medialifemagazine.com
Where brevity is indeed the soul of wit
By Heidi Dawley
Mar 17, 2008 - 1:10:50 AM
Dorothy Parker was an able master of them, she the clever New Yorker writer, and so was H. L Mencken, newspaperman and Sage of Baltimore, as was Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher whom Mencken so admired, and before them there were so many others, Jesus, Buddha, Plato and just scads of others through history.
And yet oddly, until this past week the aphorism had never really gotten its fair day. But on Friday, in London, the first ever international symposium on aphorisms was held, drawing people from all over the world. The idea was to celebrate this great device of human speech.
The word aphorism probably doesn't ring many bells but aphorisms have a way of ringing lots of bells, as those wonderful clever sayings that seem to enter the mind and stick there forever. They are those short, witty sayings that first make you laugh then make you think.
Here's a famous one from Mark Twain: “I never let school interfere with my education.” And from Benjamin Franklin: “He who lieth down with dogs, shall rise up with fleas.”
Mencken gave us: "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends." And Parker this: "If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to."
These short sound bites of wisdom serve as compasses in our synthetic, rush-rush, modern world, summing up a view that's often dark but always spot-on about something fundamental about life.
“They are powerful because as humans we need words to live by,” says James Geary, the organizer of last week's symposium. “Aphorisms are the way that we talk to each other about the big existential questions of life.”
Geary has a bit of a thing for aphorisms. In fact, they have been a passion of his since he was eight years old and discovered the quotable quotes page in Reader’s Digest.
Since then Geary, a former Europe editor of Time magazine, has written several books and a number of articles about aphorisms. His most recent book, “Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists,” was published last autumn. Before that he wrote “The World in a Phrase: A History of Aphorisms,” which made The New York Times best seller list several years back.
Geary says there is no simple definition of an aphorism. But you can spot them using what he calls Geary’s Five Laws of the Aphorism.
They have to be short. They have to be personal, in other words, the author has to be known. They also have to be definitive, philosophical and to have a logical or linguistic twist.
Examples from his first book include: W.H. Auden’s: “Knowledge may have its purposes, but guessing is always more fun than knowing,” and Chamfort’s “Society is made up of two great classes: those who have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.”
Aphorisms have actually been around since about 5,000 B.C., and they're commonly found in the writings of the great intellectual and spiritual leaders, from Confucius and Buddha to Lau Tzu, Jesus and Mohammed.
“All the founding documents of the world’s religions are written in aphorisms because that was the most memorable way to get the message across,” says Geary. Few could read or write, so everything was passed down orally. Aphorisms were easy to remember.
These days we're likely to see aphorisms on t-shirts and bumper stickers. We see very little of them in writing. We send and receive more written words than in any time in history, but in the volume there's less cleverness and less of the craft of writing.
“I think the age of Dorothy Parker and Mencken was in many ways a far more literary and literate age than that we live in now,” says Geary. “The written word has far less of a prominent place now than it used to.”
What wit we do see in print is usually in ads, which can be very witty indeed. But ad slogans, no matter how clever, are not aphorisms.
Here's the critical difference. Aphorisms are intended to make you think. Ad slogans are intended to get you to buy, as Geary explains. They're all about persuading.
But ad men can rise to the aphorism. Here’s one from a former adman, the late Theodor Seuss Geisel, who wrote under the name Dr. Seuss: “From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere.”
***
Meanwhile, elsewhere in popcult, the adaptation of the popular children's book "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who" was at the top of the box office over the weekend, earning $45.1 million in ticket sales. In second place was "10,000 B.C.," which brought in $16.4 million.
In DVD rentals for the week ended March 9, according to IMDb.com, "Beowulf" stayed at the top of the chart at No. 1 in its second week on the shelves, while second place went to new release "Into the Wild."
On iTunes this morning, "Hallelujah" by Jeff Buckley lost its No. 1 spot to Usher's "Love In This Club," featuring Jeezy. In the No. 2 slot was Leona Lewis' "Bleeding Love."
And in books, Valerie Bertinelli's new tell-all "Losing It" stayed at No. 1 on The New York Times' hardcover nonfiction best-sellers list for the week ended March 8, but dropped down to No. 5 on USA Today's book chart for the week ended March 9.
