How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee

In 1907, when serious scholars genuinely debated reforming English spelling, Owen Wister penned this gleeful demolition of the entire enterprise. Thomas Greenberry, a conspicuously aloof scholar, finds himself drafted into a national convention where the eccentric President Masticator B. Fellows of Chickle University leads a charge to simplify the language. What unfolds is a magnificent trainwreck of lugubrious suggestions, petty rivalries, and scholarly absurdity. Miss Appleby flirts. Professor Willows pontificates. Motions to reform spelling devolve into chaos that has nothing to do with phonetics. Wister, better known for Westerns, proves himself a sharp comic writer here, skewering not just the reformers but the entire apparatus of academic seriousness. The joke runs deep: language may be chaotic, but so are the people trying to fix it. For readers who savor vintage humor, language nerds who enjoy a good spelling beef, and anyone who suspects that committees accomplish less than they suppose.