Open Writing

Fairbanksans grow notoriously peevish in March, as verdant Spring’s approach becomes palpable while remaining two months distant. We all occasionally find certain minor irritations more egregious than they warrant, but what sets pet peeves apart from mere aggravations is the charm of being reliable conversation starters. UC Berkley professor Geoff Nunberg writes in a recent NPR article that “A pet peeve should be like a pet theory or a pet story – a tic or fancy that you nurture in your bosom and make your own … But it’s odd to use the phrase for off-the-rack gripes that everyone shares.”

British-trained grammarians think the previous sentence is improperly punctuated, since the period’s inside the quotations marks, but not so American grammarians. For example, Jane Strauss, author of grammar books and GrammarBook.com, states “Periods and commas always go inside quotation marks, even inside single quotes.” Good thing there’s www.UnnecessaryQuotes.com “The ‘Blog’ of ‘Unnecessary’ Quotation Marks,” whose devotees submit photos of signs featuring unwarranted quotations, which usually connotes sarcasm. Examples include “NO ONE UNDER AGE ‘21’ IN THIS BAR” and “$5 ‘LUNCH’ Special.”

“Pet peeve” is defined by the “American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms” as “A particular or recurring source of irritation.” Etymonline.com says the phrase was coined in the U.S. in 1919 and is a “back-formation” of the 14th century word “peyvesshe,” meaning “perverse, capricious, silly,".” Back-formations are words formed by dropping their prefixes and suffixes, and are doubtlessly someone’s pet peeve, and cause for peevishness abounds. Fortunately there’s GetAnnoyed.com (“The Web’s Largest List of Pet Peeves”), where people grieve about things like bad drivers, people rubbing fingers on balloons, and ice cream dripping from the bottom of sugar cones.

Peevishness finds full flower in literature, and no American writer ever produced undiluted peevery like Ambrose Bierce. A prolific and respected journalist and author, Bierce is mainly known today for a few short stories, like “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” and his “Devil’s Dictionary.” The latter’s famous as some of the most cynical wit in American letters. His definitions of “optimist” and “love,” for example, are “A proponent of the doctrine that black is white,” and “A temporary insanity curable by marriage.”

Bierce was born to poor dirt-farmer parents who possessed a small library in 1842, the eleventh of thirteen children, whose names all began with “A,” including Aurelius, Almeda, Adelia, and Aurelia. His father’s books provided Ambrose much of his education, and the Civil War supplied most of the rest. He enlisted as an idealistic patriot and fought at Shiloh, Chicamauga, Missionary Ridge, and Kennesaw Mountain, all notably horrible battles. Bierce suffered a severe head injury in the latter fray and was transformed into a committed misanthrope who, gloried in pessimism and soon became famous for his cynicism.

Bierce entered San Francisco’s journalism scene and eventually edited the “Wasp,” which ran eighty-eight of his bitter dictionary articles, each containing a dozen or two definitions. He compiled them into “The Devil’s Dictionary” in 1906, but his publisher, Doubleday, re-titled it “The Cynic’s Dictionary,” since invoking Satan was considered too irreverent. However, Bierce’s preferred title was used when it was included in volume seven of his twenty-volume “Collected Works” in 1909, and a reprint of that set resides in our library’s collection.

In 1913 Bierce toured his old Civil War battle sites, traveled on to Mexico to observe Pancho Villa’s uprising, and was never seen again. The seventy-something wit was cynical to the end. His last known words appeared in a letter to a niece: “Good-by – if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico – ah, that is euthanasia!”

While the tenor of certain words, like “dollop” and “creamy” annoy my wife but leave me unscathed, I don’t like “peeve,” which sounds inherently petty and whiney. Other things annoy me more, many of which involve library misbehavior, but those go beyond peevishness and certainly aren’t pets. I’m with Whoopi Goldberg, who said “I don’t have pet peeves, I have whole kennels of irritations.”