anachronism?

[James E. Clapp]

Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> I wonder if the real objection on the reviewer's part was not to the
> well-established use of WEIRD as 'uncanny, strange', but to the use of the
> 'all getting too ...' locution.  Just a guess . . .

My guess too.  The reviewer quoted the whole line ("It was all getting too
weird; I just had to get out"); and although we can't know the context, the
line as a whole certainly has a post-1950's ring to me.

Partly it is simply the juxtaposition of words; I'd be surprised if many
instances of expressions like "getting too weird" or "got really weird"
could be found from the 1940's or before, especially when not referring to
anything specific but rather to a general situation ("*all* getting too
weird"). But partly there is something about the sentiment the words are
expressing, or the particular use of those words to express that sentiment,
that is hard for me to imagine in a 1940's setting.  There's a sort of
vagueness of sentiment and expression that I associate (perhaps unfairly)
with a younger generation than mine.

I see that *I'm* being vague!  I guess I'm like Justice Stewart and
pornography:  I can't say definitively what makes this anachronistic, but I
know it when I see it (I think); I feel sure that I would have reacted to
this line the same way the reviewer did.

James E. Clapp