Topsy

The expression "grows like Topsy" is apparently from Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I read long ago. Like so many books written prior to 1984 or thereabouts, it doubtless gives the inmates of political correction institutions many an opportunity to fume and froth.

I wonder how these people could ever achieve a sense of the past as something other than "it's not my thing". Perhaps they might meditate on a thing they do have in common with folks dead and gone - outrage, that combination of the two traditional sins of wrath and pride. We have never been modern, as Bruno Latour wrote.

Here is what I found on Topsy:

St. Clare's daughter Eva becomes friends with the young slave girl Topsy, and the novel recounts a conversation between Topsy and St. Clare's cousin Ophelia:

"Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?" The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual. "Do you know who made you?" "Nobody, as I knows on," said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added, "I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me." [Chapter XX]

Given the astounding popularity of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (at the time of its publication it outsold every book previously published in the U.S. except the Bible), legions of readers were charmed by Topsy's declaration that she just "growed." Soon "it growed like Topsy" had become a popular figure of speech to describe something that grew or increased by itself, without apparent design or intention, and by 1885 Rudyard Kipling was explaining to a correspondent that "I have really embarked ... on my novel.. Like Topsy 'it growed' while I wrote." Today "grow like Topsy" is most often heard in criticism of bureaucratic institutions or government budgets, for whose bloated sprawl and inefficiency no one is eager to take credit.

From "The Word Detective" (April 27, 2002)

Incivil servant

I have a broadband contract with T-Mobile, the severed arm of the former German communications monopoly, das Deutsche Fernmeldeamt. Their employees still have a tendency to bureaucratic give-a-damnedness, as the following example shows.

T-Mobile provides wireless services. I pay a flat monthly rate for a high-speed connection. As I reported recently, it turns out that the fine print in the contract allows T-Mobile to degrade my service for the remainder of any month in which I download a total of 5 gigabytes. I hit that limit again today around 18:00, and then it took over 5 minutes to load Crown's home page. There is probably high traffic around this time, but still, this is more like termination than degradation.

My father always told me to "go to the top" with complaints, and take a wad of bills with me. So I called the service line, but couldn't get past the first call center smoothie who took my call. I asked how much would I have to pay to upgrade my service to avoid this volume restriction, but was told that it was impossible to do that. The schmuck didn't even suggest an alternative. He seemed offended by my question, as if I had tendered a bribe.

Décision de réserve

In an interview from 2000 excerpted below, Sloterdijk explains the thinking behind his decision to walk softly and carry a small stick.

[Skip to next paragraph if this one proves too excruciating]
He sketches his view of our "postconsensual" society, in which "truths" are more appropriately described as "symbolic immune systems", rather than external resources we compete with each other to acquire. We are condemned to the ceaseless task of wielding morpho-immunological shields against microbial invasions and "experiences, those impediments to our semantic arrangements". Each of us, in his/her inescabably defensive position of self-maintenance, would do well to cultivate a radical respect for the defensive needs of others.

I am disgusted by the whiff of pretentiousness in the last paragraph, which is my attempt to give a sense of the excerpt by translating phrases from it into English. But it's damned hard to recreate a vocabulary and style from scratch, even with recourse to congeneric words.

Sloterdijk's style is a baroque literary German that is both precise and allusive. I have my doubts about the French in this interview, but then I'm not a French intellectual. I trust to Sloterdijk, who is bilingual. I have a sinking feeling that I am condemned to parallel existences in distinct language worlds. But it may mean, on a positive view, that I have cognitive spare parts stored safely in different locations, and don't have to wait for advances in stem cell application.

P.S.: One problem with my paraphrasing of the interview in the second paragraph is just that: the paragraph attempts to "summarize" the interview in a few sentences. Maybe there is something like a semantic compaction index for authors, that specifies the maximum amount that an author's texts can be compressed and still be meaningful.

The full interview of Sloterdijk by Éric Alliez in March 2000 is Vivre chaud et penser froid.