The enduring head of a former English Department, Intercultural
Communications or something, wrote a newspaper review of one of those OED
histories. His trained anti-imperial post-colonial mind quickly identified the
OED as imperial and colonialist. I will never, he declared, read it the same
way again. Given his vehemence, why bother? The greatest poet (arguably,
always) at the End of Empire, safe in NYC, wore out his OED and thought to
purchase a new set. His face was wrinkled with innumerable profound
cross-references. On his third cigarette after breakfast he gleefully scanned
Sir James Murray’s columns: Octavo, Octet, Octillion, October…
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