Critical Mass

There has recently been a firestorm–as there so often is in these Internet-fed, cable television-stoked days–concerning the comments that a young woman, a self published novelist, made on a book review blog that gave her tome a mildly unflattering review.  The attendant hoo-hah is not my concern.  Others have covered that territory as thoroughly and even-handedly as can be done.  My concern is something other:  Should writers or any artists read reviews?

I doubt it.  Despite the well-worn notion that criticism should be taken with a tugged forelock and a mumbled “Thank’ee, Mrs,” I think it is a mistake for artists to read criticism of their own works.  (Even when the criticisms, as in the cited case, involve proofreading errors and rhetorical disasters.)  There are a couple of assumptions I hold, fundamentally, that lead me to this conclusion.  First, I think that a review of anything is essentially a conversation between consumers (sorry about calling readers and movie watchers and everyone else who takes in some work of art a “consumer,” but it was convenient shorthand) of that particular art.  It is the reader’s hope to find out whether a given work is worth the time they would need to commit to it, and it is the reviewer’s job to give them the best hints they can on whether it is or not.  The artist is not part of that conversation; the artist is no more than an artifact in such a discussion.

Second, I think that such criticism–from a reviewer and not from an editor, a colleague, a director, a loved one–is irrelevant to the work of the artist.  For one thing, reviewers can only review the work that is the most recent, not the next in line.  Therefore, from the artist’s point-of-view, reviewers are talking about something that is dead and in the past.  There comes a point in every project in which the artist must let go of it and move on.  Otherwise, all any artist would ever do is worry over a work endlessly and compulsively, for every work is flawed, especially in the eyes of the poor sap who created it.  And you can’t go back, only forward.  All of an artist’s focus has to be on the next project, the next work, the next thing to which that person must commit his or her imagination, attention, and energy.  As with Lot’s wife, looking back is disastrous and paralyzing.

And what can be gained by an artist from reading a review anyway?  Let’s say that there are two reviews and they conflict, as is generally the case.  Which review is the correct one?  Should the artist make the corrections demanded by one critic and remove them at the behest of the other?  Is one more correct than the other, and, if so, how is such a judgment to be made?  No.  As I see it, there are only two things that can happen when artists read their reviews, and both of them are bad.  On the one hand, if the review is negative at all, the artist’s feelings will get hurt and confidence undermined, and there’s a pretty good chance that you’ll end up with the sort of brouhaha that I linked to above.

The second possibility is even worse.  The reviews could be good and the artist can start to believe them.

Creating a decent work of art is difficult enough without one’s head being filled with notions.  From what I know from my meager experience and what I can glean from the comments of my betters, creating a work of art–even a mediocre or bad one–is an arduous task, won with sweat and molded with craft.  And once one is convinced that one is a genius, a magician who creates timeless masterpieces with a mere wave of the hand, how is one supposed motivate oneself to do the dirty work that is needed?

I know that in this age of workshops and focus groups, critique groups and MFA programs that the idea that the artist should walk alone without correction, suggestion, and “support” is a kind of blasphemy, but there you are.  That’s how I feel.  It is a lonely trail the artist wanders, filled with brambles and sinkholes.  I think of something that Joseph Campbell talked about, an image presented in the Arthurian legends.  In one version of the tales, the Knights of the Round Table approach a thicket and agree to each hack his way through the tangle on his own path.  And each one who crosses another’s path and starts to go down it follows it to his own peril.  It is a hard and lonely and perilous journey that the artist embarks on, but the glory of it is that, whatever that journey may turn out to be, it is that person’s own.

Gamy Art

Recently, Roger Ebert, who has lately been trying to flesh out his film critic’s resume with social criticism and political commentary, found himself at the center of a firestorm when he wrote a blog post in which he dared to opine that video games are not Art.  Things got to the point (something short of picketers patrolling the sidewalk outside his townhouse, I’m sure) that he posted something of a limited retraction yesterday.  Now, I’m not sure whether any video games are or can be Art, but such a controversy cannot help but produce a variety of thoughts in the typical blogging blowhard, such as your truly.  So, here goes.

Now, one of the gimmicks that Mr Ebert used in trying to bolster his argument was to use his Twitter account to get people to participate in an online survey:  Which of these would you value more, a great video game or Huckleberry Finn.  Now the problems with the survey, as Ebert himself has noted, are legion.  First, he is pitting something generic and theoretical (“a great video game”) against something specific and capable of being assessed as the thing it is.  Second, his sample was unscientific and not likely to be representative of the population at large.  Third, what does it mean to “value” something?  And does valuing something “more” mean not valuing the other thing at all?  People who know the mechanics of surveying and sampling could take this apart in a dozen ways, I’m sure.  In fact, it would be interesting to see what Nate Silver would make of it.

In terms of results, the first wave went decidedly Huck Finn’s way, but a decisive wave in the last 5000 of 12,000 votes made the seesaw tilt in just the opposite direction.  But what information can we truly extrapolate from this?  That a “great video game” is artistically superior to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?  Not really.  What it says to me is that gamers, who, in order to properly pursue their hobby, must cultivate a desire to win, simply flooded the survey site once word got around that they were losing.  Which brings me to the first difficulty that video games designers would encounter in trying to make a work of art.  A game, by definition, is a thing that the participants try to win.  Winning and losing are alien concepts to the appreciation of art.

Whatever art is or isn’t, it certainly doesn’t involve accumulating points or reaching ever-higher levels of play.  Art is, I think, a sorting through of the experience of life, a comparison of notes concerning what this trip is that we are all separately and together embarked on.  The questions posed and examined by art are myriad and are not capable of easy summation.  But art does not involve the attainment of a goal.  It, like life, just is.  Now, in theory, I can imagine that there could be a game that just is, but it would be a pretty Zen game.  And would most people who play these games be interested in a Zen game?  Would it be up there with Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft?  I find that to be unlikely.

Marshall McLuhan talked about bits of technology being extensions of earlier or other things.  A hammer is the extension of a fist.  An automobile is an extension of legs and feet and walking.  A blog is, ultimately, an extension of speech.  What then is a video game an extension of?  Most directly, typically, it is an extension of games played in literal arcades that were and are part of midways and fairs and carnivals.  And all games are, ultimately, extensions of the natural play of children.  Art, however, is rooted in the impulse to religion.  Play is a way of practicing skills.  Art is a way of pondering that which is difficult to ponder.

One thing I can’t understand is why gamers want their games to be considered Art (the capital A signifying the significant significance of it).  Of course, we do live in a culture that tends to equate Art with all that is good and uplifting and noble.  But it’s not.  There is a huge amount of shit art in the world, far more than there is good stuff.  And a lot of the shit becomes famous and admired and gets fawned over by experts who can only justify their expertise by raving about useless crap and thereby proving the perspicacity of their taste.  Were gamers to understand art as being something that can be good or bad, would they be so insistent on video games being defined as Art?  Probably not.  And, frankly, it is better for a game to be a good game than it is to be crappy art.

Several of Roger Ebert’s respondents in this controversy stated that they experienced every emotion imaginable while playing various games.  Fair enough, but is that really true?  There is a painting by Renoir that I once had the privilege of seeing in person at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts called Dance at Bougival.

The man leans his face hungrily toward the woman’s, and she looks away in a manner that suggests, to me, both regret and resignation.  It is an extraordinary thing to see, very powerful, very moving.  Is it possible, while playing a video game, to come across and experience, through compassion, this sort of complex emotion?  Do gamers truly feel wistfulness, nostalgia, bemusement, and schadenfreude?  Do video games persuade the player to have compassion–that is, to participate actively in the sufferings of another–for the characters portrayed in them?  Aren’t most of the characters involved merely objects meant to be either overcome or destroyed?    Aren’t most of the major characters separated into the sentimentalized binary categories of Good or Evil?  Is there truly roundness or complexity to the characters?  And aren’t the dominant emotions involved a sense of accomplishment when things are going well and frustration when they are not?

