This book is a collection of short pieces on language. In his essays, Thomas will sometimes maneuver into a discourse on etymology and Indo-European roots; most of the book follows that pattern, examining particular words and their histories, drawing connections among them.

Some chapters are amusing but forgettable, while others are more successful. A favorite of mine is "Mathematics and Language", one of the few which seems a product of planning rather than accretion, which speculates on mathematics as a language and a social force (appealing nicely to my prejudices). I like "Accidie, Anomie etc." particularly for a somewhat uncharacteristic passage on accidie. "Music, Crowd, Absurd etc.", in discussing music's appeal, includes a claim that I think is generally wrong but need to quote anyway: "... what profound music does in the receptive, attentive mind is to produce a steady, unwavering high plateau of surprise, lasting as long as the music lasts." (Terry Riley does this for me; it's unfortunate that Thomas apparently never learned how to listen to minimalist music -- which he calls "cranky".)

A slight recurring annoyance is the assumption that etymology has a necessary logic, that the history of a word must flavor its meaning. Thomas likes to personify language, inferring its habits and its personal preferences. In keeping with his usual approach to this sort of romanticism, he acknowledges that linguists generally disagree, and throws in a few spoilers (the common root of "war" and "wurst", for example), but persists anyway. Treat this as a sort of poetry, ignoring if necessary his description of comparative philology as a "quantitative science", and it comes out all right.

eub 8/96