Dr. Mardy's Quotes of the Week ("Normalcy")
July 30-August 5, 2023 | THIS WEEK'S THEME: “What Does Normal Mean to You?”
Opening Line of the Week
This is the original first-edition cover as well as the opening line of a spectacularly successful debut novel by J. K. Rowling, born in Yate, Gloucestershire, England on July 31, 1965 (she celebrates her 58th birthday this week). By adding “thank you very much” at the end of the first sentence, Rowling subtly but skillfully adds a “thou doth protest too much” quality to the Dursley’s assertion that they are a perfectly normal family.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was the first of seven Harry Potter novels that went on to become one of the most successful series in literary history, with over 600 million copies sold. The first novel had an inauspicious beginning. Rowling, an unknown writer at the time, received a modest advance (1,500 pounds) and the initial print run was a puny 500 copies, almost all expected to be purchased by school libraries. The book quickly became a surprise bestseller, and Rowling spearheaded a reading revolution among young readers that made her one of the world’s wealthiest women. Here she is speaking at a White House Easter Egg Hunt in 2010.
In a 2016 Guardian article on the best opening lines in children’s novels, Ciara Murphy wrote:
“If ever we needed confirmation that Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were, in fact, not normal at all, this line is it! But by emphasizing so strongly the Dursleys’ pride in their supposed normality, Rowling also hints at the existence of other, perhaps more ‘abnormal’ dimensions to reality, setting us up perfectly for a book filled with witches, wizards and dark forces….”
For more opening lines exploring the idea about what is normal, check out the entries by David Mitchell, Anthony Storr, David Steinberg, and Greg Tamblyn on GreatOpeningLines.com.
If you’d like to receive a daily dose of famous first words, follow me on Facebook.
This Week’s Puzzler
This wry and witty observation comes from one of America's most influential political cartoonists, born in 1929 and still alive today at age 94. The picture above shows him working on a 1958 strip.
Born in a working-class neighborhood in the Bronx, his father was a salesman and his mother a fashion designer. From early childhood, his mother encouraged him to draw, and when he was thirteen she bought him a drawing table and enrolled him in the Art Students League of New York. After graduating from James Monroe High School in 1947, his career dream was to become a comic-strip artist. His first big break occurred in 1956, when he began drawing cartoons for The Village Voice. Over the next half century, he became a highly respected satirist and political cartoonist, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1986 and Lifetime Achievement Awards from both the National Cartoonists Society and the Writer's Guild of America.
The typical format for his cartoons was a series of elements that appeared to be going in a certain direction, and then ended in an unexpected—and often quite clever—way. The formal literary term for this kind of writing is "paraprosdokian"(para-prose-DOKE-ee-uhn), a figure of speech in which there is a surprising or unexpected shift in meaning at the conclusion of a statement or set of remarks.
Who is this man? (Answer below)
What Does the Word Normal Mean to You?:
The first thing to be said about the concept of normality is that it is essentially a numbers game. The more widespread it is for people to do, say, or believe something, the more likely it will be regarded as not just “normal,” but even “natural” or “healthy.”
The second thing to be said on the topic is that conceptions about what is normal vary widely according to time and place. For example, from the beginning of recorded history, heterosexuality was by far the dominant pattern, and any departure from the norm (notice the cognate word) was considered abnormal. As time and thinking evolved, homosexuality and bisexuality gradually began to be thought of as normal variations of human sexuality, but old ways of thinking die hard, and we still see millions of people viewing gay love as unnatural, unhealthy, and even sinful.
As a society’s norms change, conceptions about what is normal change—often markedly. In 1950s America, it was normal for men to go to work and for their wives to stay home. It was normal for men and women to smoke cigarettes. And all across the country, but especially in the south and midwest, it was normal for people to publicly make racist, misogynistic, and homophobic remarks. Today, these things are more likely to be considered abnormal. In The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (1937), Karen Horney expressed it well when she said:
“The conception of what is normal varies not only with the culture but also within the same culture, in the course of time.”
Normal is also one of those elusive words people think they know, but often greatly misunderstand. For example, when sick people talk about “getting back to normal,” what they’re really hoping for is not good health, but an illness-free state in which they will not even think about health or sickness.
Or let’s say you’re a young woman who’s so disgusted with all the crazy men you’ve recently met that you’re thinking, “I just want to meet a normal man.” In saying this, you’re not fantasizing about a dream man, but rather someone who’s not going to drive you nuts with all his male meshugeneh. What you’re looking for, in effect, is a man who, speaking normatively, is likely to be so unexceptional that he’s probably going to be bland and boring as well. In many respects, normal is the barely acceptable midpoint between two dramatic extremes, each one with major drawbacks.
This week, give some thought to what the word normal means for you. Before you do, though, take a few moments to peruse this week’s selection of quotations on the theme:
“If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” Maya Angelou
“The truly fearless think of themselves as normal.” Margaret Atwood
“Nobody is normal.” Dave Barry
“Everybody seems normal, till you get to know them.” Edna Buchanan
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” Albert Camus
“Normal is just a setting on your clothes dryer and has nothing to do with people.” Patsy Clairmont, and later picked up by Whoopie Goldberg
“Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent. Sigmund Freud
“To study the abnormal is the best way of understanding the normal.” William James
“Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years.” R. D. Laing
“A normal adolescent isn't a normal adolescent if he acts normal.” Judith Viorst
For source information on these quotations, and others on the subject, go to the NORMAL section of Dr. Mardy's Dictionary of Metaphorical Quotations.
Cartoon of the Week
Answer to This Week’s Puzzler:
Jules Feiffer
And here’s what Feiffer’s “Turns out I'm normal” cartoon looked like when it was originally published in 1969:
Thanks to Garson O’Toole, aka The Quote Investigator, for helping track down this image.
Dr. Mardy’s Observation of the Week
“Never sacrifice any of your uniqueness for the comforting illusion of normality.”
After a month’s absence, I’m delighted to be publishing my newsletter once again—especially on this new and vibrant platform. Thanks for joining me. See you next Sunday morning, when the theme will be “Kisses & Kissing.”
Mardy
This new email format is such a treat! Thank you!
I for one am very happy that things are back to normal! Nicely done, Mardy!