Is this a good use of scare quotes?

[Jonathan Lighter]

Jesse, I think these may not be "scare quotes" but semi "quote quotes."  I think the writers may feel some doubt that Hurt had ever been "discovered" in the first place -you know, like Lana Turner had been "discovered." By the '90's, I think "discovered" was at least as likely to imply "received public adulation" as to mean "presented to the public with limited popular success." The quotes around "rediscovered" etc. may be less ironic than simply a way to indicate uncertainty about what "discovered" meant in the first place.

  But you're right that, strictly speaking, they're unnecessary.

  JL

Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM> wrote:
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Poster: Jesse Sheidlower
Subject: Is this a good use of scare quotes?
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I've been listening lately to a lot of Mississippi John Hurt.
Hurt was a bluesman who lived in Mississippi, working for
meager wages as a farmer, and playing guitar at occasional
local events. In 1928, a record guy was led to him (the guy
had come to find country singers, and two (white) guys said,
"You've gotta go hear Hurt"), and he recorded eight songs in
Nashville, and then came to New York and recorded twenty
songs.

They didn't really sell, and the Depression clobbered much of
the business in country/blues records, so Hurt worked on farms
as a hired hand. In the late 1940s, people tried to find him
and couldn't, and assumed he was dead. Then in the early
1960s, Tom Hoskins, a young folklorist, followed a
biographical lead in one of Hurt's songs and just went to a
town that he had sung about, and lo, there he was, age 71. He
was brought north, played sensationally at the Newport Folk
Festival in 1963, made more records, was revered by loads of
people (Dylan being the most prominent), and died in 1966,
thrilled rather than embittered that his career had finally
established itself after so long in obscurity.

I've read several essays about him and reviews of his music in
reference books in my collection, and here are a few curious
comments:

1993 F.-J. Hadley _Grove Press Guide to Blues on CD_ 104
Hurt's recordings after his celebrated 1963 "rediscovery" by
the folk music crowd and the national press are possessed by a
characteristic genteelness.

1998 N. Walters & B. Mansfield _MusicHound Folk: The Essential
Album Guide_ 384/2 It reads like a fairy tale or a Hollywood
script: "...'Rediscovered' musician takes folk world by
storm."

1999 J. Swenson _Rolling Stone Jazz & Blues Album Guide_ 339/2
Hurt wold be "rediscovered" by blues scholars in the '60s,
leading to acclaimed recordings and performances, prospects he
had rejected 50 years earlier.

2001 I. Stambler & L. Stambler _Folk & Blues_ 286/2 Soon after
Hurt's "rediscovery," he began to make new recordings.

2003 V. Bogdanov et al. _AllMusic Guide to the Blues_ 267/1
_Today!_ is Mississippi John Hurt's first and finest studio
release since his "rediscovery" on his Avalon farm by
folklorist Tom Hoskins in 1963.

So, to get to the point: Why the scare quotes around
"rediscovery"? It seems to be an absolutely accurate use of
the word. This wasn't some case of the white intelligentsia
eventually realizing what had been known to "the people" for
decades. He really was vanished, he recorded nothing for 35
years, no one knew where he was. Now, if it has been "His
'discovery' in 1928 by OKeh Records...", _maybe_ that would
have been all right--he had been known in a very small local
circle, and was brought to a (somewhat) larger audience. And
if "discovery" had been applied to the events of 1963, that
would be a deserving use of scare quotes--he had been known
beforehand, and his 1928 record was a collector's item praised
by aficionados, so to present the later work as a "new"
discovery could merit typographical irony.

But this? If the word _rediscover_ has any meaning at all,
it would seem to apply to this situation perfectly. The
scare quotes strike me as an attempt to mock his later fans
by denigrating their commitment, and, of course,
to allow the writer to express his (these writers are all
male) superiority by thus insulting those who came to Hurt
after 1962. (The facts that Hurt was apparently genuinely
thrilled and touched at his later fans, and that the music
of his later career was equally outstanding as his early
music, should not matter.)

I know, I know, I should find something better to do with
my time.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED

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