I was going through a pile of stuff from my distant past, and I came across an errata slip I seem to have acquired in the late '70s. There's no indication of the book it came from, and most of the half-dozen items are perfectly normal typos (p. 129, line 1, read "Gongbo" for "Gangbo"). But the first and last items are:
p. 57, line 14, read "pornographic" for "pomographic";That's what's wrong these days: too much pomographic illiterature! Posted by languagehat at March 21, 2007 08:37 PM
Back cover, line 3, read "literature" for "illiterature".
And thus... a literary movement born...
Posted by: Kári Tulinius at March 21, 2007 09:31 PMPomography sounds like something Judith Butler might write. One shudders to think...
Posted by: Dr Zen at March 21, 2007 09:59 PM"That's what's wrong these days: too much pomographic illiterature!"
Speak for yourself-- I'm on a nearly constant search for pomographic iliterature.
BTW, did you google those two words? "Pomographic" returns almost 500 hits (mostly OCR errors, from the looks of it) and "illiterature" has a surprisingly good definition on urbandictionary.
Posted by: Zotz at March 21, 2007 10:09 PMIlliterature? Ah, this must have something to do with the Second Mereman's illiteration at the arch-thread Tabellion. Glad we were able to help! We do draw the line at pomography, though. Apples are not in our perve-view.
Too much? Nay, sir, not enough!
Posted by: bulbul at March 21, 2007 11:34 PMI hear Pomographic juice is good for the heart.
Posted by: zhoen at March 22, 2007 05:57 AMThe word "illiterature" is normative and must not be used. Stop it. The literary scholar must be neutral between "good" and "bad" literature, and should completely eschew "appreciation". (What is appreciation, anyway? "Yeah man, Hamlet is really rad!" Only idiots "appreciate" literature.)
If anything, critics should depreciate literature, in order to redress the balance. Under the domination of the Imaginary, for endless ages we have been compelled to "appreciate" "good" books.
Posted by: John Emerson at March 22, 2007 07:04 AM"If anything, critics should depreciate literature"
Way ahead of you, John.
Posted by: Conrad at March 22, 2007 02:34 PMIt seems to me, though that you were depreciating what you thought was "bad" literature, rather than depreciating neutrally.
Posted by: John Emerson at March 23, 2007 10:39 AMAnnie Proulx's first published book,in 1980, was a discussion on the making of cider, including apple presses, glass bottles versus wooden barrels and recipes for using cider in cooking. Since it's about apples, and it's not the literature of her later works, this must be pomographic illiterature ...
Posted by: Terry Collmann at March 23, 2007 12:02 PM