Is this a good use of scare quotes?

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On 1/21/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 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.

I dunno, I definitely detect a tone of derisive irony in those quotes.
There was a box set of Hurt's '60s recordings released on Vanguard in
1998 called "Rediscovered," and this review is typical:
"_Rediscovered_ (as if he was ever lost!) is a collection of Hurt's
1960s output for Vanguard."
<http://www.greenmanreview.com/rediscovered.html>

I think what's being mocked is the obsession that (white) folk-blues
enthusiasts of the '60s had with finding "lost" perfomers of the '20s
and '30s (Skip James and Son House being other prominent examples). If
you've seen footage from the Newport Folk Festivals of '63-'65 (as in
the recent Dylan documentary "No Direction Home"), it's easy to see
why the folkies were so mockable. They demanded "authenticity" in
their blues music, which led them to reject most electric blues, or
really any blues performed by someone not fitting the idealized image
of a "lost" bluesman from the rural South that they could feel
privileged to "rediscover." (I believe this image was in large part
due to the popularity of the Robert Johnson album "King of the Delta
Blues Singers," released in 1961.)

So even though it's technically true to say that Hurt was
rediscovered, the scare-quotes provide ironic distance between the
writer and the traditionalist folkies who demanded "authentic" blues.
Of course, as Jesse suggests, that's an easy stance to take these
days, just as it's easy to deride anyone from the '60s folk scene who
didn't appreciate it when Dylan went electric.


--Ben Zimmer

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