Post 192--"Crazy" Roget

This is the story about a man and his book that has been very helpful to me ever since my college years back in the late 1950s. It is about Peter Mark Roget and his book Roget's Thesaurus. I was in Calvin College, Grand Rapids Michigan. The person who gave the book to me was Ben Wisselink, a student in forestry at the University of BC in Vancouver. Unfortunately, Ben contacted a mysterious kind of illness that did him in. He never graduated. 

As to that book being very useful to me over the years, being a writer, I consulted it frequently, whether I studied and wrote in Canada, the USA, Nigeria or The Netherlands. It was always within reach on shelves just above my desk until 2016, when I noticed a used copy of Webster's Thesaurus published in 1988 sitting on the shelf of a thrift store in Vancouver.  Since my faithful Roget's had fallen apart and had frequently been taped up, I decided to buy the Webster and have been using it since, while poor old Roget's was trashed.  

Webster's boasts about itself on its cover, "It is so simple and easy to use that for many it will largely supersede Roget...." That, according to the Wall Street Journal, a newspaper respected by everyone and, therefore, believed. Well, they were right: It is simple to use, but it took me a long time, over a year of frequent use, that I began to appreciate it almost as much as my Roget's. I sort of felt I betrayed two trusted friends when I discarded it. The first to be betrayed was my friend Ben. After all, this was my last remaining memory of him. The second to be betrayed was the Roget's itself. It had served me so well and effectively that trashing it seemed like trashing another old friend. I did not find Webster's easier to use, but that was probably more due to sentiment than practicality. I've gotten used to it and am okay with it now, though the sense of double betrayal still lingers.

I am sharing the article below with you as my final farewell to both friends and with deep gratitude to both. As a writer, I could not have done without either. Thank you Ben. Thank you Roget, even though you put your unusual book together under suffering circumstances.   

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A life of madness, pain and words

Roget: New book looks at the man who created the first thesaurus

The Province, March 30, 2008

His mother suffered dark depressions and tried to dominate his life. His sister and daughter had severe mental problems, his father and wife died young and a beloved uncle committed suicide in his arms.

So what did Peter Mark Roget, the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus, do to handle all the pain, grief, sorrow, affliction, woe, bitterness, unhappiness and misery in a life that lasted more than 90 years?

He made lists.

The 19^th century British scientist made lists of words, creating synonyms for all occasions that ultimately helped make life easier for term paper writers, crossword puzzle lovers and anyone looking for the answer to the age-old question: “What’s another word for …”

And according to a new biography, making his lists saved Roget’s life and by keeping him from succumbing to the depression and misery of those around him.

“As a boy he stumbled upon a remarkable discovery – that compiling lists of words could provide solace, no matter what misfortunes may befall him,” says Joshua Kendall, author of the just-published The Man Who Made Lists, a study of Roget’s life (1779-1869) based on diaries, letters and even an autobiography composed of lists.

Kendall, in a recent interview, said Roget cared more for words than people and that making lists on the scale that he did was obsessive-compulsive behavior that helped him fend off the demons that terrorized his distinguished British family.

Madness was a regular guest in Roget’s home, Kendall said. One of his grandmothers either had schizophrenia or severe depression, and Roget’s mother lapsed into paranoia, often accusing the servants of plotting against her. Both his sister and his daughter suffered depression and mental problems.

Then there was the case of Roget’s uncle, British member of Parliament Sir Samuel Romilly, known for his opposition to the slave trade and for his support of civil liberties. He slit his own throat while Roget tried to get the razor out of his hands.

Unlike a thesaurus, no one understood Uncle Sam’s last words: “My dear … I wish …”

Indeed, to quote most of the Thesaurus listing for pain, Roget’s was a life filled with grief, pain, suffering, distress, affliction, woe, bitterness, heartache, unhappiness, infelicity and misery.

Kendall said, “The lists gave him an alternative world to which to repair.” Many writers have declared their debt to Roget, including Peter Pan’s creator, J.M. Barrie. In homage, he put a copy of the Thesaurus in Captain Hook’s cabin so he could declare: “The man is not wholly evil – he has a Thesaurus in his cabin.”

The 20^th century poet Sylvia Plath called herself “Roget’s Strumpet” to pay respects for all the word choices he gave her.

But the British journalist Simon Winchester holds Roget responsible for helping to dumb down Western culture because his work allows a writer to look it up rather than think it out.

Roget made his first attempt at a thesaurus at age 26 but put aside the effort and did not publish his book until 1852, when he was in his 70s and retired. He then kept busy with it for the rest of his life.

It became an instant hit in Britain but did not sell that well when an American edition was published two years later. But when Americans went crazy for crossword puzzles in the 1920s, the Thesaurus assumed its place on reference shelves.

Kendall’s book is written in a style that he calls “narrative non-fiction,” which contains a lot of dialogue and descriptions of how Roget and his friends feel and think, all, he says, based on source material.

“I did a lot of work to stitch together a narrative,” he said, adding that all the scenes in the book are based on actual events.