6.0092 Rs: Forks (5/112)
Elaine Brennan & Allen Renear (EDITORS@BROWNVM.BITNET)
Thu, 18 Jun 1992 18:33:55 EDT
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 6, No. 0092. Thursday, 18 Jun 1992.
(1) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1992 14:38:12 +0300 (EET-DST) (49 lines)
From: LBJUDY@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL
Subject: RE: 6.0087 Qs: Forks
(2) Date: Thu, 18 Jun 92 10:06:17 IST (9 lines)
From: "David M. Schaps" <F21004@BARILVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0087 Forks
(3) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 92 21:42:54 GMT (12 lines)
From: "C. David Frankel" <D7BAIAD@CFRVM>
Subject: 6.0087 Forks
(4) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 92 20:45:34 EDT (33 lines)
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 6.0087 Forks
(5) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1992 15:18:17 (9 lines)
From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 6.0087 Forks
(1) --------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 1992 14:38:12 +0300 (EET-DST)
From: LBJUDY@VMSA.TECHNION.AC.IL
Subject: RE: 6.0087 Qs: Humanities Computing; E-Mail; Forks (4/117)
Re: He knew the forks
This is just a wild guess, but one I can't pass up.
Back in England when I was growing up in a determinedly middle-class
family, a great deal of importance attached to the way you laid the
table. Not only forks on the left and knives on the right, soup
spoon to the right of the knives and dessert spoon at the top; but
the right knives and forks for each course (fish, main, whatever,
don't ask me now!) in the right order. For a several-course meal
you ended up with a bewildering array of silverware. The general
rule is that you start at the "outside" (leftmost fork, rightmost
knife) and work your way in; the other general rule was that if
you don't know what you're supposed to eat a particular dish with,
wait to see what the "better-bred" members of the company are
doing and follow their example. It was infinitely better to be
5 seconds late picking up your fork than to pick up the wrong
one... for the former error could have several reasons, the latter
unequivocably indicated bad breeding, i.e. that you came from
a background where such niceties were unknown (possibly --
heaven forbid! -- even working-class).
Of course you didn't pay that much attention to all this for a
normal family meal; but you did pay some; and if you were having
guests, it became important. In short, I would guess that "he knew
his forks" means "he always knew what to eat what with", i.e.
"he was well-bred, he knew all the right social behaviour".
I am glad to have escaped all this; but I must admit that the
convention in some other countries, including Israel, that you
wipe your knife clean on your bread (and lick your fork) and
continue to use them for the next course, still leaves me with
an indefinable disquiet, a sense that in a hotel, really, one
should expect better... I suppose this is childhood conditioning.
PS it is absolutely true that one test of good breeding in the
England of those days was to serve the victim peas and see how
s/he ate them: the right way was to balance them on the back
of the fork, held so that it curved upward like an arch; a
near-pass was awarded if you held the fork correctly but speared
the peas on them; to hold the fork curved down, like a spoon,
and scoop the peas onto it, was unforgivable. I haven't been
back to England for years. Is it still like that?
Judy Koren, Haifa.
(2) --------------------------------------------------------------15----
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 92 10:06:17 IST
From: "David M. Schaps" <F21004@BARILVM>
Subject: Re: 6.0087 Qs: Humanities Computing; E-Mail; Forks (4/117)
The queried comment would probably have spoked with less of a forked
tongue had the enquirer read it correctly: "he knew the forks", not
"he knew his forks". Without recourse to slang or colloquialism, I take
it to be a straightforward metaphor: when walking down the road of life,
he knew where to go at each fork in the road.
(3) --------------------------------------------------------------19----
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 92 21:42:54 GMT
From: "C. David Frankel" <D7BAIAD@CFRVM>
Subject: 6.0087 Forks
Check a book of etiquette: salad fork, dinner fork, dessert fork, shrimp fork.
. .
|
C. David Frankel_________Phone: 904-588-8395
Asst. Prof. of Theatre___BITNET: D7DBAIAD@CFRVM
Saint Leo College________INTERNET: D7BAIAD@CFRVM.CFR.USF.EDU
(4) --------------------------------------------------------------42----
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 92 20:45:34 EDT
From: Bernard.van't.Hul@um.cc.umich.edu
Subject: 6.0087 Qs: Humanities Computing; E-Mail; Forks (4/117)
To the question from W. Schipper et al., about the knowing of "forks"
(excerpted in his "He knew the forks," of June 17):
Teeming with respect for philologists' contempt for folk etymologizers;
freed by my innocence of Donaldson's *American Life...* (to guess the
more wildly-wantonly): I'd have construed the quoted "He knew the forks..."
as not at all a knowing of "his manners," but as authorial-ironic
way of saying that he was an unscrupulously pragmatic opportunist --
took every "turn" (like affecting CURRENT tastes [debased by the
author's heavily ironic "canons" applied to whimsy-vs.hoary-time-
sanctioned JUDGMENT, e.g.]) that is afforded, in fact imposed, by the
FORK in every road.
That -- the fork in road -- is the base metaphor in this fancy of mine.
If Frost's commonly MISconstrued Narrator took the tine of the fork
"least travelled by" for reasons dubiously construed, I'll say this
much in that Narrator's defense: "KNOWING ONE'S FORKS" was far more
free-market-teleological than FROST'S Narrator wanted EVER to
become.
Shorter version: To me it seems that knowing his forks was
his "getting around," his nose for "what's
out there."
He was a grandchild of Captain Vere, Jason Compson, President
Bush, Benjamin Franklin, Machiavelli, the Dean of your favorite
School of Business, the most stellar of grantspersons who ever
sniffed the breezes that blow even more capriciously than roads
diverge as *forks* -- that crowd.
A grandchild of the HUMANIST, I mean, who not MERELY wonders but
expeditiously declaims: "What does all of this gibberish have to
do with the relationship of computers to THE humanities?"
(5) --------------------------------------------------------------18----
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1992 15:18:17
From: koontz@alpha (John E. Koontz)
Subject: Re: 6.0087 Qs: Humanities Computing; E-Mail; Forks (4/117)
> ... Any suggestions as to the meaning of the phrase "He knew his fork[s]"?
Presumably, which of several forks beside the plate to use with each course.
My particular terror, though, is spoons.