Bryan Garner: 5/18/15

Bryan Garner, author, lexicographer, and subject of David Foster Wallace’s essay Authority and American Usage, joins Brian to talk about their mutual love of language. Bryan also explains the fight between descriptivists and prescriptivists, how his life changed after Mr. Wallace’s essay ran in Harper’s Magazine and Consider the Lobster, and the story of how he brought Justice Scalia and David Foster Wallace together. In addition, Bryan discusses why he thinks Steven Pinker’s new book on language “isn’t very good,” the definition of the term SNOOT, and how prescriptivists may have literally lost the fight on the definition of literally. Topics this week: Modern American Usage by Bryan Garner LawProse.org provider of CLE training in legal writing, editing, and drafting Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage by David Foster Wallace Authority and American Usage by David Foster Wallace Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace Millers Crossing a film by the Coen brothers Gideon’s Trumpet by Anthony Lewis The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White Quack This Way by Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker “Sorry. Dr. Gove ain’t in.” New Yorker Cartoon by Alan Dunn Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky The Originalist a play by John Strand The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin WBUR interview with Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace The Financier – Theodore Dreiser Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger Fearing’s Restaurant in Dallas, TX with Chef Dean Fearing David Brinkley: A Memoir by David Brinkley   People this week: @BryanAGarner @SAPinker @PomonaCollege @DeanFearing Former President George W. Bush Jay-Z Brian Williams Justice Antonin Scalia Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg The Claremont Colleges   Email: [email protected] Twitter: @briankoppelman Rate us on iTunes: itunes.com/themoment   This episode of The Moment is sponsored by Quickbooks Self Employed. Visit tryselfemployed.com/moment for your free 30 day trial. And by Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer, and save up to 80 percent compared with a postage meter. Sign up for a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer when you visit Stamps.com and use the promo code MOMENT.