By one of those strange coincidences that add spice to our lives, alert us to ranges of possible but unlikely meanings, I read, in the space of two or three days, two expositions of the word delirium. The first was in a review in the London Review of Books–Out of His Furrow, William Poole’s review of Gordon Teskey’s Delirious Milton; the second was in Thomas Pynchon’s new book, Against the Day. On both occasions the writer elaborated on the interesting etymology of the word:
to deviate from the furrow.
When we leave the furrow, the groove, of our birth families, as we are bound to do, there is obvious danger. How far are we going to wander? Will we fairly quickly find another furrow to follow; what we call a career. Or will we forever wander in circular and unproductive pathways.
Walkingtalkingwriting would seem to be explicitly and implicitly about wandering from the furrow. Mind you, I had never thought of us as being delirious–it’s an interesting notion–one which it would not surprise me to hear one or two people ‘out there’ laugh in recognition at this description of us. And we did, with humour, sign up to an identity of city vagabonds.
Is the challenge, then, to plough a deep enough furrow for others to say, oh yes it’s a furrow, and after that to add, wow, that’s exciting, I’d like to add some seeds to that.