Bryan Garner on David Foster Wallace, Steven Pinker, and Why Language Matters

The lexicographer and author of Modern American Usage discusses the DFW essay that changed his life.

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This week on The Moment, Brian Koppelman’s guest is Bryan Garner, author, lexicographer, and subject of David Foster Wallace’s essay "Authority and American Usage." Garner talks about his book, Modern American Usage, and how his life changed after Wallace’s essay ran in both Harper’s and the book Consider the Lobster.

Koppelman and Garner also cover their mutual love of language and why descriptivists and prescriptivists just can’t get along. Other highlights include Garner’s personal warmth for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Garner’s take on why Steven Pinker’s new book on language “isn’t very good,” and the debate on whether or not prescriptivists may have literally lost the fight on the definition of literally.

Slate’s The Moment is sponsored by Quickbooks Self Employed. Visit tryselfemployed.com/moment for your free 30-day trial. And by Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer, and save up to 80 percent compared with a postage meter. Sign up for a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer when you visit Stamps.com and use the promo code MOMENT.

Topics this week:

Modern American Usage by Bryan Garner
LawProse.org provider of CLE training in legal writing, editing, and drafting
“Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage” by David Foster Wallace
“Authority and American Usage” in Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Miller's Crossing, a film by the Coen brothers
Gideon’s Trumpet by Anthony Lewis
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Quack This Way by Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
“Sorry. Dr. Gove ain’t in,” a New Yorker Cartoon by Alan Dunn
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
The Originalist, a play by John Strand
The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin
WBUR interview with Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace
The Financier by Theodore Dreiser
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
Fearing’s Restaurant in Dallas, with Chef Dean Fearing
David Brinkley: A Memoir by David Brinkley

People this week:

Email: themomentbk@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankoppelman
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Email: themomentbk@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankoppelman
Rate us on iTunes: itunes.com/themoment