Bryan Garner, author, lexicographer, and subject of David Foster Wallace’s essay Authority and American Usage, joins Brian to talk about their mutual love of language. Bryan also explains the fight between descriptivists and prescriptivists, how his life changed after Mr. Wallace’s essay ran in Harper’s Magazine and Consider the Lobster, and the story of how he brought Justice Scalia and David Foster Wallace together. In addition, Bryan discusses why he thinks Steven Pinker’s new book on language “isn’t very good,” the definition of the term SNOOT, and how prescriptivists may have literally lost the fight on the definition of literally.
Topics this week:

Modern American Usage by Bryan Garner
LawProse.org provider of CLE training in legal writing, editing, and drafting
Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage by David Foster Wallace
Authority and American Usage by David Foster Wallace
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace
Millers Crossing a film by the Coen brothers
Gideon’s Trumpet by Anthony Lewis
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
Quack This Way by Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace
The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker
“Sorry. Dr. Gove ain’t in.” New Yorker Cartoon by Alan Dunn
Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky
The Originalist a play by John Strand
The Palace Thief by Ethan Canin
WBUR interview with Bryan Garner and David Foster Wallace
The Financier – Theodore Dreiser
Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymour: An Introduction by J.D. Salinger
Fearing’s Restaurant in Dallas, TX with Chef Dean Fearing
David Brinkley: A Memoir by David Brinkley
 

People this week:

@BryanAGarner
@SAPinker
@PomonaCollege
@DeanFearing
Former President George W. Bush
Jay-Z
Brian Williams
Justice Antonin Scalia
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
The Claremont Colleges

 
Email: themomentbk@gmail.com
Twitter: @briankoppelman

Rate us on iTunes: itunes.com/themoment
 

This episode of The Moment is sponsored by Quickbooks Self Employed. Visit tryselfemployed.com/moment for your free 30 day trial. And by Stamps.com. Buy and print official U.S. postage using your own computer and printer, and save up to 80 percent compared with a postage meter. Sign up for a no-risk trial and a $110 bonus offer when you visit Stamps.com and use the promo code MOMENT.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices