REMINDER

Some books are undeservedly forgotten; none are undeservedly remembered. Auden

The Blunderer and "One Hand" Dan have been trying of late to pump of sales of that doomed, unscholarly volume, Work of Human Hands. "One Hand" has stooped so low as to hype it in a recent sermon on the necessity of Latin. As the gift-giving season goes into full swing, perhaps this is the time to remind everyone of the many failures of that rag -- failures that reflect the failed legacy of the Terrible Trio, whose pride, arrogance, and overreaching will be forgotten soon enough, as are all human vanities. All their works are best consigned to oblivion.

Just as there are seven deadly sins that we should avoid, here are seven reasons for not wasting your money on such an empty and self-serving product of amateur authorship and publishing:

The academic shortcomings of Anthony Cekada’s Work of Human Hands are legion. First, there is virtually no notion of systematic composition, for sentences are not developed into coherent, unified and structured paragraphs. Second, the author’s diction is not academic but characterized by American regional slang and colloquialisms. Third, the self-taught author commits numerous errors of translation, transcription, and citation from Latin. Fourth, the author, in several cases, has failed to attribute the source of translations. Fifth, the text is littered with non-standard English and unconventional usage. Sixth, typographical errors and misspellings abound. Seventh, the book contains factual errors, as even one favorable reviewer pointed out.

We could continue, but we will not tax your patience. Suffice it to say that Work of Human Hands is at best a mere pantomime of scholarship. For a complete post-mortem of this stillborn insult to the world of genuine learning, start with this post on Pistrina Liturgica and continue reading.