That being said, I did find the subject matter very interesting. Winchester follows the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary and the life story of one of the most influential volunteers, Dr. W C Minor. Minor was a doctor in the Union army during the American Civil War, during which he probably suffered a shock that sent him spiraling into what Winchester diagnoses as paranoid schizophrenia. As an army pensioner, however, he receives the best care and even is granted a release from the hospital. He travels to London to recuperate, but while living there convinces himself that people are trying to break into his room at night and then murders a man on the street. Minor is lucky enough to be tried during a period of leniency in Victorian judicial proceedings and the court finds him not guilty on the basis of insanity. He is sentenced to a mental hospital to 'await the Queen's pleasure.' Minor remains there for much of the rest of his life. The pinnacle of his imprisoned life is his participation in the making of the Oxford English Dictionary.
A nonfiction text like this one necessarily faces the difficult challenge of connecting several strands of narrative together into a cohesive whole. Winchester does an excellent job at making those strands into very interesting vignettes. He writes on the history of dictionary making, which the English student in me particularly liked. He also writes on what Minor would have encountered as an army doctor in the American Civil War, the life story of James Murray, the chief editor of the OED, and various diagnoses in the history of schizophrenia.
By far the most interesting part of the book is the bit on the interaction between Minor and Murray. Murray and his team put out advertisements to call for volunteers. The goal of the OED, to catalogue every word in the English language along with several quotes to demonstrate each use of the word and, most importantly, to discover the earliest known use of the word, was a task of such immensity it could never have been completed without an equally immense workforce. To this end, the OED editor asked for volunteers to read books in certain time periods and submit words, along with quotations, they thought might be interesting. Murray's team then collected these thousands and thousands of slips of paper, filed them alphabetically, and proceeded to start with the letter A. Minor, on the other hand, knew he was in a unique position. As a hospital inmate, he would be able to devote all of his time and all of the library he had been accumulating. So instead of sending words he found in books, he cataloged all words and corresponding page numbers in all of his books. He then inquired of Murray where in the alphabet his team was working and if they were having trouble finding quotations or instances of specific words. When Murray responded, he would references his catalogs, pull the books off his shelf and send in quotations. In this way, he could fill the gaps that the varied and easily distracted volunteer team left behind. Though Minor would not submit the most words of any OED volunteer, his contributions appear in the text more than any other contributor because he sent in what was needed at the moment.
This part of the story was engrossing and detailed. However, the layout of the text did not seem optimal to me. The book began with a description of Murray going to visit his most valuable volunteer at the address on the letters he had been receiving for ten years. Murray is surprised to find out, however, that Dr. W C Minor is not the resident doctor at the mental institution, but rather one of its oldest residents. Catchy opening, yes? In fact, this tale is an overly romanticized one - Murray had known Minor was an inmate at the asylum for several years prior to meeting him in person. Winchester plays this detail like a surprising twist - you thought you knew how Murray and Minor met, but in fact it was much less interesting! It's a twist that only confuses the reader (wait, I thought the book opened, 150 pages ago, on a scene of Murray walking up to the asylum?), who presumably is not familiar with the romanticized version of the tale.
Once Winchester unwraps this surprising twist, the novel peters out. He goes on to describe how Minor succumbs to his own disease, committing a pretty gruesome act of self-mutilation and returns to an asylum near his brother in the United States. Murray's death is glossed over. Winchester muses on the history of schizophrenia paranoia and concludes with a brief passage on the completion of the OED.
The Professor and the Madman was at times interesting and informative, but perhaps geared to a shorter, more concise medium. As a whole, I found the tangents far too tangential and the narrative lacking in cohesion.
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