Burton:
I conceived the book around fifteen years ago. Every time I heard a word, term, or phrase used in the atrocious way English is butchered in the U.S., I would jot it down and provide a definition for it. There was no research, just observation, and with a few exceptions the definitions originated inside my restless brain. Where an exception occurs and I owe conception of the definition to someone else, even if I reformulated it, you will see an acknowledgment.
Norm:
Your dictionary has been compared to Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary. Could you tell our readers something about Bierce's dictionary and did you pattern your dictionary after his? If not, what is the difference between the two?
Burton:
When Bierce lived in San Francisco, where I live now, he was a columnist for Hearst's foundation stone newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and later he journalized in his own periodical. As he became angrier and angrier at the phoniness and hypocrisy and the social injustice he saw everywhere, he became ever more cynical and satirical in his approach to commentary. He was called "Bitter Bierce." Out of his bitterness and cynicism, his Devil's Dictionary emerged.
I have followed his method of employing satire to demolish standard applications to words that mean something entirely different from the way they are generally used, to provide the true meanings of them, and to add iconoclastic commentary; but our styles are of necessity very different. Bierce wrote toward the end of the Victorian era, and so much of his writing appears stuffy and even archaic. More importantly, most of the words I define either did not even exist in Bierce's time or were used in ways that have been drastically changed. I can only imagine how much deviltry Bierce would have found in villainizing words such as downsize and outsource as they emerge from charlatanical business moguls and politicians. But such words did not exist in Bierce's time on earth because the conditions that have generated them did not exist.
Norm:
Your dictionary has a broader mission than simply entertaining. Can you talk more about that mission and what you hope readers will take away from reading your dictionary?
Burton:
For me to believe there has been a "mission" in publishing Lucifer's Dictionary, I would have to be a Don Quixote, or at least a Pollyanna. The most I can hope for is that readers emerge from a reading of the book with a determination to use the English language accurately and with originality instead of conforming to so-called "pop culture," that the readers will recognize when members of the media and business and socio-political leaders are spouting claptrap, that the readers will take time to write letters to the media or even op-ed pieces to correct some of the widespread butchering of the language, and that maybe, just maybe, some of all of that will have some effect.
Norm:
You mention the game of Monopoly in your dictionary and it appears you have extensively researched the history of this popular board-game. Would you briefly inform our readers why Monopoly interested you and what did you discover?
Burton:
I became interested in the origin of the Monopoly game when a San Francisco State University economics professor, Ralph Anspach, produced a game called Anti-Monopoly and Parker Brothers sued him for infringing on its patent and copyright. As the result of newspaper and television publicity about the lawsuit, Anspach heard from individuals who had played the game in varying forms and under different titles long before Parker Brothers began manufacturing it and suing everyone who tried to produce the game or any similar game or any similar board under any other name.
Out of his research and what is known in law as the discovery process which occurs during a lawsuit, a long-buried story merged.
I conceived the book around fifteen years ago. Every time I heard a word, term, or phrase used in the atrocious way English is butchered in the U.S., I would jot it down and provide a definition for it. There was no research, just observation, and with a few exceptions the definitions originated inside my restless brain. Where an exception occurs and I owe conception of the definition to someone else, even if I reformulated it, you will see an acknowledgment.
Norm:
Your dictionary has been compared to Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary. Could you tell our readers something about Bierce's dictionary and did you pattern your dictionary after his? If not, what is the difference between the two?
When Bierce lived in San Francisco, where I live now, he was a columnist for Hearst's foundation stone newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner, and later he journalized in his own periodical. As he became angrier and angrier at the phoniness and hypocrisy and the social injustice he saw everywhere, he became ever more cynical and satirical in his approach to commentary. He was called "Bitter Bierce." Out of his bitterness and cynicism, his Devil's Dictionary emerged.
I have followed his method of employing satire to demolish standard applications to words that mean something entirely different from the way they are generally used, to provide the true meanings of them, and to add iconoclastic commentary; but our styles are of necessity very different. Bierce wrote toward the end of the Victorian era, and so much of his writing appears stuffy and even archaic. More importantly, most of the words I define either did not even exist in Bierce's time or were used in ways that have been drastically changed. I can only imagine how much deviltry Bierce would have found in villainizing words such as downsize and outsource as they emerge from charlatanical business moguls and politicians. But such words did not exist in Bierce's time on earth because the conditions that have generated them did not exist.
Norm:
Your dictionary has a broader mission than simply entertaining. Can you talk more about that mission and what you hope readers will take away from reading your dictionary?
Burton:
For me to believe there has been a "mission" in publishing Lucifer's Dictionary, I would have to be a Don Quixote, or at least a Pollyanna. The most I can hope for is that readers emerge from a reading of the book with a determination to use the English language accurately and with originality instead of conforming to so-called "pop culture," that the readers will recognize when members of the media and business and socio-political leaders are spouting claptrap, that the readers will take time to write letters to the media or even op-ed pieces to correct some of the widespread butchering of the language, and that maybe, just maybe, some of all of that will have some effect.
Norm:
You mention the game of Monopoly in your dictionary and it appears you have extensively researched the history of this popular board-game. Would you briefly inform our readers why Monopoly interested you and what did you discover?
Burton:
I became interested in the origin of the Monopoly game when a San Francisco State University economics professor, Ralph Anspach, produced a game called Anti-Monopoly and Parker Brothers sued him for infringing on its patent and copyright. As the result of newspaper and television publicity about the lawsuit, Anspach heard from individuals who had played the game in varying forms and under different titles long before Parker Brothers began manufacturing it and suing everyone who tried to produce the game or any similar game or any similar board under any other name.
Out of his research and what is known in law as the discovery process which occurs during a lawsuit, a long-buried story merged.
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