Man’s Search for Meaning . . . of Words

A book I recently read and am now listening to on Audible weaves together the story of 3 boys whose lives intersect and take them on an adventure via The Lincoln Highway [1].

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few are to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

― Francis Bacon, The Essays

Already referred to as a classic, The Lincoln Highway, like Amor Towles’ previous novels––A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility––the payoff for readers comes at the end.

Here’s the book’s synopsis copied from Amazon.

In June, 1954, eighteen-year-old Emmett Watson is driven home to Nebraska by the warden of the juvenile work farm where he has just served fifteen months for involuntary manslaughter. His mother long gone, his father recently deceased, and the family farm foreclosed upon by the bank, Emmett's intention is to pick up his eight-year-old brother, Billy, and head to California where they can start their lives anew. But when the warden drives away, Emmett discovers that two friends from the work farm have hidden themselves in the trunk of the warden's car. Together, they have hatched an altogether different plan for Emmett's future, one that will take them all on a fateful journey in the opposite direction—to the City of New York.

Why the Title?

The actual Lincoln Highway, built beginning in 1913, became the first intercontinental highway. Originating at Times Square in New York City and ending at the Legion of Honor Plaza in San Francisco, the highway today wends its way over 3,100 miles.

Like Alice, I fell in a rabbit’s hole of wonder and information while reading about the highway. Associations have formed in the states where the highway runs and people attend annual conferences along the Lincoln Highway. [2] A camper’s guide notes the places along the highway with reference to the nearest cities. [3] Who knew?

Why did this book make me think about words and their meaning?

One of the main characters is named Woolly, nickname for Wallace, nephew and the namesake of Wallace Wolcott in The Rules of Civility (one of my top #10 favorite novels). This relationship points back to the privileged life young Woolly had in New York before winding up in a reform school in Iowa.

While it’s not stated, Woolly appears to be “on the spectrum,” (meaning he has some form of autism), which accounts for his being expelled from a number of private schools. His most recent school expulsion resulted from an incident that involved a dictionary and a thesaurus.

Wooly’s mother had given him a boxed set with both a dictionary and a thesaurus. Woolly “had loved the dictionary––because its purpose was to tell you exactly what a word meant.”

“As much as Woolly had loved the dictionary, he had loathed the thesaurus. Just the thought of it seemed to be the opposite of the dictionary’s. Instead of telling you exactly what a word meant, it took a word and gave you ten other words that could be used in it’s place.”

Woolly asked his math teacher to work out how many words could be substituted if ten words could be used in place of any one word. The revelation of possibilities boggled his mind.

Somehow the thesaurus tormented him, and he got a can of gasoline that sloshed a trail from the goalpost of the school’s football field to the twenty-yard line where he set the thesaurus on fire. The description of what had happened included the disciplinary committee using the words “fire, blaze, and conflagration,” illustrating by their choice of words “the tyranny of the thesaurus.”

“And Woolly knew right then and there that no matter what he had to say, they were all going to take the side of the thesaurus.”

I wrote LOL! in the margin of my new hardback book. And I’m still laughing.

Throughout the story, Woolly emerges as child-like, misunderstood, and yet a most endearing character.

So why care about the meaning of words?

I had intended to write about the meaning of words, to spotlight the word of the year 2021 (according to Merriam-Webster) and consider how words get used and misused and change, like the way just about everything else I can think of keeps changing around me.

This meaning of words changing right out from under the already complex English language used to bother me a lot, but not enough to set the dictionary on fire.

In elementary school, I remember asking my mother how to spell a word. She would say, “Look it up,” pointing to her mammoth dictionary. Thinking, How do I look up a word I don’t know how to spell?

I swear that dictionary weighed 20 pounds. And I would lug it to the coffee table, open to the middle, and begin turning pages either toward the front or the back, depending on the first letter of the word I needed to spell. Arrgh!

At the time, I didn’t know what a thesaurus was––or how to spell it.

Since that time, I have learned that the dictionary doesn’t control the language. The language controls the dictionary.

On a podcast interview I listened to this week, the speaker said that words create a “chemical cocktail” as we, human beings, read meaning into everything. Curiosity triggers dopamine. The stress hormone cortisol indicates something is at stake, so we keep reading a story, seeking resolution. Oxytocin is linked to empathy, released when words give us something or someone to care about.

The point is, reading affects us physiologically as well as psychologically and sometimes, emotionally. What we choose to read shapes how we feel about ourselves, others, and the world around us.

What remains a mystery is how the nuance of words, “a subtle difference in meaning or opinion or attitude” can either build our connections or threaten our future.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Highway-Novel-Amor-Towles/dp/0735222355/ref=sr_1_1?crid=I78850PEME3T&keywords=the+lincoln+highway+amor+towles&qid=1641590776&sprefix=The+Lin%2Caps%2C111&sr=8-1

[2] https://www.lincolnhighwayassoc.org/blog/

[3] https://thedyrt.com/magazine/lifestyle/a-campers-guide-to-the-first-coast-to-coast-interstate/