Second opinion
I DON'T want to sound like a decon- structionist literary critic, but sometimes I wonder whether language isn't the means by which we all disguise our meaning from one another. I think I write with tolerable clarity, and yet I am constantly misunderstood. Either I delude myself about the limpidity of my prose, or most of the human race doesn't understand plain English.
For example, I recently wrote an arti- cle in a newspaper in which I asserted that a patient could have no right to an easeful death because such a right implied that someone had a duty to pro- vide it. Doctors, I said, cannot have an actual duty to kill their patients, though they may sometimes have an excuse for doing so — irresistible impulse, for exam- ple. And I also pointed out that once the principle of killing patients had been con- ceded there would be an ineluctable slide towards death on demand.
I had fondly supposed that no one could mistake my meaning, agree with it or not, but almost by the next post a letter arrived which proved me wrong. A lady with severe obsessive-compulsive rituals thanked me for my enlightened views, and asked whether I knew of anyone pre- pared to put her down, out of her misery.
Well, I am told by my prisoner patients that the cost of a contract on someone has declined of late (the conse- quence, I presume, of the law of supply and demand), providing that he or she is only an average humble citizen. But I expect that my correspondent was hop- ing for something on the National Health, and therefore my reply must have disappointed.
Everyone who writes for the public, I should imagine, sometimes receives let- ters which are not only uncomprehend- ing but stark mad. I myself have made a small Holmesian study of the envelopes in which correspondents enclose their written responses, and have come to recognise, for example, when the writer is angry, even before I have opened the envelope.
The enrages of England — who seem to congregate disproportionately in Bournemouth and its environs — use tiny envelopes of the meanest quality, of a dirty off-white colour. These they address, using a 30-year-old manual typewriter whose keys they have struck with such force that the letters are no longer prop- erly aligned. Moreover, the type is faded because the ribbon is exhausted of ink and will never be replaced. As for the letters themselves, they are always on the flimsiest paper (fear of having to use an extra stamp, I suppose). Enrages are fond of the upper case, as in WHY DO you doctors ALWAYS stick together like GLUE? The other typo- graphical means of expressing apoplectic rage is underlining, though when this is done in a colour different from the type itself it is indicative of the mad letter proper.
One can also tell the mad letter proper by its envelope. It is frequently a shade of mauve, and there is a lengthy post scriptum message scrawled on its flap. The letter itself conforms to no orthodox layout, with handwritten sentences meandering round the edges of the paper (which is thicker than that of enrages' letters), and contains sym- bols and drawings in addition to writ- ing. Last week, for example, I received a letter from a witch in Cornwall, com- plete with femino-wyccan runes, informing me that money was the means by which grasping and greedy men had always prevented nurturing women from ruling the world as it should be ruled, with attention to love rather than finances.
Needless to say, it arrived by second- class post.
Theodore Dalrymple
Previous page
