I blame Bill Gates. Some time in the 1980s, Microsoft got sick of all its software problems being called 'bugs', and decided that they were really 'issues'. This was like moving from the active voice to the passive: nobody was responsible, and there was nothing specific you could focus on. It was a spectacularly successful imposition of corporate doublethink, and it worked a treat. From then on, the word 'issues' spread like a virus around the world.
This suited the times. Nobody had problems any more. I even remember, a day or two before the company went broke, a spokesperson describing Ansett as having 'liquidity issues'. Now you can't move for issues: they're like house flies in spring.
Sick people have 'health issues'. Celebrity cokeheads have 'dependency issues'. Corporate crooks have 'regulatory issues'. Even wayward Aussie Rules full-forwards have 'kicking issues'. Everybody with a problem has got 'issues they've got to work through'.
Isn't it interesting that, at a time when the planet's situation is more dire than ever, and American hubris is fomenting more and more rabid Islamic terrorism, no one can cope with a spade being called a shovel?
It feels like the worse things get, the less we can cope with facing them.
This dovetails neatly with the corporate softening of language in general. I'm not talking about the problem of euphemisms (such as 'letting go' instead of 'firing'), which have been around forever. It has more to do with the agendas of the real Big Brother: finding a way to make covert political tactics and ambitions sound acceptable. 'Climate change' is a serious issue, for instance, but is not as much of an alarming problem as 'global warming'.
What does this have to do with book publishing, you ask? Not a lot, directly. But I can't help thinking about it most days, as we look at piles of unsolicited submissions and manuscripts, most of them struggling to breathe life into a common language that has been systematically denuded of colour and movement.
The problem for serious book-publishers isn't just the increasing incidence of time-poor readers, or competition from other media, or the attractions of other leisure activities. It's also the fact that we're dependant on a staple product â the English language â that's being robbed of vitality by a Western culture that's had enough of reality. Except, of course, on television.
Henry Rosenbloom