Professor Cyprian Broodbank of the Institute of Archaeology of University College London has written a book called The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. It is published by Oxford University Press who should be ashamed of themselves because this work is uniquely and splendidly terrible. I have both read and written my share of graceless and flat academic prose. If ‘academicese’ was all that was going on here I wouldn’t complain but this author’s prose style is incoherent, baroque, and dyslexic. The book cannot be read because it is unreadable.
Now it’s not a crime to write poorly. Lots of academics do write badly but we can’t let that be a barrier to their writing books. After all, if they’re not going to write up their research or their pensées then who’s going to? But in former years publishing houses gave effective editorial help to their authors. Unclear pronomial referents, run-on sentences, mismatched verbal numbers, baroque and captious stylings … all such things were trimmed away by editorial fiat with the reader being none the wiser. In this respect either Oxford University Press or Thames and Hudson (and that ‘best of editors’, Colin Ridler[1]) have done Professor Broodbank a gross disservice. No actual editor could possibly read the following sentences and think that it was ready for publication. Listen:
1. Such ways of life based on the selective uptake of domesticates alongside wild foods only enjoyed only a brief, very patchy currency on the northern side of the Mediterranean, and a fairly marginal if longer-lasting status in the Levant.
2. In much of Mediterranean Africa, however, they became the norm, primarily thanks to the wider orientation on pastoral practices, decoupled from crop cultivation, that had arisen in the Saharan heart of North Africa.
3. As we shall see in future chapters, this lifestyle survived for millennia along Africa’s Mediterranean fringe, even as that heart was ripped out by the return of the desert.”[2]
I’ve numbered these consecutive sentences for easier reference.
In sentence 1: ‘only enjoyed only a brief, very patchy …’ Only..only? No editor ever read that sentence.
In sentence 2 what does ‘they’ refer to? The phrase ‘wider orientation on pastoral practices’ – what does that mean? It looks as though Broodbank may have meant to say ‘wider orientation OF pastoral practices’ although that doesn’t really make sense either. We will never know what he intended because no editor cared enough to figure it out. Notice, too, the mismatch of nominal numbers between sentences 1 and 3. In sentence 1 the plural ‘ways of life’ has become the singular ‘this lifestyle’ (jargon police!) in sentence 3.
But the grand prize, the pièce de résistance, the big enchilada, the actual SONG OF THE FAT LADY HERSELF is in sentence 3.
‘even as that heart was ripped out by the return of the desert’.
Wait a minute!!!! WHOSE heart?!?!? What’s going on here?!?! An actual editor paid by an actual corporation allowed that sentence to get away?
This book is verbal salad. It is what Sarah Palin would write if she took up Mediterranean Studies. It is NOT academic writing but a burlesque of it.
This example was chosen entirely at random; there are hundreds of pages of this syntactical goo.
This book was never read by anyone. I emphasize that. This book was never looked at by an editor. And I haven’t read it either. I admit that up front. Life is too short to read such graceless, distorted, and dyslexic prose. But the culprit here is not Broodbank. The blame attaches entirely to his editors who abandoned their posts and let Broodbank go down with his ship. SpellCheck is NOT editing.
The way this book is presented (a beautiful volume with many lovely and informative pictures) combined with the way that it was rushed into print makes me think that before long we will be seeing promos for a TV series “Mediterranean: Sea of Destiny!” presented by Professor Cyprian Broodbank. Could happen. Professor Broodbank is a nice looking young man with wonderful credentials and who would look good on TV. We need more historians on TV and, if this is going to be such a series, I wish him well. At least as a TV presenter he’ll get better editorial support than he got from Oxford University Press or Thames and Hudson.
But all is not lost with the book either. I’m looking forward to the English translation.
[1] Cyprian Broodbank, The Making of the Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean from the Beginning to the Emergence of the Classical World. Oxford University Press, 2013. 6.
[2] Ibid. 210.
squinches 