I’ve mostly played sporting video games myself, although I have tried other kinds a few times over the years.  Not really my cup of tea.  Most of my experience with them comes from observation.  I’ve watched my son, in recent years, play a variety of games without ever once observing him have a moment sublime or caring.  Years ago, I had a coworker who liked to play a rather vicious game called Wolfenstein when he was supposed to be working.  He had me stand behind his shoulder to watch once, and I couldn’t have been more mortified.  He, however, did not pick up on that because he was too fixated on murdering as many nameless, faceless, human-shaped objects as he could before they finally got him.  I don’t know what effect games like that had on Harris and Klebold when they decided to shoot up Columbine High School, but they certainly did nothing to encourage the compassionate sort of worldview that might have kept them from committing the attack.  Would it have mattered had they been as immersed in various art forms as they were in the video game culture?  It’s impossible to say, of course, but I don’t remember anyone going berserk because of their obsession with the music of Bach or Citizen Kane or the paintings of Camille Pissarro.

Video games certainly make use of artistic techniques, and there are, apparently, on some games images of great beauty.  And what is the Venus de Milo about if not only its own extraordinary beauty?  And yet, the images, the music, the dialogue in the introductory scenes of video games do not constitute the whole thing.  They are ancillary to the purpose of the game itself, a kind of video game filigree.  Games exist to be played, not to be appreciated as artistic inventions.

One final point.  In his book Das Glasperlenspiel (also known as Magister Ludi), Hermann Hesse used what he called The Glass Bead Game as a symbol for all that was knowable by humans throughout the history of art, science, and philosophy.  There is no way when he was writing the book in the 1930s that he could have imagined such a thing as the modern video game.  But is it not possible that the video game could evolve into just such a thing?  I’m not sure.  I don’t think that it is entirely out of the question.  However, I suspect that the game that would truly and unarguably accomplish that would no longer be a game.  I think that the experience of the player as a participant obviates his or her ability to experience the thing as a piece of art.  Perhaps not.  Perhaps it is possible for video games to veer away from melodrama and manufactured emotions.  But would a person have the same experience of Oedipus or Hamlet or Willy Loman if he had to enact them in a game atmosphere?  Doesn’t the power of art come from it being observed rather than enacted?  I used to be an actor, and I never had the kind of experience onstage that I could get from the audience.  It wasn’t my job to.

I think, at the end of the day, that gamers should simply enjoy the games for what they are.  They are certainly entertainments, and valid as entertainments.  I don’t think that they need to be justified as Art any more than baseball does or mumblety peg or Monopoly or Hungry Hungry Hippos.  Gamers should just play them for what they are and enjoy them, and not engage in a pretentious exercise, based in a sense of inferiority, of trying to get them classified as “Art.”

Yr Obt Svt

Thanks to an article in the London Times concerning an attempt to set up an Academy of English to serve as the final arbiter of the language, a bit a firestorm has erupted on Twitter. At least it has on the pages of the British authors, comedians, and all-around good guys, Stephen Fry (@StephenFry) and Charlie Higson (@monstroso).  Both Messrs Fry and Higson have come out against such a notion, which is right and just.  In fact, I think so little of the notion of establishing an academy that I didn’t even bother to read all of the article.  The first two or three sentences were sufficient.  Simply hanging on to the notion that a language–especially that world-engulfing monster, English–can be somehow fixed and confined is absurd.  It will be contorted and expanded and used in every which way imaginable whether there is a panel of experts involved or not.  English is a living language, and one cannot embalm a living thing.  Or, rather, one can make the attempt, but will only kill the thing he loves in the process.

Much of the fiasco seems to have been inspired by the various abbreviations that people use while texting or tweeting.  “You” becomes “u.”  “To” and “too” become “2.”  (We will assume that “two” becoming “2″ is acceptable to all.)  Now, I am speaking as someone who quite purposely avoids such abbreviations.  I also avoid using emoticons in the hope that the person on the other end of the communication can understand when I intend to be humorous or something of a scamp simply from the way that I string words together.  Perhaps I am deluding myself or overestimating my abilities, but I am willing to live with the consequences involved.

Of course, the making of abbreviations is nothing new.  As Stephen Fry pointed out at some time some place* (I can’t remember where; it could have been on his blog, on something I watched on YouTube, on QI, on Twitter, in a column, or perhaps in some stray graffito, the one medium I can’t be certain that he hasn’t conquered), during the 18th century, when paper was what bandwidth is now, people abbreviated all the time.  Of course, having made this bald assertion, I couldn’t find any handy examples on the Internet,

but probably will some time in the future when I search for something like “French-Canadian bowling leagues” or “imbecility in 50-year-old fat men.”

