Persons attempting to find a "text" in this [story] will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a "subtext" in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise "understand" it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR - Wendell Berry's introduction to Jayber Crow.
This article was posted to Jayber on 27 November 2005 by to the following categories: Feature, Stories.
An audio version of this article is also available.
You see, I have this condition. It's my larynx. Whenever I try to speak a word with an open configuration of my vocal tract (AKA, a vowel), I end up sounding like some pimply seahorse hiding in a treasure chest in the middle of pimpleshire. It's not good, I'm telling you.
I just diagnosed myself with this disorder tonight, so let me explain it to you since it will not appear in your textbooks.
IVS, or "Sp:as:tic: C:olo:n", is a group of Functional Vowel Disorders and is fairly rare. IVS usually rears its ungraceful head when diphthongs are violently spouted really really fast. Examples:
The symptoms of IVS are sometimes hard to spot, but often fall into the following categories:
Treatment involves two of the following three prescriptions:
IVS is not fatal nor is it linked to the development of other serious vowel disorders. However, the following behaviors, and other negative quality-of-life effects can be common in more serious cases.
Individuals lucky enough to find a successful treatment for their symptoms can lead normal lives.
We call this “mind clutter” — so much stuff banging around in your head that sometimes it runs into traffic jams, causing you to do/say the strangest things. Perhaps it is genetic