Is This a Bad Time?
Yes
"We stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord!" ex-President Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1912. It was a declaration of relative progressivism (spoiler: unsuccessful) which, wrote William Allen White, "literally sizzled in the hearts" of Teddy's supporters.
Literally? Don't get me started. People ought not to use the word literally --which has a meaning, people -- as a device to sort of jack up the front end of a figurately-used verb. Sizzled isn't hot enough?
Why quibble, you ask? Don't we stand at Armageddon, now? I reckon we do. I don't like it.
Did you see that movie, Armageddon? I didn't like it. It was directed by Michael Bay, who has been quoted as saying it was his worst, which is saying something. I can enjoy an explosion every so often, in a movie, but there shouldn't be so many of them and there ought to be more of something else in between.
At least the Russians cooperate in the desperate effort (spoiler: ultimately successful) to split, literally, an asteroid the size of Texas before it can destroy the earth. Whew! A close one! What if it had been Texas cooperating in the desperate effort to split an asteroid the size of Russia?
The thing everybody notices about that movie is the editing. "The cuts," according to imdb.com, "last an average of about 1.5 seconds." If this SENTENCEwereedITed ByMichaElBABABABAyitwoulDLOOKlikeTHIS.
Literally.
Did you know that the term Sturm und Drang dates back to a German play by that title about the American Revolution? A lot of shocks and violence and heavy-breathing exclamations, I gather. Well, I have been known to yell too much myself sometimes, but I'm not proud of it, at least not in retrospect. If only people could express themselves fully while accompanied, on the offbeat, by retrospectroscope.
WHAT I PREFER
Is some peace and quiet in which to read things closely, with an editor's eye.
On People.com, I read about a lady (Ms. Alexander) and her dog. And this passage struck me:
"Alexander, whom doctors have told has weeks to live, hopes to find and meet a new parent for Rosie before passing away."
Rosie, in the accompanying photograph, is a likeable-looking dog. I hope Ms. Alexander, a resident of Philadelphia, has found Rosie a new loving situation by now, and then has discovered that the doctors were wrong -- that she, herself, is not dying after all. So she's got to scheme how to get Rosie back, and of course the old man who has Rosie now is in love with her, Rosie, and maybe Rosie, for her part, doesn't really want to give him up, either, so she has to scheme . . . That's the kind of movie I like. One of the kinds.
But here's what I can't get out of my mind:
whom doctors have told has weeks to live.
If you or I had written "whom doctors have told has weeks to live," I'll bet we would have stopped to think, Uh-oh, whom...has. That can't be right.
And ruined it. The anonymous People.com writer let it stand. Perhaps that writer was as fascinated by the construction as I, or as any serious student of who and whom must be. And could not bear to touch, much less, efface it. Or perhaps the writer was so focussed, quite rightly, on the prospects of Ms Alexander and Rosie, that mere syntax did not seem important.
But there is something very striking about whom doctors have told has weeks to live.
Nothing wrong with "whom doctors have told."
But then . . .
The whom is dragooned into double duty.
Whom cannot be both the indirect object of "have told" and also the subject of "has weeks to live." Indeed, whom cannot, grammatically, be the subject of anything. But this effect is special: this is the kind of thing that makes who/whom studies so engrossing. In all my days, I have never seen a whom that is both correct and incorrect.
What’s incorrect is readily fixable: "whom doctors have told she has weeks to live."
But let's not leave the double-barreled whom behind so quickly. Can we imagine a different sentence in which one whom fits correctly into two different clauses?
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whom . . .
Why, you may well ask, bring Tennyson in? I have no special affinity with the man or his work. But already, in the space of a handful of weeks, Tennyson has appeared in this substack twice before, with reference to the Kraken and to twerking. Who talks about Tennyson these days? We do!
So. Yes. We can imagine a sentence in which one whom fits correctly into two different clauses. And here it is:
Alfred, Lord Tennyson, whom friends warned the deal would impoverish, nonetheless invested his whole inheritance in Dr. Allen's ecclesiastical wood-carving enterprise.
Friends warned him, the deal impoverished him. Whom did the friends warn? Tennyson. Whom did the deal impoverish? Tennyson.
This financial reversal, according to Wikipedia (I researched further, but found too many off-putting details) came before Tennyson was eminent, but it may have established his character. Other guys must have been saying to him:
"Blew your inheritance? On wine, women and song I hope."
"Noooo."
"Then what? Something fun, surely."
"Noooo."
"Oh, no! Not that so-called ecclesiastical . . ."
"Excuse me. I feel some echos about to roll from soul to soul. You may finish my pint."
Tennyson, whom T. S. Eliot would call the saddest of all English poets and W.H. Auden would call the dumbest, sank into a depression.
I know, that sentence, too, has a double-whom. And a double "of-all-the-English- poets." I was tempted, furthermore, to omit the second "would call" But "whom T. S. Eliot would call the saddest of all English poets and W. H. the dumbest" would have had Eliot calling Auden the dumbest. Of all English poets. The last thing we need now is uncalled-for ill-feeling.
As for dogs, Tennyson had a wolfhound named Karenina, after the novel. I expect he kept her well away from trains.
And Another In Our Action-Packed Series of Limericks About Exasperating Men
"You'll be reading your tree ode? Or
Your Robert E. Lee ode? Or . . . "
"Shut up already,"
Says Uncle Teddy,
"And address me as Theodore."
Speaking of literary Brits and large dogs, Lord Byron had the following inscribed on a stone near the grave of his Newfoundland, Boatswain:
“ Near this spot are deposited the remains of one who possessed Beauty without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferocity, and all the Virtues of Man, without his Vices.”
You, sir, are a great bringer of great pleasure, and I like you a lot. Thank you.