Of course, the most famous of these abbreviations is “yr obt svt,” which stood for “your obedient servant” and was used at the end of letters the way that “sincerely” or “This is an attempt to collect a debt” are today.  As Twitterspeak, “yr obt svt” is elegant and mostly useless, a phrase which could be used to describe most of the best tweets posted on a random day.  In fact, I like it so much that I may never tweet anything else but “yr obt svt” ever again.  Excluding my researches into the life and works of Justin Bieber.

So, until the English Academy Police, Online Unit, hunts me down (or “hunt me down” if you are British), I’ll B talkin 2 ya or u or whtevr.

*Update:  It turned out to be in an episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.  Stephen’s comparison of text abbreviations and 18th century abbreviations begins at about 5:16 into the following video and continues through 5:40.

Online Bookselling v. Real Life and Independent v. Big Box

In my last post, which occurred exactly one month ago, I threatened to pollute the blogosphere, Interwebs, and other such figments of the collective imagination with more thoughts about bookselling.  We’ll see how I do.  With any luck, I’ll make a modicum of sense.

First, taking a cue from a thoughtful comment made last time, I will discuss online v. retail store sales.  Barnes & Noble, in its 2nd quarter 2009 results (which would be from last summer, since their fiscal year extends into 2010), reports that store sales were down from the previous year by 2% to $950 million.  Online sales, on the other hand, were up by 9% and had accounted for revenues of $120 million.  Clearly, online sales are gaining on retail sales overall.  However, it should be noted that retail sales still account for almost eight times the income that online sales do, and that the stores brought in almost $1 billion in a period of three months.  Not quite a death rattle yet.

The fallacy that I find in discussions of online v. retail and electronic reader v. paper book is the assumption that it is a zero-sum game, that the two versions of reality can’t exist together.  I find that to be nonsense, pure and simple.  The question in each case is not which one will prevail and which disappear, it is a question of what percentage of sales will be accounted for by one and how much by the other.  In the case of online v. retail, the ratio seems to still be determining itself.  Will online sales account for more than 11% of B&N’s total sales in the future?  Quite possibly.  I haven’t seen any reason to think that online sales as a percentage of total sales has leveled off yet.  We’ll see as more quarters and fiscal years go by.

(Just for the record, sales of electronic books seems to have plateaued at 5% of total book sales.  This past October, e-books accounted for 2.5% of all books sold, which is still a ways from 100%.)

My prediction:  in the future there will be online sales of books and retail sales of books.  We will not see a world without bookstores any more than we will see a world without online retailers.  Each type of sales will find its level, and, frankly, I would be surprised if online sales ever overtake traditional retail sales in volume.  E-books, which have yet to outstrip audio books in sales, will remain mostly a curiosity.

Now, the second part of my thesis is less a prediction or a sighting of a trend than it is the report of a perceived opportunity.  It’s like a running back seeing a hole; it’s one thing to see the hole, and it’s another to do something about it.

That being said, I think that online inroads in bookselling might be an opportunity for independent bookstores.  I think that in order to do so, they will have to limit the categories they carry.  It will be better for them to have depth in one category than be thin in a hundred.  They will also need to make certain that their staff is extremely knowledgeable.  Put requested volumes in customers’ hands.  Provide superior customer service.  Provide a good atmosphere for browsing and reading.  I might be wrong about all of this, but it’s worth a shot.

The Future of the Bookstore

Thanks to Baby Got Books the other day, I had the opportunity to read two blog posts (or articles that happen to have been written for blogs, to be precise) that discuss the future of the humble bookstore in our modern now-a-go-go society.  (The first piece is by Clay Shirky; the second by Cory Doctorow.  Both are worth reading.)  I spent some years of my life as a bookseller.  I met my wife by applying for a job as a bookseller.  (She didn’t know what kind of trouble she was getting into when she hired me.)  I do not claim to be an expert on how to run a bookstore and have no claims to prescience in terms of what will happen to the industry.  However, a few things occur to me that I would like to add to the discussion, notions that I think worth considering and that might give a clearer picture of the future of an institution that I love.

