benny/HDAS

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Jun 17, 2005, at 4:18 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> Yes, but I can never remember who. Can someone help me out here?
>
> What was the question?
>
> James C Stalker <stalker at MSU.EDU> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: James C Stalker
> Subject: Re: benny/HDAS
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>
> Do you ever think,in the quiet hours of morning, "I've forgotten
> more than.
> . .ever knew"?

ah, this allows me to quote a bit about (possible) narrative
improvement.  from Janet Malcolm's "Someone Says Yes to It" (on Stein
and Toklas), The New Yorker, 6/13&20/05, p. 164:

-----
In "What Is Remembered," Toklas wrote of the "troubled, confused and
very uncertain" afternoon of the surgery.  "I sat next to her and she
said to me early in the afternoon, What is the answer?  I was
silent.  In that case, she said, what is the question?"  However, in
a letter to Van Vechten ten years earlier, Toklas had written:

.....
About Baby's last words.  She said upon waking from a sleep--What is
the question.  And I didn't answer thinking she was not completely
awakened.  Then she said again--What is the question and before I
could speak she went on--If there is no question then there is no
answer.
.....

Stein's biographers have naturally selected the superior "in that
case what is the question?" version.  Strong narratives win out over
weak ones when no obstacle of factuality stands in their way.  What
Stein actually said remains unknown.  That Toklas cited the lesser
version in a letter of 1953 is suggestive but not conclusive.
-----

umm, what was the question?

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)