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Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and Its Decline
In a collection of keen observations and barbs, the eminent critic exposes abuses of the English language
222 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 25, 2009
This was extremely good. I am almost afraid to write this for fear of writing improperly. Simon insists on the importance of language and precise communication. Good thought cannot exist without good expression. Language shapes our thoughts. We think in words. When words lose their meaning or are used improperly, they cannot give rise to clear, independent thought. It's hard to be independent if you don't know what you are saying. Rather than being snobbish, good English is a wealth that all can afford. Grammar is free. “Slumming” in language doesn't help the underclasses, it only imprisons them within their existing thought ghettoes. Language is a tie between men, a means of transmitting culture and a heritage of beauty. Bad language breaks those ties and prevents cultural transmissions. It leaves the linguistically poor at the mercy of those who have mastered language. The ignorant are easy to control. They emote rather than think. Their thoughts are controlled because their language is controlled. Politically Correct language is thought control disguised as etiquette. The controlled don't even know that other thoughts or meanings are possible. Also, Simon quotes a bit of poetry that appears nowhere else online: “a delight to sweetly breathe in your sleeping lover's breath.” I cannot find the source poem and it will drive me crazy until I do.
December 14, 2010
Karl Krause, John Simon and Paul Fussell, among others, have long been concerned about the decline of language. The more oonspíratorial minded believe it’s a deliberate attempt at mind control. To quote John Simon: "The worst part of it is that there are all these pseudophilosophioal and political justifications for the deterioration [of languagel. Now if terrible grammar is used, it’s justified by liberal or leftist politics: it’s everybody’s political right to speak as abominably as he or she wishes. There’s an organized pull towards undermining the language whether it’s by feminists, homosexuals, or some ethnic minority whose attempts to undermine English are considered their Godgiven or state-given right. I'm for using language imaginatívely, but imaginatively does not mean incorrectly. In fact, it’s very easy to be imaginative if you are incorrect: If you tie your necktie around your knee instead of around your neck, you are imaginative, but you are imaginative in an ímbeoile way."
November 27, 2019
This is a collection of essays on language by one of the greatest critics of the twentieth century. Few writers can compare with the knowledge of language and the way with words demonstrated in John Simon's trenchant essays. This compendium is a delight for all readers who enjoy virtuosity in the use of language to defend the best writers who pursue the best words.
These essays span such topics as writers, linguists, the performing arts, the media, and more. His comments are biting and to the point; here is an example:
"In the beginning was the word, But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax, the thing that tripped up so many people. And they're tripping up more than ever today."("Authors Without Fear or Shame", p. 111)
It is an eclectic collection of elegant prose that will leave you wanting to read more criticism from the pen of John Simon.
These essays span such topics as writers, linguists, the performing arts, the media, and more. His comments are biting and to the point; here is an example:
"In the beginning was the word, But by the time the second word was added to it, there was trouble. For with it came syntax, the thing that tripped up so many people. And they're tripping up more than ever today."("Authors Without Fear or Shame", p. 111)
It is an eclectic collection of elegant prose that will leave you wanting to read more criticism from the pen of John Simon.
October 4, 2013
A bit dated perhaps but essentially a man after my own heart and all the more remarkable because English isn't his first language, or even his second or third. To all the other linguistic pedants out there, may I direct you to http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/so.... I rest my case!
November 23, 2011
This was good, albeit dated. However, the issues have not changed since the 1970s when Simon wrote these pieces.
May 5, 2017
Well ... those were the days? I guess? When it was acceptable to use words like ***** and ****** and ****** instead of "woman," "African-American," and "homosexual." This is certainly a journey, that's for sure. In the first few essays, Mr. Simon establishes himself as an old, stuffy grump who most likely uses "harumph" regularly in conversation when he is forced by circumstances beyond his control to interact with other human beings. As an English teacher, I'm of course in favor of people using correct grammar, syntax, diction, and usage. Mr. Simon, however, despite his frequent explanations to the contrary, presents himself as King-o-Grammar to whom all cretins who dare to publish and/or utter English incorrectly must bow and/or apologize. About 25% of the way through the book, Mr. Simon has wholly established himself as every -ist in the current (as of this review, not Mr. Simon's day) social media lexicon. A third of the way through, one is tempted to question the justice of the universe: how does a fellow such as this get the opportunity not only to meet Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling but also to work with them simultaneously for years?!
