Having a Joke at Cousins’ Expense

Norman Cousins’ letter complaining about such phrases as “unmitigated gall,” “trust me implicitly” and “as far as” without a concluding “is concerned,” has stirred some opposition.

Many readers have pounced upon Cousins’ concluding comment (“Between you and I, of course”) as a sign that this distinguished gentlemen doesn’t even know simple grammar.

Among others, George Lee King pointed out that unseemly solecism, noting that Cousins might have tested his usage by using “we” and “us.” “If the substitution is ‘we,’ then ‘you and I’ is to be used, and if it is ‘us,’ then ‘you and me’ is to be used.”

King is certainly correct in faulting Cousins in this instance, but I suspected, granting Cousins’ literary stature, that his “between you and I” was simply a joke; furthermore, I suspect it was meant as a sign that his entire letter was not to be taken too seriously.

Having once saved his life by laughing and joking, Cousins tends to be joking more often than not. One must always be on guard.

King also challenges Cousins on the phrase “trust me implicitly,” which Cousins insisted was more ambiguous and indirect than “trust me explicitly .”

“I always thought (and still do),” King writes, “that when someone was trusted implicitly it was indeed a compliment because it meant that irrespective of the question at hand, the judgment rendered could be trusted.”

Barbara Rieber of Pacific Palisades politely begs to differ with Cousins on “unmitigated gall,” Cousins holding that gall can not be mitigated.

“I beg to differ with the great Norman Cousins re ‘unmitigated gall,’ ” Rieber writes. “I think ‘gall’ can be mitigated, and sometimes is, by a lingering politesse, left over from a family background of good breeding.”

Rieber’s use of the elegant phrase lingering politesse certainly suggests that she herself comes from a family background of good breeding.

She goes on: “My New World Dictionary defines gall as (colloq.) rude boldness, impudence, audacity.” For a synonym, it suggests temerity . Among the synonyms for temerity , Mrs. Rieber goes on, she found that “ gall suggests unmitigated insolence.”

Ergo, if we can have unmitigated insolence we can have unmitigated gall.

So Cousins must have been kidding after all.

Writing in a style of highly unmitigated irony (higher than Cousins’ own), John Blattner of Santa Monica heaps ironic praise on me for observing that Cousins was an intellectual (though not a physicist or mathematician); for noting that Cousins lectures medical students on literature and philosophy (though he may not have devoted 10 or 20 years of study to those subjects himself), and for noting that he is engaged in research in the biochemistry of emotions (despite a lack of laboratory experience in the field).

“What a superb hazing you have given Norman Cousins!” he carries on. “He will surely appreciate the humor in the reference to lecturing, and the statement goes far toward alerting the ‘professors’ of literature and philosophy that we know that it isn’t really necessary to spend two or three decades in dreary scholarship in order to be able to lecture on these subjects.”

And how perceptive that is! Indeed we do know it! Can you imagine how dull it would be to take a class in literature or philosophy from a professor who had spent “two or three decades in dreary scholarship” on the subject? (Cousins at least would be good for a few laughs.)

Blattner also lauds my “great stuff” in saying that in “Anatomy of an Illness” Cousins told about “curing himself of a fatal disease with laughter and positive thinking.”

The idea of curing oneself of a fatal disease ought to provide enough laughter to do that very thing. If Blattner doesn’t feel well, he’s welcome to it.

Most of our critics, however, came down on both Cousins and me for agreeing that, in his words, “Not even the liberation of one-half of the human race can justify the clanking his or her disfiguration of the language.” (As in, “Will every pupil please put on his or her hat?”)

As I said, “I have been fulminating against that usage for years, along with chairperson , the unspeakable his/her , and the other misguided feminist attempts to alter their state by altering the language.”

If anybody doesn’t agree with me, they can stick it in their ear.