Word: decays
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...film of The Wreck of the Deutschland is just one more indicator of the decay of civilization for Enderby. He loathes his students for their eating, habits and for their anti-intellectualism; he also hates his brightest student because he knows too much. Enderby is the epitome of American notions about British elitist snobbery; and while these notions may be just as false as Burgess's opinion of Americans, they are, as fantasies reflecting actuality, much more damning...
Nathan writes with a certain dis taste for Mishima - which is natural enough since Mishima was, for all his exuberance and charm, a squirmingly unpleasant character; his brilliance had the phosphorescence of decay. All his life, he was explicitly and erotically in love with death. Suicide was the only act, he believed, that could make him comprehend his own existence. Just after Mishima disemboweled himself, his mother said: "This was the first time in his life that Kimitake [Mishima] did something he always wanted to do. Be happy...
...there are no surprises either. How could there be? These are the handful of poems that Auden wrote between the time he went back to England after 31 years in the New World and the time of his death. It is the familiar, autumnal Auden speaking: student of fleshly decay, writer of thank-you notes, urbane scold, expert at anamnesis, a celebrator of the numinous past that raises nostalgia almost to the level of ritual...
Unfortunately, after this promising start in the introduction at ripping the veil off the underlying structural causes of language's decay, Strictly Speaking falls prey to the very deficiency it is describing: it is written in such a comical, anything-for-a-laugh-at-all-those-illiterate-people tone that all analysis is obscured. Instead of learning the realtionship between social transformations and the way people talk, we are told reporters are too self-important, politicians too aftaid of being spontaneous, social scientists too attached to impressive-sounding jargon. As for the common, non-proffessional man, well, he comes across...
...political but literary; Newman is unable to tolerate the untidiness caused by the social changes of the last decade. For Newman, like Arnold, there are two real classes: those who know, and those who don't. For all his insight into the relationship of Watergate and America's literary decay, Newman remains oblivious to the fact that the distinction between the educated elite and the uneducated masses is an arbitrary one which the social movements of the '60s that affected language sought to eradicate. Social change will invariably take its toll on language; judgement on the way people speak...