Althouse: "My mother works so hard/And for bread she needs some lard."

February 3, 2014

"My mother works so hard/And for bread she needs some lard."

"'I can’t think of a single child who would opt for this phrasing over, say, a more simple "so hard to make bread,"' a choice that demonstrates he 'was already exhibiting the masterful grasp of language for which he would later become famous.'"

9 comments:

mccullough said...: We murder to dissect.; 2/3/14, 12:28 PM
Anonymous said...: Analyzing "so hard and for bread" as a single phrase is very peculiar.; 2/3/14, 12:36 PM
Sean Gleeson said...: The transcriber actually missed two words from the first line. A glance at the manuscript shows that Wallace wrote "so hard" twice. So his first line was really...

My mother works so hard, so hard,

...which is a much better line, fits the meter of the poem and repeats the phrase to evoke the repetitive nature of her hard work.; 2/3/14, 12:38 PM
Darrell said...: Well lardy-dardy. . .; 2/3/14, 1:57 PM
JoyD said...: I enjoyed seeing his little ditties in his original schoolboy scrawl.
I really like that a teacher of that generation did NOT get out her red pencil to change "threw" to "through", or "there" to "their". I also like his sense of humor in using "dayd" for dead, and that the teacher let it be.

That is fundamentally good practice to teach in edu101 - when to correct and when not to. Fortunately I had such a professor, long ago.; 2/3/14, 2:37 PM
tim maguire said...: Agree with Paul. These are separate phrases and there is no particular justification for reading them as a single thought like that.; 2/3/14, 3:08 PM
campy said...: I really like that a teacher of that generation did NOT get out her red pencil to change "threw" to "through", or "there" to "their". I also like his sense of humor in using "dayd" for dead, and that the teacher let it be.

Today those errors would go uncorrected because the teacher wouldn't spot them.; 2/3/14, 5:37 PM
Richard Dolan said...: It's a lovely romantic idea in play here, the celebrated writer who was already a budding literary genius in kindergarten. Behind that idea is the reality of an academic treadmill, with newly (and not so newly) minted PhDs desperate to find some author about whom to make their career. UT Austin seems to have a leg up in the DFWallace sweepstakes.

AS I read this article, I started thinking back to WJBate's bio of Keats, and the (to me) harsh judgments about his early poetry -- really, almost everything before the great Odes in his last year. When DFWallace finally meets his WJBate, I suspect the judgments will be harsher still. But that will come later. It seems we're still in the adulatory phase.; 2/3/14, 8:38 PM
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