Still amazed that no one stopped John Bryant from Self-Destructing in the June LEVIATHAN

Any academic dope

Mispronounces Penelope.

It takes a dope like Johnny B.

To mispronounce Parthenope.

"SOWING CONFUSION," I WROTE ABOUT JOHN BRYANT IN 1994, my words in my diary imperfectly recalling the King James Version:

Proverbs 6:14 - Frowardness [is] in his heart, he deviseth mischief continually; he soweth discord.

So in his long review of the Northwestern-Newberry Edition THE WRITINGS OF HERMAN MELVILLE on p. 110 John Bryant instructs us on basic pronunciation:

          "Parthenope (pronounced PAR-thin-OH-pee) is now the newly sanctioned title for what we have in the past referred to as Melville’s Burgundy Club Sketches.” [That is what Bryant says.]

THIS IS SOWING CONFUSION, SOWING DISCORD, ON A MASSIVE SCALE. HOW LONG BEFORE READERS OF LEVIATHAN CATCH ON?

Bryant in his classist, elitist way loves to introduce me by saying, "Hershel hails from Oklahoma." "Hails from" is priceless snobbery.  John fawns over his academic friends from Columbia, Harvard, and Yale. What do they think of him, really? We know what the great old scholars like Sealts and Hayford thought of him. And see my various posts about ORNERY PEOPLE, my retirement project on who the Okies really were.

Any academic dope

Mispronounces Penelope.

It takes a dope like Johnny B.

To mispronounce Parthenope.

Never met a Choctaw Okie

Ever called it "PAR thin OH pee."