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From: eich@uiuccsb.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.singles
Subject: Re: trying too hard - (nf)
Message-ID: <4580@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Dec-83 04:31:31 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4580
Posted: Sat Dec 17 04:31:31 1983
Date-Received: Sun, 18-Dec-83 06:19:14 EST
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#R:decwrl:-460100:uiuccsb:15600011:000:908
uiuccsb!eich    Dec 17 00:41:00 1983

>>	  -  From which follows: maybe neither of us is such a great 
>>	     find as we think we are.  (Isn't English wonderful!  I 
>>	     can't figure if the subject is plural or singular either.)

"Neither of us", an elision of "neither one of us", is clearly singular,
so "he or she" should be used rather than we (awkward in this case because
we occurs twice).

As for an example of trying too hard, consider Hector Berlioz, the
prototypical Romantic.  His crazed infatuation with the Irish
Shakespearian Harriet Smithson had him threatening suicide if she did
not return his love, and standing up in the middle of her performances
to shout oaths at her leading man.  What a neurotic (also a bit of a
poseur).  At least we got the Symphonie Fantastique out of it, which as
you may know has as its program an agglutination of Faust, Confessions
of an English Opium Eater, and Berlioz's own fantasized life.