The first thing that occurs to me is that both Shirky and Doctorow start with an assumption that hasn’t yet really been proven, and that is that bookselling is moving inexorably online and that there will be no place for offline–hereafter known as “real”–bookstores in the marketplace.  The analogy drawn is with the demise of the record store, an analogy that I think is as false as it is facile.  Record stores succumbed to online retailers–and did so at least half a generation sooner than bookstores are supposed to despite being part of a similar timeline–in part because online retailers could offer samples easily and efficiently and because they could reduce the album back to a collection of singles that could be purchased separately or collectively.  None of this applies to the world of the book, where online sampling is limited and cumbersome, and where books are books and not potentially subsets of themselves.  While it is convenient and tempting to lump music and literature together under the heading of “Media,” it does not help us draw a reliable analogy.

They are also both under the misapprehension that bookstores depend on hardcover bestsellers for the bulk of their revenue, which is not and has not been true for a very long time.  I’m not really sure that it ever was true.  When Barnes & Noble sells the latest Grisham or The Da Vinci Code at 40% off, they are selling at their own cost.  Since they are also paying for other expenses, such as rent, electric, and payroll, they take a small loss on each bestseller sale.  (Big publishers are the only ones who depend on bestsellers, and they, as I point out elsewhere, are working from a flawed business model.)  So does Amazon.  And retailers such as Target and WalMart, which are–as Mr. Shirky points out–fighting a price war by discounting bestsellers by 50% and more, are taking a real shellacking on them.  Bestsellers are now, and have been for some time, merely the bait for the trap.  The hope is that customers will rush to one’s establishment–either online or here in the haggard world of time-and-space–to get the latest potboiler and also pick up another item while they are there, with any luck one that has a profit margin that will more than make up for the loss that comes from the bestseller.

This hurts independent bookstores because they don’t have as much wiggle room and can less afford to take the chance on using deep discounts on some books as a means of perhaps selling others.  It’s a gamble, and few people go into the business of selling books because they like to gamble.  And so they play it safe and find that they have a hard time competing.  As usual in this modern world, money is power.

The idea that bookstores are simply disappearing is not true:  Barnes & Noble reports that comparable store sales for the current fiscal year are expected to decrease, but only by 2%-to-4% in a slow economy.  That is hardly the sound of the death knell yet.  Borders is having a harder go of it, but they are compensating by dumping “multimedia inventory,” which accounted for 71% of a $99.1 million dollar inventory reduction.  In other words, they are relying on book sales to get them through.  They see this as being their best bet.

And now I am going to say the most surprising thing of all:  This might be a good time for the long-lamented independent bookstore.

And that is a thought I will get to in the next installment, which I will write after I’ve had a bit more time to ponder.

Newspaper Madness

One of the arguments that people–and by people I mean print journalists–make for the inability of newspapers to move online is the claim that the level of reporting would suffer because news outlets, due to the smaller levels of revenue available online, would have to close foreign bureaus and layoff staff and just generally not be able to do as much reporting as they have traditionally done.  Fair enough.  The loss of solid reporting would be a loss to society.  However, that argument can only hold water if the two basic assumptions underpinning it–that quality reporting can’t be accomplished without a wide network of standing bureaus and that online reporting is inherently inferior to its print cousin–are actually true.  I’ve encountered a couple of things in recent weeks that lead me to believe that neither is.

The first has been the coverage of the demonstrations in Iran.  While The New York Times has mostly reported on the press releases and statements of the most hardline Ayatollahs and the dismal to the point of being pathetic Ahmadinejad, Andrew Sullivan on his blog The Daily Dish has been doing actual reporting based on Twitter tweets and emails and on information gleaned from people who have connections with family and friends inside Iran.  This is reporting.  And this is why, when a very important and respected group of Ayatollahs came out against the recent election, all the big news outlets were slack-jawed in their disbelief while Andrew and his readers were not.

The second piece of reporting has had to do with the sudden resignation last week by Governor Sarah Palin.  (For the sake of the argument I am presenting, I offer no opinions for or against Gov. Palin.  This has to do with reporting facts, not opinions.)  While the MSM took the Governor’s statement at face value and, even in interviews, tossed her softball questions, online outlets were checking her statements to see what was factual and what wasn’t.  Again, the online outlets are reporting while the MSM is passing along press releases.