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TOP MOVIES
Weekend Box Office Estimates
Weekend of March 14-16, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
MOVIE
|
Engagements
|
Box office (millions)
|
|
1
|
Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who (20th Century Fox)
|
3,954
|
$45.10
|
|
2
|
10,000 B.C. (Warner Bros.)
|
3,410
|
$16.42
|
|
3
|
Never Back Down (Summit)
|
2,729
|
$8.61
|
|
4
|
College Road Trip (Buena Vista)
|
2,706
|
$7.89
|
|
5
|
Vantage Point (Sony)
|
2,761
|
$5.40
|
|
6
|
The Bank Job (Lionsgate)
|
1,613
|
$4.91
|
|
7
|
Doomsday (Universal)
|
1,936
|
$4.74
|
|
8
|
Semi-Pro (New Line)
|
2,270
|
$3.00
|
|
9
|
The Other Boleyn Girl (Sony)
|
1,212
|
$2.90
|
|
10
|
The Spiderwick Chronicles (Paramount)
|
2,407
|
$2.39
|
|
Source: Yahoo Movies
|
|
IMDb TOP DVD RENTALS
Week ending March 9, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
|
1
|
Beowulf
|
1
|
|
2
|
Into the Wild
|
-
|
|
3
|
American Gangster
|
2
|
|
4
|
Michael Clayton
|
3
|
|
5
|
30 Days of Night
|
4
|
|
6
|
Awake
|
-
|
|
7
|
Gone Baby Gone
|
5
|
|
8
|
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
|
-
|
|
9
|
Rendition
|
7
|
|
10
|
We Own the Night
|
6
|
|
Source: IMDB
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|
ITUNES TOP 8 SONG DOWNLOADS
for Monday, March 17, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
|
1
|
Love In This Club, Usher feat. Young Jeezy
|
|
2
|
Bleeding Love, Leona Lewis
|
|
3
|
Shawty Get Loose, Lil Mama
|
|
4
|
Love Song, Sara Bareilles
|
|
5
|
No Air, Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown
|
|
6
|
Low, Flo Rida feat. T-Pain
|
|
7
|
Don’t Stop the Music, Rihanna
|
|
8
|
Stop and Stare, OneRepublic
|
|
Source: iTunes
|
|
NEW YORK
TIMES BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending March 8, 2008
|
|
Fiction (hardback)
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
Weeks on chart
|
|
1
|
Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
|
-
|
1
|
|
2
|
The Appeal by John Grisham
|
1
|
6
|
|
3
|
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
|
2
|
5
|
|
4
|
7th Heaven by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
|
3
|
3
|
|
5
|
Honor Thyself by Danielle Steel
|
-
|
1
|
|
Nonfiction (hardback)
|
|
1
|
Losing It by Valerie Bertinelli
|
1
|
-
|
|
2
|
Beautiful Boy by David Sheff
|
3
|
2
|
|
3
|
Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg
|
2
|
9
|
|
4
|
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
|
4
|
10
|
|
5
|
Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely
|
5
|
3
|
|
Fiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
|
1
|
7
|
|
2
|
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
|
2
|
5
|
|
3
|
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
|
4
|
27
|
|
4
|
The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
|
3
|
17
|
|
5
|
The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs
|
-
|
1
|
|
Nonfiction (paperback)
|
|
1
|
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
|
1
|
59
|
|
2
|
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin
|
2
|
58
|
|
3
|
The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama
|
3
|
11
|
|
4
|
Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama
|
4
|
86
|
|
5
|
90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper with Cecil Murphey
|
5
|
72
|
|
Source: New York Times
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
USA
TODAY BESTSELLING BOOKS
Week ending March 9, 2008
|
|
Rank
|
TITLE
|
Last week
|
|
1
|
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
|
1
|
|
2
|
Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
|
-
|
|
3
|
The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
|
3
|
|
4
|
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
|
5
|
|
5
|
Losing It by Valerie Bertinelli
|
2
|
|
6
|
Remember Me? by Sophie Kinsella
|
4
|
|
7
|
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules by Jeff Kinney
|
10
|
|
8
|
The Appeal by John Grisham
|
6
|
|
9
|
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
|
7
|
|
10
|
Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin
|
13
|
|
Source: USA Today
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