“And Its Discontents” and its discontents

  • 24 January 2008 – 23.01 UTC
  • Posted in On names

Do you think Freud’s translator had any idea what he was starting?

5 Comments

  1. I’m going to do a bit of promotion here. I noticed you link to a Lulu book of yours Adam - and that you’ve made it a free download. Well, I also noticed you only have the default preview. I’d recommend you now go back and create a new preview for the book. Quietly, last night, we at Lulu pushed out new flash based previews. Once you create a new preview, it will appear in a viewer where the cover of your book appears now. You’re cover will still be there, but now any one with flash (most of the people browsing the internet) will have a very accessible preview. I and several other engineers worked hard to get them ready to go - I hope you and others find them useful. Lets us know if you find any bugs. Thanks.

  2. That’s nice, Mark. Unfortunately, I’m only one of the authors of the book, not its publisher. I have no control over that page or its settings.

  3. If you know: How was that phrase selected to be the title of your/Mark’s pamphlet? Why was the phrase considered to make a better title for the pamphlet than other possible choices? I have been curious about these questions since at least 12/14/07, around the time when the pamplet was released.

    Your post suggests that you are perhaps lately (or soon about to be) thinking about the phenomena called the “snowclone.” Yes, it has a Wikipedia entry, and website devoted to it. The great blog, Language Log, also has some great discussion of it.

    By my count, your title’s snowclone is listed in the “queue” at Snowclones.org, at around # 235. You are right in between “X and its enemies” and “critique of X reason,” or between Popper and Kant. Not bad company.

  4. It was actually Mark’s call - I suppose we can ask the next time I see him.

    FWIW, I probably wouldn’t have used the “Discontents” trope for this particular application, but only because I’m guiltier than most of having overused it in the past. I think there are at least two or three old v-2 pieces called “X and …”

    • igj
    • Posted 28 January 2008 at 14.05 UTC
    • Permalink

    “Of all the comments boards, in all the towns, in all the world, he walks in to mine.”

    Jamie, now you got me obsessed with spotting the snowclones.

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