclusion as the work of a full-fledged crackpot. Not all crackpot literature takes the essay form, however. Special mention must be reserved for an author like Henry Watson Fowler, whose efforts have led me to include a reference book on my crackpot bookshelf. His justly famed and quietly acerbic "A Dictionary of Modern English Usage" -- not to be confused with the recently published "New Fowler's," which substantially waters down the original -- has provided my circle of friends with hours of read-aloud fun, and not only because we are amused to find the word "otherwise" described as "now having very curious experiences." Both Fowler's crackpot tendencies and his crackpot authority credentials can be seen in the intricate system of cross-references that pepper the book. "Love," in contrast to de Rougemont's treatment, is disposed of simply by referring us to two other articles: "hackneyed phrases" and "stock pathos." A felicitous choice of entry can start the reader on a never-ending tour of Fowler's nose-thumbing take on written English, as in the following example: From the entry on whence, whither: From preposition at end: ... In avoiding the forbidden order, unskilled handlers of words often fall into real blunders (see OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN) ... From out of the frying-pan: ... the slapdash corrector, who should not be in such a hurry, & the uneducated corrector, who should not be writing at all, are apt to make things worse than they found them. Is that clear, you uneducated correctors and unskilled handlers of words? Happily, Fowler's genius as an expert in the English language lies in his ability to become almost completely incomprehensible himself -- and in his offhand dismissal of such beasts as "the scribbler who has reckoned on our having tastes so primitive." Among crackpot authorities, though, Fowler is a mere divertissement. At the other end of the spectrum lies one of the deepest and broadest thinkers of the 20th century, Elias Canetti, without whom no such list would be complete. Canetti's "Crowds and Power" is one of the most fascinating critiques of modern culture ever composed. Like Jaynes, Canetti looks to ancient and aboriginal cultures to shed light on the course of humankind's development. Like Reich, he maps onto human behavior a complex but internally consistent set of rules that may or may not have much to do with reality. Nevertheless, Canetti's observations are revelatory. His classification of human behavior into types of "crowds" and "packs" provides a nearly plausible explanation for much of modern culture and what Reich would call "the negation of life inherent in social ideology." And the short passage tracing the origin of both words and artifacts back to the gestures of the hand is, by itself, the mark of a truly original thinker. What drives the crackpot compulsion to deliver an exhaustive treatment of the unfathomable? For many of the great crackpot thinkers -- Canetti, de Rougemont and Reich all fall into this category -- it is the deep imprint of the 20th century's unprecedented world wars. The effect of these cataclysms is apparent in the work of all three of these writers, and probably has much to do with their need to find a universal system to explain the goings-on of their lifetimes. Canetti's Central European background plays a key role here. While he is a less forgiving writer than Jaynes or de Rougemont, he is perhaps more important than either. The epilogue of "Crowds and Power" is one of the great humanist cries in literature. It is only effective, though, with the weight of Canetti's tome behind it. Therein lies another secret of the crackpot authorities: They generally save the best for last. No dummies they, these writers are aware that a skeptical public may not be ready to buy the near-lunacy they seem to be serving up. It is only through the aggregation of facts and observations that they can hope to persuasively make their points. And it is in these facts and observations, if not always in the arguments they support, that the value lies. The reading of such authors should be approached as an exercise in the opening of the mind. Who among us, after all, has not suddenly been gripped by a flash of insight, only to scratch our heads later and wonder just what we were thinking. The crackpot authorities had the courage to follow their insights to their (il)logical ends. It is best, in such cases, to suspend judgment, and observe while a great mind works out the kinks of a questionable theory. Even if nothing is really "learned," the reader will be greatly rewarded, and not a little entertained. And then there's the Fowler ampersand. Of this more will be said in a later work.
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