Aphorisms

Thanks to everyone at the Barnes and Noble in Philadelphia for hosting me and The World in A Phrase on November 21. And thanks to everyone who turned out to juggle words, ideas, and balls — especially those who were not genetically related to me and hence not legally obligated to show up.

There was a blank sheet selected from the globe, and the subject was: Sports, the same subject chosen when the blank sheet came out of the globe at the Charleston Literary Festival. I came up with the timeless wisdom of Johan Cruijff, a Dutch soccer star whose distinctive sayings have been given their own name: Cruijffisms.

Without the ball, you can’t win.

Before I make a mistake, I do not make that mistake.

Every disadvantage gots its advantage.

Cruijff is like a Dutch Yogi Berra, an inadvertent aphorist whose philosophical nonsequitirs are spontaneous rather than deliberate. And the choice of Sports as a subject gave me the chance to share some of my favorite Berra-isms, too…

Always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise they won’t go to yours.

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

It’s déjà vu all over again.

And, of course, my favorite Yogi anecdote: Once in an Italian restaurant, Berra was asked if he wanted his pizza cut into four or eight slices. “Four,” he said. “I don’t think I can eat eight.”

In other aphorism-related news, Hannah Murray at Talk Radio Europe’s TRE in the Afternoon had me on for a wide-ranging discussion about the book. You can listen here:

I always add an aphorism-on-request when signing books, but sometimes it takes a sec (see image below) for me to think of one. And, sometimes, I need to consult a reference book (my own) to get the citation right. This happened in Philly with the subject Music, such an important theme for which I should have an aphorism at hand. Anyway, I eventually found one in Geary’s Guide, by Hugo von Hofmannsthal:

Painting changes space into time; music time into space.

Thanks to everyone at the hallowed and historic Mechanics Hall in Portland, ME for hosting me and The World in A Phrase on Nov 18, to The Rabkin Foundation for helping make the evening possible, and to Back Cove Books for moving the merch. And thanks to the Portland peeps who came out to juggle words, ideas, and balls.

Every talk is different, because I put different aphorisms into the globe and because every time different aphorisms come out of the globe. There was no blank sheet selected from the globe at Mechanics Hall, but there was lots of conversation about and exchange of aphorisms — going on well after my talk officially ended. Just two of the memorable sayings shared and originated by members of the audience…

Good things happen when you get out of the house

excellent parental advice from an aphoristically-inclined dad, and

Hold the handlebars loosely

this latter aphorism by Mary Louise Schumacher, executive director of The Rabkin Foundation.

This one by author Ruha Benjamin is from a talk she gave at the Charleston Literary Festival:

Resistance is fertile.

And Bradley Shingleton, who was kind enough to attend my talk at Politics and Prose in DC and throw out the ceremonial first juggling ball, is teaching a continuing education class this winter on aphorisms. (Why didn’t I think of that?!) Bradley is also an aphorist, and here are a few of the sayings he shared with me…

Some knots should be loosened slowly rather than cut quickly.

Worrying about insomnia keeps me awake at night.

It takes at least two people to create loneliness.

In other aphorism-related news, NPR’s L. Carol Ritchie wrote an ode to the passing of the penny in which she lists some of the penny-centric sayings inspired by this humble coin — ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’, etc… She asked me why I thought the penny was so proverbial, such a rich image for aphorisms, which prompted these thoughts and an aphorism…

I think the penny lends itself to aphorisms because they are both small — the aphorism is the shortest form of literature, and the penny is the smallest monetary denomination. Though pennies and aphorisms are both small, they both contain a lot of value, which is where I think so many of the common expressions involving pennies come from … a penny for your thoughts, the penny dropped, a penny saved is a penny earned. An aphorism collection is in many ways like the jar of pennies so many of us collected as kids; keep adding to your collection long enough, and you’ll find yourself unexpectedly wealthy when you start counting the pennies and unexpectedly wise when you start recounting the aphorisms.

Put a penny on your prison floor. Now you live in a vault.

This aphorism is by JPJ, a mysterious aphorist about whom nothing is known apart from the fact that the author self-published a book in 2009 called Last Aphorisms. I like this aphorism because it suggests how we can transform negative situations by bringing some kind of value to them ourselves. If we find ourselves imprisoned in an unsatisfying circumstance, bring something worthwhile to it and that will transform both the circumstance and the way we regard the circumstance.

Finally, in still other aphorism-related news, Seán Moncrieff had me on his Newstalk radio show in Ireland to banter a bit about aphorisms…

Be sincere, be brief, be seated.

