Although I am not a prescriptivist, I find the sloppy misuse of sophisticated words very annoying. It is not often that Michiko Kakutani annoys me in this way, but she did so yesterday, in a review of Curtis Sittenfield’s new novel, American Wife.

Ms. Sittenfeld’s portrait of Charlie Blackwell, however, quickly devolves into caricature.

Wrong. The portrait descends into caricature. Devolution is the opposite of evolution: it means turning backward instead of forward. Responsibilities and sovereignties devolve, falling back on the shoulders of a person (or a sovereign) when something else doesn’t happen to keep them from doing so; as, for example, when superiors leave it to cubicals to make a deadline. Devolution may be regrettable, but it has nothing to do with the deterioration that Ms Kakutani imputes to the portrait of Charlie Blackwell. You may wish that your boss did his own work, and stopped leaving it for you to finish up, but that doesn’t mean that the work itself had been made less worth doing by his irresponsibility.  

Here, then, is what Ms Kakutani ought to have written.

Ms. Sittenfeld’s portrait of Charlie Blackwell, however, quickly descends into caricature.

When you’re writing about something getting worse, steer clear of devolution.

Drop me a line at rjk@dailyblague.com
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