St. Paul Pioneer Press St. Paul / Minneapolis, Minnesota August 21, 2005 Former Wisconsin Prof Edits Journal to Swear By Maledicta, a collection of the profane and vulgar, is back in print after 8 years by David Hawley After an eight-year hiatus, Maledicta, also known as the "International Journal of Verbal Aggression," is back in print. And it's as unexpurgated as ever. "Maledicta" is Latin for "bad words," and the latest edition, Volume 13, is chock full of them. This should please those who swear by the journal, though the prudish are encouraged to avoid it. "We have lots of fans in Minnesota," said Maledicta founder and editor Reinhold Aman, a former teacher at the University of Wisconsin who now lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., with a score of pet cats and boxes crammed with yet-to-be-published articles. In fact, Aman says Minnesotans of Finnish heritage may be interested in reading an article in the latest issue that explores common Finnish epithets ("Helvetti!") and euphemisms for taboo and vulgar words. Finns are known to be a reticent people, so it's not surprising that they've figured out ways to say vulgar things without being too vulgar. On the other hand, the article's author, Helena Halmari, notes that some expressions that aren't vulgar at all are avoided in Finland because the words merely resemble offensive words. Talk about suppressed. But we digress. Aman, who has a doctoral degree in pre-15th century German language and literature, takes pride in publishing a journal that is both scholarly and, well, offensively funny. On the scholarly side, the new issue has an article on sexual terms used by writers Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin and Theodore Dreiser, plus an article on "scatological flyting" in the teaching of an obscure medieval monk named Abbot Aelfric. But it also includes a series of filthy limericks, all relating to the sexual experiences of a character named Joe Zeugma. There's also an article that purports to explain the real meaning of words in newspaper personals ads. "40-ish" in women's ads means 49, for example, and "mature" in men's ads means "older than your father." There's also a list of unconsciously hilarious quotes from American athletes. Sample: A remark by former Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann: "Nobody in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein." A fixture of every issue, including the newest one, is a selection of jokes, riddles and topical humor submitted by readers and printed under the heading "Kakologia." Because of a publishing backlog of eight years, the column starts with offensive jokes -- really, really offensive jokes -- about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, and moves forward in time, including groaningly offensive jokes about the destruction of the World Trade Center. Be warned: Maledicta is unsparing. It may seem strange that the stolid Upper Midwest -- Milwaukee, to be specific -- gave birth to a journal devoted to obscenities, blasphemies, offensive jokes and other "negatively valued words." Back in the 1970s, the German-born Aman, now 69, gave up a teaching job at Milwaukee's branch of the University of Wisconsin when he was told that "verbal aggression" was not a suitable subject for serious academic research. He published the first volume of Maledicta in 1977. At the time, the idea was unique, Aman said. "Back then, Maledicta was a very bold thing to do for a scholar," Aman said. "That's because 99.9 percent (of the academic community) looked down on it, even though they used foul language in private life." Times have changed, Aman says. "Now there's so much bilge over the air and on the Internet that I think Maledicta is not as unique as it used to be," he said. "But there's only one Maledicta in the world, even though the world is flooded with smut." In recent decades, Aman's personal life has been anything but rosy. In 1993, he was convicted of sending threatening letters to a judge who had ruled in favor of his ex-wife during a messy divorce case. He spent nearly 16 months behind bars. He attributes the eight-year hiatus of Maledicta to a series of illnesses and financial hardships. "But I'm already starting on Maledicta 14," Aman said during an interview last week. "If I can get enough shekels to come in, it will be out in 2006. I will publish as long as I can look at a screen and my fingers work." David Hawley can be reached at dhawley@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5257. TO ORDER Maledicta 13 can be purchased by sending $22 to P.O. Box 14123, Santa Rosa, Calif. 95402. For further information and for the cost of international orders, go to the Maledicta Web site at www.sonic.net/maledicta or contact editor Reinhold Aman directly at aman@sonic.net. Copyright © 2005 by David Hawley and St. Paul Pioneer Press All Rights Reserved. Source: http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/local/states/wisconsin/12435069.htm Back to "News - Reviews - Interviews"