Understanding Expo

Understanding Expo In Montréal/Montreal the fortune cookies are bilingual, too. But Expo’s message is beyond words, beyond the Russians and Robert Moses. Every two days Expo 67 Administra- tion (2,000 desks on nine floors) emits enough memos, press releases, orders, counterorders, routings, schedules, letters of verification and pacification, to paper over the twenty- story Geodesic Bubble light-tight. Words, words. In bilingual territory whatever is said officially must be said twice. In one language, not two, this output of paper might be halved, but Expo also unrecognizably differ- ent.

A monolingual Expo might have simply strewn exhibits about and stuck labels on them. Expo 67, dipped in the bitter tensions of imperfect bi- lingualism, conceived and erected at the one spot of the globe where In- dian wrestling between Descartes’ mother-tongue and Swift’s all day long knots brows and draws sweat (Montréal/ Montreal, say letterheads; One Dollar/Un Dollar, says cur- rency): Expo 67, avoiding, where it can, words altogether, has funneled more energy into systematized non- verbal communication than any en- terprise in the previous history of the world.

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About the Author

Hugh Kenner

Understanding Expo In Montréal/Montreal the fortune cookies are bilingual, too. But Expo’s message is beyond words, beyond the Russians and Robert Moses. Every two days Expo 67 Administra- tion (2,000 desks on nine floors) emits enough memos, press releases, orders, counterorders, routings, schedules, letters of verification and pacification, to paper over the twenty- story Geodesic Bubble light-tight. Words, words. In bilingual territory whatever is said officially must be said twice. In one language, not two, this output of paper might be halved, but Expo also unrecognizably differ- ent.

A monolingual Expo might have simply strewn exhibits about and stuck labels on them. Expo 67, dipped in the bitter tensions of imperfect bi- lingualism, conceived and erected at the one spot of the globe where In- dian wrestling between Descartes’ mother-tongue and Swift’s all day long knots brows and draws sweat (Montréal/ Montreal, say letterheads; One Dollar/Un Dollar, says cur- rency): Expo 67, avoiding, where it can, words altogether, has funneled more energy into systematized non- verbal communication than any en- terprise in the previous history of the world.