Is it obscure, a classic, or both? [Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος]

Awake, mostly alert, hoping to maintain this state (or time naps appropriately) to get to Bowie, College Park, and Arlington tonight in that order. A bit cooler today; wondering to what extent the heat was adding to my discombobulation.

Editing my quote-of-the-day queue (currently filled through the end of January, though I may have to shuffle some quotes to insert a bit from McCain's speech last night before then), and wanted to include a quote that had spoilers in it. And my instinct was to <lj-cut> the spoilers despite the book in question not being recent. Now I'm wondering: should I spoiler-cut a quote from a book published a century ago (literally -- it's from 1904)? I'm also trying to decide whether to just hide the entire quote behind a spoiler warning or to chop it up with a sprinkling of cut-tags to obscure who is speaking to whom. Oh, a probably-relevant detail: it's one of the sequels to The Wisard of Oz.

Hope to start catching up on comments and email later, but managing my spoons to make tonight work is a higher priority.

([Edit] I remain amused by the fact that the verb "spoiler" and the noun "spoiler" mean opposite things (that is, that to "spoiler" something means to de-fang (well, attempt to make avoidable) the "spoilers" in it). I am, of course, similarly amused by the relationship between "spoil" and "spoiler". Though I've seen some folks get impressively confused when encountering "spoiler" as a verb for the first time, alas.)

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I've never heard "spoiler" as a verb before. What does it do that good old "spoil" doesn't already do?

Sure, any noun can be verbed, but that doesn't mean it ought to be. :-)

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To "spoiler" a message means to put a spoiler warning in the subject header and/or insert "spoiler space" (or, on LJ, spoiler lj-cuts) to make it possible to avoid any spoilers contained therein. So I guess you could say spoilering means spoiling the spoilers, in order not to spoil the movie/book you're talking about for people who haven't seen/read it yet.

I haven't seen "spoil" used in the same sense (i.e. "spoil a message" meaning what I described for "spoiler a message"), though perhaps that's done in different corners of the net than I've been reading?

"Sure, any noun can be verbed, but that doesn't mean it ought to be. :-)"

True, 'dat (both halves of it). But what amused me was the inversion of meaning in the verbing process, which strikes me as a little unusual.

(BTW, what does it mean that the sentence, "Verbing weirds language," has stopped feeling self-referential (that is, all perception of dissonance has vanished) for me?)

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To "spoiler" a message means to [...]

Oh, to spoiler-proof it, or apply spoiler protection. Ok. I haven't heard the word "spoiler" used for that activity before.

I haven't seen "spoil" used in the same sense (i.e. "spoil a message" meaning what I described for "spoiler a message"),

Ditto. You "spoil" something by revealing the ending or whatever, not by impeding that.

(BTW, what does it mean that the sentence, "Verbing weirds language," has stopped feeling self-referential (that is, all perception of dissonance has vanished) for me?)

"It's not the verbing that weirds the language, it's the renounification." (Marc LeBlanc)

"Weirds" as a verb still gets my attention just a bit (in a "that's not quite right" way), but verbing nouns is pretty routine these days. What bugs me is when perfectly good verbs already exist for that purpose, as is so often the case when goofy management trends are involved.

"It's not the verbing that weirds the language, it's the renounification."

As much as I like that as a button slogan, I don't think that really makes it any weirder, just clumsier (sometimes, yes, pointlessly and annoyingly so).

" What bugs me is when perfectly good verbs already exist for that purpose [...]"

*nod* Sometimes it's for finer nuance, sometimes it's deliberately silly (sometimes both, when I'm making nonstandard nouns from adjectives) ... and sometimes it's just stupidly clumsy use of language. That third category happens rather too often. *sigh*

E.g., "doable" -- one of my most despised words. And, since I work for investment bankers, it's only one of the most egregious examples of verbing nouns that's out there. "Feasible" and "possible" are my preferred synonyms for "doable" -- I have been told there's a nuance in "doable" of intent, though it's not how I've mostly seen it used.

For the record, I have read all the Oz books. So spoil away! :)

All of them? Yowza. I haven't even made it through all the Baum ones yet (though admittedly I'm trying to read them in order, and some are allegedly hard to find, and some are definitely hard to find in ebook form, which is how I've been looking for them so far). Then again, I got a late start (this year).

So you'll probably know which bit of Marvelous Land I couldn't resist quoting then. ;-)

The question is how many people are, like me, discovering these books relatively late.

I was SHOCKED, recently, to find out that several folks whom I consider well-read fen haven't read the Oz books. Not even the first.

We might be weird, but they're on our kids' (3 1/2 and almost 6 years old) shelves, along with some Raggedy Ann and Andy books (and, shortly, The Dark is Rising and Harry the P, and...)

I have Opinions about "spoilers". To put it in simplest terms, a work that doesn't suffer revealing unconnected details, even several of those, is not an interesting work.

I'm not saying that such a work cannot be diverting entertainment. But it is of the "use and dispose" variety.

I would worry a bit about spoiling someone's potential enjoyment of a use-and-dispose work, and I'd worry about diminishing, even in a minor way, someone's enjoyment of a work that remains worthwhile even without its surprises, but there are categories of works which most folks don't expect to need to protect. I don't think Citizen Kane is "ruined" by knowing what "Rosebud" refers to before it starts, or that Romeo and Juliet isn't worth watching because we all know how it ends, or that the end of season ... uh whichever season Glory was in -- five, right?... of Buffy isn't worth watching just because you know there was a season six; but watching the final episode of season seven the second time was a different emotional experience than watching it without knowing who would survive. Still worth going back to -- all the important aspects remain powerful -- but different.

If I accidentally spoil the surprise for someone in a work that's generally considered safe to discuss, because they're one of the few people who was going to see it but hadn't yet, that's unfortunate but mostly in the "oops, oh well" category. But for everything else, I try to be polite even when I feel spoiling the surprise doesn't ruin the work.

So what I'm wondering is whether The Marvelous Land of Oz is a book we can assume has already been read by most of the people interested in it, a classic that new people are constantly discovering for the first time, sufficiently obscure that most of the people who haven't read it aren't likely to encounter it, or has a surprise that's sufficiently unsurprising that revealing it doesn't actually spoil anything.

As to whether it suffers the revelation, well, I would read it again myself, so I guess it survives it.

Not related to the topic of the entry, but glad that you seem/feel perkier. I was rather concerned, all through the past week.

Thanks. I'm glad to be feeling better too. Just hoping I don't overdo too soon and screw myself up again.

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