Quotation or statement

I may be a descriptivist when it comes to language use, but that does not mean there aren't features of how people use language that I find annoying—that is, I have my peeves, too. The difference between me and a prescriptivist is that I'll give up my peeves if I notice that people are actually using words in a way that seems odd to me (as in my pondering the contemporary use of "geek", where I don't say that people are using the word incorrectly, but just that I don't quite get how they are using it).

So one pet peeve of mine is how people use the word "quotation." For example, a student writing about Hitchcock's "Rear Window" just began a sentence by referring to "Jeff's quotation about how 'sometimes it's worse to stay than it is to run' ..." My peeve is that the student is quoting not "Jeff's quotation" but "Jeff's statement". That is, Jeff is not quoting anything when he says that; he's saying something in his own words.

Similarly, I see things like this, in a discussion of Einstein's comment about God not playing dice: "Einstein's quotation was meant to convey his belief that the universe was not randomly designed." Again, Einstein was not quoting anyone, so it seems odd to me to refer to his remark as his quotation.

So that's my pet peeve, but when I'm grading a student's paper that uses "quotation" where I would prefer "statement," "comment," or "remark," I don't correct it, because it's my impression that that is how the word "quotation" is being used these days.

Perhaps I'll get a comment or two now telling me I should mark it as a mistake, but I'm really just wondering if others have the same peeve about this use of "quotation" or not. The usage is surely common enough that it is completely innocuous to many people.

Telling and Selling Truth and Lies: The Milkman Scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps"

This is a scene near the beginning of Alfred Hitchcock's The Thirty-Nine Steps:

Here, Richard Hannay (Robert Donat) makes three attempts to convince the milkman (Frederick Piper) to help him. Hannay first tries to bribe him. This would make help a commodity that can be bought and sold. But the milkman wants to know more ("What's the big idea?"), so Hannay concludes that "I'll have to trust you." He then tells a story about a murdered spy in his apartment—which is actually what happened in the previous scene. When this truth proves unconvincing, Hannay tries again, this time preceding his story differently: "I'll tell you the truth." Even though the story of adultery that follows is pure fiction (and in fact just as cliche-ridden as and hence no more credible than the story of the murdered spy), the milkman is finally convinced to help Hannay.

When Hannay can't buy help, he has to tell a story. And given that the milkman, as the saying goes, "doesn't buy it," what Hannay has to do is sell a different story. He has to give the milkman a story he wants to hear: not "a lot of tales about murderers and foreigners," but the kind of story he likes, about adultery. As the milkman says, "I only wanted to be told"—and what Hannay learns is that what people "want to be told" is not the truth, but something that they will "buy" because it is what they want to hear.

If Hannay thus discovers the utility of an effective lie, there is still a way in which Hannay is always telling the truth: he does need to "make a getaway" from the two men who are outside in the street. His intention is true, even if the story he eventually finds to realize his intention is not. This intention remains true throughout "The 39 Steps," even as it gets complicated by a second intention: Hannay's attempt to prove that he did not commit the murder in his apartment.

In order to prove himself innocent, Hannay has to learn, as he does here, that the story of his innocence is beside the point. The truth may come out in the end, but not because he tells people the truth. Nor can he buy people's trust; rather, they have to buy him by believing his stories (true or not). In "The 39 Steps," the truth may need to be revealed, but it is best gradually revealed by the telling—and selling—of effective lies.

Mr. Memory

In 1997, Bill Frisell released an album called Nashville, his "country" album. I took it upon myself to write words for some of the songs on the record, including the song "Mr. Memory" (click here to listen to it on Spotify):

MR. MEMORY

When you're alone with your name

what you recall is your self

Shoulders hunched up with the rain

no umbrella lost again

Mr. Memory heads for home

turns the corner and he's gone

If you forget your own name

what can you say to yourself?

The rain against the windowpane

is everything left behind

Mr. Memory waits for you

round the corner but you're gone

And you awake with no name

Bells ringing in a blue day

I just liked the expression "Mr. Memory" and let it and the melody take me places while I was writing. 

Last week, I watched Alfred Hitchock's The 39 Steps and was pleased to discover that Frisell's title might well be a reference to the character Mr. Memory, as played by Wylie Watson: