Another anachronism?

[RonButters at AOL.COM]

In a message dated 3/14/2000 9:46:41 AM, laurence.horn at YALE.EDU writes:
>>
>> 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.
>

Exactly.  It's not as blatant as, say, "This is getting way weird" or "This
is SO not funny", but it's on the way.

larry >>

Well, maybe the reviewer was onto something. For me, I don't see anything
anachronistic about either part of the sentence. It all sounds like something
that could have been said in 1950.

Now try this (cited in this most recent NEW YORKER):

"But we are living in a bad period all around. The writers are always
crabbing about the fights we got now, but look at the writers you got now
themselves.
All they think about is home to wife and children, instead of laying around
saloons soaking up information" --AJ Leibing "Kearns by a Knockout," (a
Reporter at Large), July 12, 1952.

I think "saloon" carries a much different valence in 1952 from today. But
what really interests me is "crabbing"--I wonder if the high school student
today would understand what this means at all--an, if so, if she wouldn't
finds it granny talk?