Fortuna stands some seven feet tall, on a pedestal overlooking seven Black automatons, in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s Roberts Family Gallery. The mechanized figures in plots of obsidian perform a kind of ritual resurrection: One automaton, limbs flailing, repeatedly rises from and falls to the ground, summoned by another robot dressed in the robes of a prophet.

Fortuna takes it all in, periodically raising her arm and pointing to her mouth as an aphorism printed on a slip of paper pops out:

Your last shred of dignity is often your best.

Life is the abyss into which we deliberately and joyfully thrust ourselves.

Artists cannot be expected to follow instructions.

This diorama of suffering and redemption is Fortuna and the Immortality Garden (Machine) by Kara Walker, an artist whose cut-paper silhouettes and installations have long engaged with complex issues of race, racism, and identity, as does this work. Fortuna the machine is also a contemporary variation on the crude mechanical fortune tellers once found in penny arcades. Drop a coin into the slot at the amusement park, and Zoltar or Madame Zita would produce a card with a prediction of your future on it. Fortuna herself may be a wonder of modern animatronics, but dispensing cryptic wisdom goes back to the beginnings of the aphorism and is one of the oldest ways we make sense of our world.

Aphorisms are the original oracles. Walker’s Fortuna connects today’s museumgoers with the people thousands of years ago who played the I Ching or consulted Pythia, the priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, for insights on the future and guidance on the here and now. The aphorism is, in some ways, perfectly suited to the digital age: The oldest form of literature finds its ideal vehicle in the most modern short modes of communication. Connecting current expressions of the aphorism with its ancient roots is one reason I’ve prepared a new edition of The World in A Phrase: A Brief History of the Aphorism, twenty years after it first appeared.

New aphorists are featured throughout this second edition of The World in a Phrase — from a Roman orator and an Austrian countess to a Harlem Renaissance poet and a Colombian philosopher — encompassing more voices and bringing this brief history up to date. Twenty-­six additional aphorists have been added to the original thirty-­eight, for a total of sixty-­four practitioners through which the history of the form is told.

When the book was first published in 2005, Facebook had only just been founded and Twitter didn’t exist. In the two decades since, the proliferation of social media —­ which places a premium on brevity, the aphorism’s essence —­ has created forums in which this shortest of short forms can thrive. Twitter, after all, has the word ‘wit’ in it. An entirely new chapter at the end of the book features those using new platforms to take the form into the future, including meme-makers, street artists, and visual aphorists who mix pithy language with compelling imagery.

Twitter, of course, also has the word ‘twit’ in it and, now known as X, it marks the spot where the unaphoristic reigns, from gauzy inspirational quotes to byte-­sized chunks of outrage. This new edition addresses the crucial differences between aphorisms and hot takes and rage posts, and it explores why, especially as generative AI programs like ChatGPT threaten to reduce our cognitive loads to zero, it is essential to our psychological survival to think aphoristically. Aphorisms remain the ultimate deep dives, even in our era of fractured attention spans, when TL;DR has become the catchphrase of a generation.

Kara Walker’s work is part of the millennia-­old tradition of the aphorism. Her aphorisms are proof of the enduring vitality of the form and its continuing popularity today. My hope is that this updated edition of The World in a Phrase will be timely and relevant for new readers as well as longtime aphorist aficionados.

Receiving the first copies of a book you have written is the oddest feeling… The object before you has lived in your mind for years, and you have spent many days working to place what is inside your mind outside your mind so others can see it.

The book is like a black box at first. What’s inside it? Did I write it? It seems like so long ago. And it was so long ago! Because the wheels of publishing turn slowly. But the grind — the writing, the promoting, the waiting — feels exceedingly fine (eventually).

Then it’s like meeting an old friend you haven’t seen in a long time. At first, you’re not quite sure it’s him — he’s changed a bit and so have you. But then you look again and yes, it’s him! I remember now. I wrote this. How wonderful to see you again!

Please come in. Make yourself at home. Stay awhile.

Have you met my daughter, Hendrikje? I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Through a series of fortunate hyperlinks, I recently stumbled across aphorisms on journalism by John Bennet, former New Yorker editor and professor in magazine writing at Columbia Journalism School. In a brief 2022 obit on the Columbia j-school site, Betsy Morais, editor in chief of the Columbia Journalism Review, wrote that Bennet “often spoke in aphorisms.” Those aphorisms are funny, wise, and profane — just like the best newsrooms.

Put the best shit at the end, the second-best shit at the beginning, and all the other shit in between.

The best journalists always overreport.

Don’t rob the reader of feeling emotions by reacting for them (“I started to cry”).

A writer is a guy in the hospital wearing one of those gowns that’s open in the back. An editor is walking behind, making sure that nobody can see his ass.