Since the 2nd edition of The Speaking Self: Language Lore and English Usage appeared in print under the Springer Nature imprimatur, Y-H-B has often wondered whether his very expensive book has reached the wide audience it deserves by its sui generis character as a usage manual. The blog on which the book is based (languagelore.net) currently has over three hundred subscribers (including 292 RSS feeds), which constitutes palpable testimony of its global spread, but the typical lack of comments on its posts does not furnish any assurance as to its impact.
All the same, I remain proud of what I have accomplished in print and remain hopeful that the high price of the published book will not remain an insuperable obstacle to its assuming its rightful place among specimens of its genre.
MICHAEL SHAPIRO
You have good reason to be proud of your published oeuvre, Michael. I am quite certain that I am far from the only person who has benefitted greatly from reading and, not infrequently, studying your work. I suppose it sometimes takes considerable time for a culture to appreciate an original thinker’s contributions. Just consider the fate of the writings of Charles S. Peirce, whom Paul Weiss called “the most original and versatile of America’s philosophers and America’s greatest logician”.– he’s still not read very much at all, and he’s understood even less. But our hope is that ‘the truth will out’ about the scholarship of our best thinkers — and I include you among them, Michael — that eventually the value of their scholarship will be more fully recognized, studied, and eventually come to improve the disciplines addressed. If/when that happens, culture itself will be meliorized to some extent.
I hope, my friend Gary, that readers also pay attention to the Comments on this blog!
My hope as well!