By the time the reader is halfway through this collection of essays, one starts to sympathize with Mr. Simon's plight: if the NCTE, popular media personalities, professors, and virtually everyone else of power and influence in the United States in the '70s wrote and spoke as horribly as they appear from their quoted selections, perhaps we would be as antagonistically frustrated as Mr. Simon as a Keeper of the Flame of Good English. By the final essay, one is almost tempted to side with Mr. Simon ... until one remembers how despicable his attitudes to most people were. Indeed, we should defend proper English and not abandon rules and syntax well-defined and honed by those who have come before us. I should watch my use of "hopefully" and be more insistent concerning anacoluthon. The recent AP decision to allow "they" as a singular pronoun is a prime example of Mr. Simon's wise words on language not "changing" but "devolving." But let's not quibble about that now. The point is Mr. Simon gives us great advice but wrapped in an indelicate (to put it mildly) package. I hope I can master his level of vocabulary (though I should learn some other languages, that's true), syntax, grammar, diction, and whatnot, but I'll try not to be such a jerk about it as he was. (Hey, no "hopefully" and no split infinitives - off to a great start.)
By the time the reader is halfway through this collection of essays, one starts to sympathize with Mr. Simon's plight: if the NCTE, popular media personalities, professors, and virtually everyone else of power and influence in the United States in the '70s wrote and spoke as horribly as they appear from their quoted selections, perhaps we would be as antagonistically frustrated as Mr. Simon as a Keeper of the Flame of Good English. By the final essay, one is almost tempted to side with Mr. Simon ... until one remembers how despicable his attitudes to most people were. Indeed, we should defend proper English and not abandon rules and syntax well-defined and honed by those who have come before us. I should watch my use of "hopefully" and be more insistent concerning anacoluthon. The recent AP decision to allow "they" as a singular pronoun is a prime example of Mr. Simon's wise words on language not "changing" but "devolving." But let's not quibble about that now. The point is Mr. Simon gives us great advice but wrapped in an indelicate (to put it mildly) package. I hope I can master his level of vocabulary (though I should learn some other languages, that's true), syntax, grammar, diction, and whatnot, but I'll try not to be such a jerk about it as he was. (Hey, no "hopefully" and no split infinitives - off to a great start.)
July 1, 2025
The attack on Rex Reed is worth reading. Very funny.
November 7, 2025
Well-written (obviously) newspaper columns on grammar. Some insults especially witty.
May 18, 2023
Critic John Simon wrote “Paradigms Lost: Reflections On Literacy And Its Decline” in 1973. It is, as the title declares, a critique of what the book alleges is the decay of the ability of Americans to write English properly.
Simon’s pomposity and arrogance in this work match his erudition. His prose, though elegant, drips with bitterness. His style was such that it left me with the deep and enduring desire to slap him. However, that fantasy died when I learned he’s about as dead as some of his rules for language, his having passed in 2019.
Who, other than Simon, cares whether a news headline that reads “Soup ’n’ Salad” is spelled with two apostrophes versus two single quotation marks? In writing this it doesn’t even matter, as my keyboard (and likely yours) only gives one key to serve both uses. His is a needless quibble. Needless, because if there is a differentiation in the font, few notice it and only those that do care. Would Simon have even eaten at a restaurant advertising such a combination, whether it was spelled correctly or not? I doubt it.
Literacy hasn’t declined. It has expanded. The implementation of universal education in the West had begun less than a hundred years before Simon’s birth. So too had the notion of “proper” grammar. When he was born in Hungary in 1925 the Oxford English Dictionary hadn’t yet been fully finished. The grammatical rules for English were younger than some who were alive when Simon took his first breath.
Well over a billion English speakers worldwide have achieved—per capita—far higher levels of literacy than ever before. That level of literacy is rarely as elevated as Simon would have wanted, even though English is the lingua franca of modern international commerce. Those masses read and write well enough for basic communication. However, they scandalously split infinitives, mindlessly mix metaphors, and dangle their participles (in public, no less). Did journalism, literature and the academy suffer for it? No. Writers in those fields mostly mastered the new rules, but those that didn’t were hardly “illiterate”, and neither were the hoi polloi. Simon encountered the worst of it (if it’s fair to call it that) and then fell prey to the “Golden Age Fallacy”. He imagined cultural rot eating away at civilization. For him and others, less than stellar writing was among the worst symptoms.
Much of what Simon viewed as degradation was, and is, inexorable evolution. Word usage and grammar changes with time, as does culture. Like any fundamentalist he denies this, of course, saying on page 17 of my volume that these changes aren’t natural, but rather a product of ignorance.
Yet the sin of ignorance trips him up at least three times. In his comparison of “uninterested” and “disinterested”, he notes that the latter word has been used incorrectly in place of the former. Simon goes so far as to write that “disinterested” didn’t exist as a word. “Disinterested” is currently listed as a word meaning “not influenced by considerations of personal advantage”. Think of a law firm acting as a disinterested party in arbitrating a legal dispute between two companies. Is that a recent development? I’m not sure, but that is considered a correct usage today. Did “disinterested” become a word in the half-century since Simon targeted it as non-existent? No. Merriam Webster lists its first usage as dating back to 1612, and in the sense of the mind failing to engage an event, as if somewhat absently focused on another item of interest. Current usage also apparently allows for the meaning as “uninterested”, the very thing that Simon hated.
