is no immediate connection between the two subjects. However, I think there is a hidden connection.
Some physicians – the majority – and some professors use the most technical language possible, as if this were the only one that is scientific. To the point where a doctor who is not himself a specialist does not understand half of the communications from this or that specialist.
I follow all this patiently, as best I can, because it fascinates me. And I have come to observe that it is the best, the most assured of the learned inquirers who use the simplest language.
I do not speak here of journals or popularizations, or even semi-popularizations, but of texts addressed to professionals.
Men who have made important discoveries, who have shown intuition, genius, have been able to express themselves in terms that their little brothers the pseudo scholars consider vulgar.
Will we ever be through, or nearly through, with taboos, with ‘initiates’, with the phony mysteries and
phoney science, the phoney good breeding an example of which was touted by the magazines of this week with their articles and photos of the marriage of one of the daughters of the ‘pretender to the crown of France’ with some Württemberger prince.
I’ve always thought that what is needed in schools is a chair of ‘demystification’ or demythification (neither of these two words is in the dictionary but the second is in the process of becoming popular, which worries me) which would teach how to recognize accepted false values, ‘self-evident’ false truths, etc., the whole jumble of conventions in which pitiable humanity flounders.
Last evening I find, in the
Presse Médicale
, the most staid and serious French medical review, the following caption: ‘World Hunger’. The article deals with the production of vegetables, fruits and vines throughout the world, and the needs of populations.
It’s not just the pun which is a sign of the times. * * In 1933 I wrote ‘Hungry People’ and not a specialist in Europe took my articles seriously.
I wish I liked the work of my friends who write. I try to make myself. I try to pretend, for it’s rarely true. Perhaps that is why I have few writer friends. I have them only by chance. Then I like them as men, while regretting that I cannot admire them professionally.
If I invented subtitles to go at the head of each of these notes, I see that it would make a sort of dictionary: childhood, blacks, travel, inspiration, doctors, friends … etc.
And if I started at
a
to get to
z
, I’d be sure of forgetting nothing.
I see too, with annoyance, that I use words here that I never use in my novels because I don’t trust them: abstract words, vague or overfamiliar words, fashionable words. Put another way, because I am trying to give voice to a few minor ideas, I adopt unintentionally the vocabulary of after-dinner talk.
I even think I wrote ‘concept’ and ‘distinguished’ … and ‘important’ in speaking of a doctor … This morning I had in mind a dozen words that figure in these notes which I defy anyone to find in my novels. I’ve forgotten them. ‘Distinguished’, probably … and ‘exquisite!’ … tired words, which help give shape to hollow ideas. If that is the case – and I’m very much afraid it is – I’m wrong to play with keeping this notebook.
Sunday noon
I want to tell it simply, without comment. Yesterday, D. and I had an apéritif. We don’t do this often. For several weeks she has been on edge, because of the secretary, then because of one of the maids, etc. She is capable of enormous energy and she can keep going for a certain length of time with two or three hours of sleep a night.
Yesterday was the last straw, on the eve, almost, of leaving for vacation.
I suggested to her that we go out in the evening, which is even rarer for us than having an apéritif.
‘Go where?’
There is only one night club in Lausanne.
‘No, I only go out to go to someone’s
Some physicians – the majority – and some professors use the most technical language possible, as if this were the only one that is scientific. To the point where a doctor who is not himself a specialist does not understand half of the communications from this or that specialist.
I follow all this patiently, as best I can, because it fascinates me. And I have come to observe that it is the best, the most assured of the learned inquirers who use the simplest language.
I do not speak here of journals or popularizations, or even semi-popularizations, but of texts addressed to professionals.
Men who have made important discoveries, who have shown intuition, genius, have been able to express themselves in terms that their little brothers the pseudo scholars consider vulgar.
Will we ever be through, or nearly through, with taboos, with ‘initiates’, with the phony mysteries and
phoney science, the phoney good breeding an example of which was touted by the magazines of this week with their articles and photos of the marriage of one of the daughters of the ‘pretender to the crown of France’ with some Württemberger prince.
I’ve always thought that what is needed in schools is a chair of ‘demystification’ or demythification (neither of these two words is in the dictionary but the second is in the process of becoming popular, which worries me) which would teach how to recognize accepted false values, ‘self-evident’ false truths, etc., the whole jumble of conventions in which pitiable humanity flounders.
Last evening I find, in the
Presse Médicale
, the most staid and serious French medical review, the following caption: ‘World Hunger’. The article deals with the production of vegetables, fruits and vines throughout the world, and the needs of populations.
It’s not just the pun which is a sign of the times. * * In 1933 I wrote ‘Hungry People’ and not a specialist in Europe took my articles seriously.
I wish I liked the work of my friends who write. I try to make myself. I try to pretend, for it’s rarely true. Perhaps that is why I have few writer friends. I have them only by chance. Then I like them as men, while regretting that I cannot admire them professionally.
If I invented subtitles to go at the head of each of these notes, I see that it would make a sort of dictionary: childhood, blacks, travel, inspiration, doctors, friends … etc.
And if I started at
a
to get to
z
, I’d be sure of forgetting nothing.
I see too, with annoyance, that I use words here that I never use in my novels because I don’t trust them: abstract words, vague or overfamiliar words, fashionable words. Put another way, because I am trying to give voice to a few minor ideas, I adopt unintentionally the vocabulary of after-dinner talk.
I even think I wrote ‘concept’ and ‘distinguished’ … and ‘important’ in speaking of a doctor … This morning I had in mind a dozen words that figure in these notes which I defy anyone to find in my novels. I’ve forgotten them. ‘Distinguished’, probably … and ‘exquisite!’ … tired words, which help give shape to hollow ideas. If that is the case – and I’m very much afraid it is – I’m wrong to play with keeping this notebook.
Sunday noon
I want to tell it simply, without comment. Yesterday, D. and I had an apéritif. We don’t do this often. For several weeks she has been on edge, because of the secretary, then because of one of the maids, etc. She is capable of enormous energy and she can keep going for a certain length of time with two or three hours of sleep a night.
Yesterday was the last straw, on the eve, almost, of leaving for vacation.
I suggested to her that we go out in the evening, which is even rarer for us than having an apéritif.
‘Go where?’
There is only one night club in Lausanne.
‘No, I only go out to go to someone’s
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