Response to Ong’s Orality and Literacy

It was clear from the very start—

It is useful to approach orality and literacy synchronically, by comparing oral cultures and chirographic (i.e., writing) cultures that coexist at a given period of time. But it is absolutely essential to approach them also diachronically or historically, by comparing succcessive periods with one another. . . .

—that Mr. Ong and I were not going to get along. Was this translated into German and then back again? Did he deliberately set out to write a book that demonstrates in its very nature the enormous gap between spoken and written English? Or is he just a crashing bore? This is the kind of impenetrable nonsense that made me decide, after suffering through more than enough of it in college, not to apply to grad school in English.

Well, that and not wanting to outright starve.

Nevertheless [sic], I did find a small amount of fruit among the jargonistic brambles.

Grapholect, unhelpfully glossed as “a transdialectal language formed by deep commitment to writing” (p. 8), nevertheless seems like a useful word.
The notion that what we think of as study is impossible without writing (pp. 8–9) had not occurred to me.
“Plato expresses serious reservations . . . about writing, as a mechanical, inhuman way of processing knowledge, unresponsive to questions and destructive of memory” (p. 24) — this sounds like how I sometimes feel about typing. I don't bring my laptop to class not because I don't think it's an efficient tool for taking notes, but rather because it's an efficient tool for taking notes. The faster I file away those words, the less likely I am to take the time to understand them. So instead, I write notes on paper. This also allows me to doodle. (Ong hits this again on p. 78.)
“Drawing . . . [on work] including early work of my own on the effect of print on sixteenth-century thought processes, Jack Goody has convincingly shown how shifts hitherto labeled as shifts from magic to science, or from the so-called ‘prelogical’ to the more and more ‘rational’ state of consciousness, or frpm Lévi-Strauss’s ‘savage’ mind to domesticated thought, can be more economically and cogently explained as shifts from orality to various stages of literacy.” (pp. 28–29) Based on this mention I would say that I'm interested to read Ong 1958b, but when I consider that that, too, will have been written by Ong, my interest dissipates.
“Jaynes discerns a primitive stage of consciousness in which the brain was strongly ‘bicameral,’ with the right hemisphere producing uncontrollable ‘voices’ attributed to the gods which the left hemisphere processed into speech. The ‘voices’ began to lose their effectiveness between 2000 and 1000 BC. This period, it will be noted, is neatly bisected by the invention of the alphabet around 1500 BC, and Jaynes indeed believes that writing helped bring about the breakdown of the original bicamerality.”
“Try to imagine a culture where no one has ever ‘looked up’ anything. In a primary oral culture, the expression ‘to look up something’ is an empty phrase: it would have no conceivable meaning. Without writing, words as such have no visual presence, even when the objects they represent are visual. They are sounds. You might ‘call’ them back—’recall’ them. But there is nowhere to ‘look’ for them. . . . They are occurrences, events.” (p. 31)
“There is no way to stop sound and have sound. I can stop a moving picure camers and hold one frame fixed on the screen. If I stop the movement of sound, I have nothing—only silence, no sound at all. All sensation takes place in time, but no other sensory field totaly resists a holding action, stabilization, in quite this way. . . . We often reduce motion to a series of still shots the better to see what motion is. There is no equivalent of a still shot for sound. An oscillogram is silent.” (p. 32)
The delights of mnemonics, as described on pp. 34–36, make me wonder if this is also how literate people who are good public speakers organize their public speaking.
All of this about repetition and set phrases makes me think that part of why the Patrick O’Brian novels make such excellent audiobooks is that he uses a lot of this sort of thing—the same anecdotes are told throughout the series, usually emplying the same phrases. And instead of being boring, it helps you keep your place—if you’re listening to it. Were I reading these books on paper, I’m not sure whether I’d enjoy them as much. They might, in that case, seem a bit redundant.
So, what's happening, as people get more and more of their information about the world from TV and radio, rather than from reading newspapers or books, is that they're also feeling more free to just make stuff up to suit their own convenience (à les pp. 48–49). This could explain a lot about the current political situation.
On p. 102: apophthegmatic and infrangible appear on adjacent lines. There really is something wrong with this man.

Words looked up*

agonistic: adjective, 1648. 1 : of or relating to the athletic contests of ancient Greece. 2 : ARGUMENTATIVE. 3 : striving for effect : STRAINED. 4 : of, relating to, or being aggressive or defensive social interaction (as fighting, fleeing, or submitting) between individuals usually of the same species.
apophasis: noun, 1657: the raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it (as in “we won't discuss his past crimes”). [Late Latin, repudiation, from Greek, denial, negation, from apophanai to deny, from apo- + phanai to say—more at BAN.]
apopthegm: noun, circa 1587 : a short, pithy, and instructive saying or formulation : APHORISM. [Etymology: Greek apophthegmat-, apophthegma, from apophthengesthai to speak out, from apo- + phthengesthai to utter.]
diachronic: adjective, 1922 : of, relating to, or dealing with phenomena (as of language or culture) as they occur or change over a period of time.
fulsome: adjective Date: 13th century 1 a : characterized by abundance : COPIOUS <describes in fulsome detail —G. N. Shuster> <fulsome bird life. The feeder overcrowded —Maxine Kumin> b : generous in amount, extent, or spirit <the passengers were fulsome in praise of the plane's crew —Don Oliver> <a fulsome victory for the far left —Bruce Rothwell> <the greetings have been fulsome, the farewells tender —Simon Gray> c : being full and well developed <she was in generally fulsome, limpid voice —Thor Eckert, Jr.>. 2 : aesthetically, morally, or generally offensive <fulsome lies and nauseous flattery —William Congreve> <the devil take thee for aTfulsome rogue —George Villiers>. 3 : exceeding the bounds of good taste : OVERDONE <the fulsome chromium glitter of the escalators dominating the central hall —Lewis Mumford>. 4 : excessively complimentary or flattering : EFFUSIVE <an admiration whose extent I did not express, lest I be thought fulsome —A. J. Liebling> [Etymology: Middle English fulsom copious, cloying, from full + -som -some.]
noetic: adjective, 1653 : of, relating to, or based on the intellect. [Etymology: Greek noetikos intellectual, from noein to think, from nous mind.]
parataxis: noun, circa 1842 : the placing of clauses or phrases one after another without coordinating or subordinating connectives. [Etymology: New Latin, from Greek, act of placing side by side, from paratassein to place side by side, from para- + tassein to arrange.]
pleonasm: noun, 1610. 1 : the use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense (as in the man he said) : REDUNDANCY. 2 : an instance or example of pleonasm. [Etymology: Late Latin pleonasmus, from Greek pleonasmos, from pleonazein to be excessive, from pleion, pleon more —more at PLUS.]

Conclusion

Overall, I think the subject matter of Ong's book is quite interesting. That fact impresses itself upon the reader with little help from the author of the book, however.

* Merriam-Webster's 11th Collegiate Dictionary.