Eloquence lost

Dork alert: I’m currently reading “Team of Rivals,” the Doris Kearns Goodwin biopic of Abraham Lincoln, on which Steven Spielberg’s movie is largely based. While this admission won’t get me invited to any raging keggers or pill-popping raves, it’s  an intriguing glimpse into 19th century American politics, and an excuse for an avowed history buff to spend some time in that lost, trippy world of faux-silver watch fobs and four-foot-long beards. Hanging out with the ghosts of these bygone gents is like chillin’ at a model railroad convention with ZZ Top.

What makes the book such an effective portrait of the big-shot political players of the day is the way Goodwin integrates her sources, which cover the spectrum from diaries written by the daughters of senators, to the letters and musings of Lincoln himself – including one in which he promises an 11-year-old girl that he’ll start growing facial hair, thus leading him to prove definitively that beards are a source of superhuman powers. Just ask Chuck Norris, who can start a fire by rubbing two ice cubes together.

Working her sources into the narrative must have been a cinch. Those dusty old letters and journal entries were written with an eloquence and precision that would embarrass the authors of modern-day correspondence, who in many cases are hamstringed by 140-character limits.

In fact, when you think of it, future historians are pretty well screwed. Goodwin had access to reams of verbose correspondence to help tell her story. A century from now, what will historians, writing about figures from our current era, have at their disposal to pry into the minds of their subjects? Facebook posts? Twitter feeds? Perfect. When 22nd Century authors write about the exploits of Molly Flutterbuckets, who in 2056 invented a car that runs on rhino tears, they’ll know that in June of that fateful year, she unwittingly ate a cookie that aggravated her gluten allergy. Four friends posted frowny-faces, and her boyfriend Kyle clicked on “like,” because Kyle’s an idiot.

Truth be told, it’s often painful to see what people, especially teens, are posting online; I, for one, am constantly assaulted by grammar that would make the scribes of old weep into their double-breasted vests.

Here’s a little history to illustrate what I mean: In 1837, Lincoln was courting – that’s old-timey for “dating” – a woman named Mary S. Owens, who would later become his wife and the country’s first lady. That August, good ol’ Honest Abe, in an effort to assuage his own anxieties about the relationship, wrote a letter to Mary that essentially gave her an “out,” telling her that she was in no way bound to stay with him if she felt she wasn’t happy. In a display of heart-rending honesty, Lincoln wrote, “I am willing and even anxious to bind you faster, if I can be convinced that it will in any degree add to your happiness. This indeed is the whole question with me. Nothing would make me more miserable than to believe you miserable; nothing more happy than to know you were so.”

Simple. Eloquent. And by today’s standards, totally uncool. Chuck Norris would not approve.

If Lincoln was a young man in 2013, and had grown up hyperconnected in a world besieged by social networks and message boards, he would have sent Mary an e-mail, and it might have read something like this: “Hey Mary, how R U? nice pix, LOL!!! do U want 2 B with me?? i want 2 B with U. herez a cat wearing a fUnNy sWeAtEr. C-ya!!!!!!  xoxoxoxoxo”

Can you decipher that mess? ‘Cause I can’t make heads or tails of it, and I wrote the freakin’ thing.

While bemoaning the current state of grammar, it’s not like I expect, or even want, a drastic resurgence of the Dickensian masterpieces penned by past generations. That kind of antiquated English is charming, and a blast to read, but would be way out of place in the 21st century. Ornate language is rendered irrelevant when you’re at a drive-through, ordering chicken nuggets through the mouth of a plastic clown.

But technology, while fantastic in so many ways, has its drawbacks; one is the gradual degradation of the way people articulate themselves. Future historians will look back on this time period as the dawn of not just a democratic form of communication, but the introduction of abbreviations and smiley faces as legitimate means of expression. While Goodwin sourced painstaking letters and diaries, her successors will have scathing YouTube comments and hastily typed text messages. There’s something lost there.

As consolation, though, they’ll also have access to reams of ridiculous Chuck Norris jokes. So maybe the future’s not so bleak, after all.