On page 137 Simon criticizes the back-formation of “enthused” into a verb from the noun “enthusiasm”. Back-formation is common in English, and this particular example has been (at this writing) used for nearly two hundred years. God forbid Simon should ever “edit” his work or have him “revise” it. Likewise he shouldn’t “translate” this book into Hungarian, his first language.
In criticizing Wayne O’Neil’s writing (which is indeed bad), Simon states on page 144 there is no such word as “audial”. There is. It was first coined in 1829.
So much for the non-existence of word evolution. I wonder how many words that Simon used in this book are actually younger than the three he claimed are non-existent?
To love this book one has to become a bigoted, ruthless and smiting Simonite. There are kinder and gentler grammarians out there to show the way to refine one’s language. Indeed, it is necessary in certain professions to have the ability to communicate with a higher level of proficiency. Most don’t need it, and most don’t have the time or inclination to attain it.
And for those of you inclined to rip this apart for its grammatical errors—go for it. I’ll never know or care.
Simon’s pomposity and arrogance in this work match his erudition. His prose, though elegant, drips with bitterness. His style was such that it left me with the deep and enduring desire to slap him. However, that fantasy died when I learned he’s about as dead as some of his rules for language, his having passed in 2019.
Who, other than Simon, cares whether a news headline that reads “Soup ’n’ Salad” is spelled with two apostrophes versus two single quotation marks? In writing this it doesn’t even matter, as my keyboard (and likely yours) only gives one key to serve both uses. His is a needless quibble. Needless, because if there is a differentiation in the font, few notice it and only those that do care. Would Simon have even eaten at a restaurant advertising such a combination, whether it was spelled correctly or not? I doubt it.
Literacy hasn’t declined. It has expanded. The implementation of universal education in the West had begun less than a hundred years before Simon’s birth. So too had the notion of “proper” grammar. When he was born in Hungary in 1925 the Oxford English Dictionary hadn’t yet been fully finished. The grammatical rules for English were younger than some who were alive when Simon took his first breath.
Well over a billion English speakers worldwide have achieved—per capita—far higher levels of literacy than ever before. That level of literacy is rarely as elevated as Simon would have wanted, even though English is the lingua franca of modern international commerce. Those masses read and write well enough for basic communication. However, they scandalously split infinitives, mindlessly mix metaphors, and dangle their participles (in public, no less). Did journalism, literature and the academy suffer for it? No. Writers in those fields mostly mastered the new rules, but those that didn’t were hardly “illiterate”, and neither were the hoi polloi. Simon encountered the worst of it (if it’s fair to call it that) and then fell prey to the “Golden Age Fallacy”. He imagined cultural rot eating away at civilization. For him and others, less than stellar writing was among the worst symptoms.
Much of what Simon viewed as degradation was, and is, inexorable evolution. Word usage and grammar changes with time, as does culture. Like any fundamentalist he denies this, of course, saying on page 17 of my volume that these changes aren’t natural, but rather a product of ignorance.
Yet the sin of ignorance trips him up at least three times. In his comparison of “uninterested” and “disinterested”, he notes that the latter word has been used incorrectly in place of the former. Simon goes so far as to write that “disinterested” didn’t exist as a word. “Disinterested” is currently listed as a word meaning “not influenced by considerations of personal advantage”. Think of a law firm acting as a disinterested party in arbitrating a legal dispute between two companies. Is that a recent development? I’m not sure, but that is considered a correct usage today. Did “disinterested” become a word in the half-century since Simon targeted it as non-existent? No. Merriam Webster lists its first usage as dating back to 1612, and in the sense of the mind failing to engage an event, as if somewhat absently focused on another item of interest. Current usage also apparently allows for the meaning as “uninterested”, the very thing that Simon hated.
On page 137 Simon criticizes the back-formation of “enthused” into a verb from the noun “enthusiasm”. Back-formation is common in English, and this particular example has been (at this writing) used for nearly two hundred years. God forbid Simon should ever “edit” his work or have him “revise” it. Likewise he shouldn’t “translate” this book into Hungarian, his first language.
In criticizing Wayne O’Neil’s writing (which is indeed bad), Simon states on page 144 there is no such word as “audial”. There is. It was first coined in 1829.
So much for the non-existence of word evolution. I wonder how many words that Simon used in this book are actually younger than the three he claimed are non-existent?
To love this book one has to become a bigoted, ruthless and smiting Simonite. There are kinder and gentler grammarians out there to show the way to refine one’s language. Indeed, it is necessary in certain professions to have the ability to communicate with a higher level of proficiency. Most don’t need it, and most don’t have the time or inclination to attain it.
And for those of you inclined to rip this apart for its grammatical errors—go for it. I’ll never know or care.
May 20, 2009
Excellent.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews