Interviews
On Thursday, September 17th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed Simon Winchester to discuss The Professor And The Madman.
Moderator: Welcome, Simon Winchester! We are so pleased that you could join us this evening to discuss your new book,
The Professor And The Madman. How are you this evening?
Simon Winchester: Tremendously well, thank you. It is actually so very good, after two weeks of talking about the book, to be writing about it instead -- very therapeutic and restful. I hope!
Graham from Boston: How did you first hear of this fascinating story? Thanks for such an excellent account of the making of the
Oxford English Dictionary.
Simon Winchester: I was, believe it or not, in the bath one day before breakfast, reading a book about lexicography (as one does). It was called Chasing The Sun by Jonathon Green, and in it, the author mentions, almost as an aside, how the lexicographical world was familiar with the tale of W. C. Minor, the lunatic murderer who was so important to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary. I remember sitting up in the bath, Archimedes-like, saying I had never heard of such a thing, and calling a friend of mine in Oxford (the phone being beside the bath). She said yes, she knew the tale -- and if I could get access to the files in Broadmoor asylum, then, she thought, I'd have a splendid yarn to tell.
Lynn Riggs from Chesterfield: Is your book the first work about Minor and Murray? What an amazing account. I can't believe it hasn't already been made into a play or book.
Simon Winchester: Actually a New York playwright named Mitchell Redman has written a play about one rather sad aspect of W. C. Minor's life, but the play never found a producer (perhaps it might now, because of the renewed interest in the tale); and I haven't seen it because, quite understandably, Mitchell prefers to keep the play tightly guarded. But you're right -- it is surprising that it hasn't been told fully before. Surprising and, from my point of view, delightful!
Peter Henry from Seattle: Can't wait to read your book! I am curious at how the making of Murray's
Oxford English Dictionary was funded. How long did it take to complete, and were all the members working on it salaried?
Simon Winchester: It took an astonishing 70 years to complete (they thought it would take four). It cost about three million pounds in the money of the day, and everyone was paid (including Dr. Murray's children, who were paid sixpence a week to sort the slips into alphabetical order -- and became demon crossword solvers as a result). The editors also issued the dictionary in paperback parts, known as fascicles, so as to improve their cash flow. In the USA they cost about $2.50 each, and came out about once every three years.
Dale from Williamsburg: What type of sources did you use to write this book -- i.e. where did you draw most of your information on Minor?
Simon Winchester: The two crucial sources were the previously secret files at Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum in England, and St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington D.C. Plus a lot of U.S. Army records, Civil War records, and the amazing archives at Oxford University Press (which preserve such things as the tail of a mouse found among the dictionary slips -- and filed under the letter T, not M, a matter that offended some linguistic pedants).
Dennis from Worchester, MA: It is amazing to comprehend that Shakespeare did not have access to a dictionary! Thanks for including the chapters on the making of the
Oxford English Dictionary. How fascinating. I am curious -- why do you think it took the English so long (lagging behind Italy and France) to compile a dictionary?
Simon Winchester: I think the lag came about in part because of the intellectual struggle going on in England over whether or not to try to "fix" the language, as the French tried to do, to establish a body that decided what was good and what was bad, what could be included and what could not. People like Jonathan Swift argued that English ought to be fixed like this; others -- happily, the majority, in the end -- reckoned that English was a forever changing language, living and extending itself, and that a proper dictionary, which would of necessity be a very large book, would reflect that constant shifting, that constant evolution.
Reed Tate from Boston: What are some of the explanations of Minor's madness? And when he contributed to the dictionary, was he still suffering?
Simon Winchester: It is always difficult to decide what event triggers madness. All we can say for sure about Minor was that he had a predisposition to madness, and that something tipped him over the edge into delusional paranoid schizophrenia, which is how he would be diagnosed today. He probably was tipped over the edge by being forced to brand the letter D with a red-hot branding iron onto the cheek of a deserter in the one Civil War battle in which he fought -- but then again, he may have been terribly sunburned during a long summer duty in south Florida, and there is some evidence that he was ordered to witness the execution of a Yale classmate. Whatever the cause, he was prodigiously and floridly mad for all the years that he wrote for the Oxford English Dictionary, and for long after. All his life, in fact.
Reagan from Miami, FL: How often is the
Oxford English Dictionary revised? Do you think there will ever be a complete overhaul of it?
Simon Winchester: It is being revised as we speak. A fully integrated second edition came out in 1989; there is now a pretty up-to-date CD-ROM, and they are doing a 3rd edition online (for all info on this, I'd recommend you visit the Oxford English Dictionary web page at www.Oxford English Dictionary.co.uk, I think.) In addition to that, a "New Additions" volume comes out every couple of years. There is a huge dictionary staff at Oxford, all beavering away like mad.
Sarah from Middlebury: Your descriptions of Winchester's madness suggest that he suffered from schizophrenia, complete with his delusional theories of conspiracy. What do you think?
Simon Winchester: Sarah, you speak of "Winchester's madness" -- I hope you mean Minor's. Though there is a strong streak of insanity among many lexicographers, and those interested in them, I am told.
Alexia from Yale: Were the records that you found on Minor and Murray available to the public? How painstaking were your research efforts?
Simon Winchester: The research was not, in truth, terribly difficult -- although the people in the District of Columbia government refused point-blank to let me have any St. Elizabeth's records. However, I rather trumped their ace by finding that, since Minor was a federal patient when St. E's was a federal institution, all his records were in the National Archives and available merely by asking, over the Internet. The Broadmoor Archives became available after a lot of pleading -- Broadmoor is still home to a lot of very dangerously ill people, and the authorities are not frightfully keen to let strangers in.
Claire R. from Littleton: Where did your research for this book take you?
Simon Winchester: Not very far. Broadmoor itself, Orange County, Virginia, South London, Washington, D.C., New Haven, and Sri Lanka. Actually, now that I come to think of it, quite far. But much less far than earlier books.
Larry M. from New York University: With the publication of your book and works like a
A Beautiful Mind, there seems to be a trend now with recognizing genius in madness. What do you think? What can we make of such individuals?
Simon Winchester: The old chestnut of "the very fine line" that supposedly divides pure genius from dementia and lunacy -- I think it can be very overrated, very romanticized. There are some cases, and this is one of them. Ezra Pound was another. Richard Dadd. But I am sorry to say that most of the patients at Broadmoor today, and in whom I became interested, did not seem to display an abundance of talent.
Pam H. from Detroit: Your bio says that this book may be made into a movie. Would you be involved in writing the screenplay? When can we expect it in theaters?
Simon Winchester: Actually Luc Besson, who has bought the movie rights, has told me that I am considered "too literary" to do the screenplay (which I and my chums think is a bit of a joke). So someone else has been asked to tinker around with the book, and I am awaiting results. Other than that, I know that Mel Gibson has expressed a keen interest in playing Dr. Murray, and talks are said to be going on between Besson and Gibson. We'll see. I'm not holding my breath. But Besson is an amazing director, and something rather extraordinary could come out of this.
Lance R. from San Francisco, CA: How would one begin to go about finding the earliest possible use of a word? What a daunting task! How did Murray orchestrate this endeavor among his readers?
Simon Winchester: Constant exhortation, I can only imagine. Some people, when set a challenge (such as "find the word 'web page' in sources earlier than 1987," say) set about it with fantastic enthusiasm. The Oxford English Dictionary Newsletter, also to be found on the Oxford English Dictionary web page I mentioned before, gives a half-yearly list of the editors desiderata, which include things like the example I gave above.
Paul C. from New Jersey: What is your opinion on the issue of whether we should detain the mentally ill in institutions? There seems to be a lot of debate on this issue lately.
Simon Winchester: I'm certainly no expert. But within the walls of Broadmoor there are clearly a large number of people who would be a great danger to those outside; there are also a lot of very elderly criminals who might be harmless but unable to function, and would end up on the streets. So a place like Broadmoor ends up playing a dual role -- segregating abominably dangerous people from society and acting as an asylum, "a place of refuge," to give the dictionary definition, for those unable to function beyond the walls.
Berry Marshall from Baltimore, MD: Would you consider yourself a philologist? Thanks for the descriptions of the making of the
Oxford English Dictionary. Wonderful!
Simon Winchester: Thanks a lot. No, I'm neither a philologist nor a lexicographer. But like all writers, I love words, and this makes one a dabbler in both disciplines.
Katherine Cleary from Reston: I understand that you are a journalist. What has been your most memorable assignment?
Simon Winchester: The Jonestown massacre. Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland. President Nixon's resignation. Pol Pot's funeral. Getting thrown into prison for three months in Argentina on spying charges. Lots of odds and ends stick in the mind.
Adrian W. from New York: What do you make of Eliza Merrett, the widow of the man Minor murdered, visiting Minor? How odd!
Simon Winchester: Almost the oddest aspect of the story, I think. I wonder how the film, if there is to be one, will treat the visits of this poor woman to the cell of a Minor who was clearly obsessed with sex. We will see. I await, I have to say, with some trepidation!
Saul from Reno: Why did the makers of the
Oxford English Dictionary feel that quotations were so important? That must have been the most laborious aspect of the whole task!
Simon Winchester: It was incredibly laborious -- after all, if there are 1,800,000 quotations in the finished Oxford English Dictionary, consider how many had to be collected in the first place. Millions upon millions. But they were crucially important because they demonstrated the way in which the meanings and senses of words evolved over the centuries; they showed the living language actually living, as it were.
Leighton from Brooklyn, NY: What is next for you, Mr. Winchester? I found your book riveting. I hope you can find an equally compelling subject.
Simon Winchester: Thanks a lot. I am now working on another very odd tale, about a failed Arctic expedition in the 1880s, in which there was a great deal of cannibalism, and in which reputations of great men were irreparably damaged by the yellow press reporting of the time (little worse then than now, frankly). I have just come back from a long trek in Northern Ellesmere Island to see the place where the expedition started; next summer I'll go back to where it ended so tragically.
Mary Jamison from Greensboro, PA: What was Murray's reaction when he first met Minor? Can't wait to read this book. Looks great.
Simon Winchester: As Murray was actually aware that Minor was mad, he was determined to be kindly during the first meeting. After taking tea and Dundee cake with him in his cell, Murray pronounced Minor "a fine Christian gentleman -- and seemingly as sane as myself," which many consider more a comment on Murray's own sanity than on Minor's mental state!
Reed from Louisville: What has been the reaction overseas to your book? Was it published in England first?
Simon Winchester: It was published last June under the title The Surgeon Of Crowthorne, and I'm happy to say it made number one on the bestseller list and remains hovering in the top ten. Considering that none of my other books has made it into the lists, nor even come close, this has been (and continues to be) a very pleasing experience.
Tad Howard from Alexandria: What was the most surprising thing you found out when researching this book?
Simon Winchester: I think the tragic and traumatic event that occurred on December 5, 1902, but which I don't think I would be permitted to tell you about online. It was a shock to read the file, and to imagine that a man could do such a thing.
Trent from Charlottesville: Did you come up with this title? It is marvelous!
Simon Winchester: Actually, no. I wanted it to have the British title, The Surgeon Of Crowthorne, but I was told this would ensure the book's early journey to the remainder table. So my agent, Jody Hotchkiss at Sterling Lord, came up with the idea, and I'm happy to record my gratitude to him.
W. Stein from St. Louis, MO: Was the final
Oxford English Dictionary version true to the vision of its original conceivers?
Simon Winchester: I believe it was, and remains so. Mind you, there are critics: Read a book called Empire Of Words by a Princeton academic named Willinsky, and he will show you how the Oxford English Dictionary is an imperial contrivance of the minds of dead white English men, and so should be (at least to an extent) disregarded.
Elke from New York: Who did the illustrations for this book? They are lovely!
Simon Winchester: I'll pass the message on to the chap in London who drew them for us. I was at first a little dubious, but people seem to like them, and so I have since eaten a bit of humble pie, or crow, or whatever, for ever having questioned the wisdom of those at HarperCollins who argued for them.
Jonathan from Seattle: What drew you to the character of Minor? Why did you feel the need to write a book about him? What were your inspirations in doing so? I'm really looking forward to reading it. It sounds fascinating!
Simon Winchester: It was a purely journalistic hunch -- the fact that a good old-fashioned story was out there to be told, the kind of thing that could take you into a crowded room, and have you say, "Shush a moment! I've got something extraordinary to tell you" -- and everyone would hush, and be amazed at the end.
Stefanie from New York: Is there a lesson to be learned from Minor's example?
Simon Winchester: That there certainly is redemption to be had -- that everyone can make a contribution, that all of us has a chance, in some way big or small, to make a difference. See how the deck was stacked against him -- and see what an astonishing thing he did, the benefits of which will last for always.
Emily Wood from Toledo: Any particular challenges in writing this book? And did Minor keep any sort of personal journal?
Simon Winchester: Seemingly not -- though people have recently written to me with offers of other papers, so who knows what I'll find out there. The challenge was really, Could I do this? I'm really a travel writer, and the idea of traveling in time, rather than in place, was strange for me. But it turned out to be truly the most enjoyable book to write.
Melissa from Connecticut: Was Minor treated fairly in the insane asylum?
Simon Winchester: Until the very end, when a brute named Dr. Brayn took away all his privileges and turfed him out of the two rooms he had occupied for 40 years. Brayn is the villain of the story, in my view. (Except he had the ideal name, I suppose, for someone running a lunatic asylum.)
Richard Hanson from Texas, USA: Is there any chance that the Internet will kill the print industry, at least for the dictionary? I worry about this!
Simon Winchester: I never want to see books as beautiful as the Oxford English Dictionary vanish. I am optimistic: Video didn't kill film, and I don't think what we are doing here will stop people producing, and reading, those wonderful confections of paper and ink we call books.
Moderator: What an interesting discussion! Thank you, Simon Winchester, for joining us this evening. Do you have any closing comments for your online audience?
Simon Winchester: Just that this has been enormous fun. My typing fingers are hurting a bit (being a hunt-and-peck person), but I'd like it to go on and on. Anyway, thanks a lot, and farewell from here.