None of this is new.  The MSM let us down in considering the Iraq War.  They let us down on torture allegations.  They’ve let us down over-and-over again for the longest time.  It predates Mr. Bush’s presidency and it has outlived it.  The big newspapers and the networks and the other big news outlets have routinely relied on press conferences and government contacts instead of real reporting, which is simply awful and lazy journalism.  All the actual journalism that gets done gets shunted into a special category called “investigative journalism” and is done mostly by magazines rather than newspapers and news shows.  All the MSM really does is support the status quo, which is what state-supported media are supposed to do.  If they are not asking questions about everybody in power all the time (and this is where Fox News also misses the mark:  they coddle one side and attack the other) they are not doing their jobs.  They have stopped being reporters and started being merely typists and apologists.

I think that the MSM can either adapt or die.  I think that journalism suffers from being made into a profession instead of a calling.  I think reporters should dig and question and be cynical about politicians and aloof from them.  I think that finding ways of supporting them in their current condition is bad for democracy and bad for the Republic.

When Illiterates Try to Read Between the Lines

I tried twice yesterday to get comments on a New York Times blog called “Moral of the Story” by a fellow named Randy Cohen.  The blog purports to be dedicated to looking at stories from the news through the lens of ethics. (Never mind that ethics and morals are two distinct things and that people who are ethical aren’t always perceived as moral while folks who are moral are oftentimes not ethical.) As of this writing, neither comment has made it through the censors, which, for the purposes of this post, is neither here nor there. The blog post in question concerns the recent public relations tug-of-war between David Letterman and Sarah Palin.

First, let me say that the whole thing is a tempest in a teapot. I can’t really imagine a less important news story. The situation is essentially this: Letterman told a joke–in some eyes a rotten joke–poorly, and Palin reacted in an absurd manner. There is no winner in this tiff, especially not the great American public.

Sprinkled amongst the comments generated by this post were a number that berated Letterman for joking about Willow Palin being raped, a thing which he did not do. Being a lover of the English language and of reasoning as an avocation, I wrote the following as my second comment (the first comment is lost to history):

There is not only a semantic but a legal difference between rape and statutory rape. In the one case, one participant in an allegedly sexual act is unwilling. The act is forced upon that person without their consent, whether they have the legal authority to give consent or not. In the other case, a person is engaged in a sexual act at an age that the legislature has determined is below the age at which informed consent can be given. The person’s willingness to engage in the act is irrelevant. They are deemed too young to be trusted to knowingly consent to such an act.

Conflating the two does no one any good. In fact, it cheapens the harm done and the injury felt by the victims of rape, those who were unwillingly violated by another.  However, in this matter and for the sake of making a few third-rate political points, it is convenient for Governor Palin and her acolytes to muddy the two very distinct terms into one so as to misstate the intent and effect of the joke. And if anyone actually thought that Letterman was referring to Willow Palin when he made that joke, you should be ashamed of yourself. You’ve got a dirty mind.

Finally, it is hypocritical to worry about protecting the children when both Willow and Bristol Palin have been repeatedly used as props and weapons by their parents. If the folks who are so worried about them are true to their word, they would find these kids a foster home.

(I have slightly revised this comment to remove spelling and other such errors and to amplify the argument in a couple of places.)

As I’ve trudged through life, I’ve been subjected to a long stream of numbskulls and dimwits who disparaged “book learning” in favor of “street smarts” and who decried the need for a large vocabulary (originally called the use of “twenty-five cent words,” inflation has them valued at somewhere around five dollars these days) and the subtle use of language. And yet the entire line of thinking that goes into jumping to the conclusion that Letterman was joking about anyone being raped shows exactly why book learning and a varied vocabulary and a subtle sense of language are virtues, not vices. For without understanding how words work, without understanding the difference between reasoning and believing, a demagogue can mislead and citizens are reduced to the status of cattle. (I made a similar point in an earlier post.)

Despite what is believed in some quarters, this nation was not founded by men who had faith in religious belief.  They had faith in the ability of humans to reason their way through problems.  They understood that reason elevated the member of a mob to be a functioning citizen.  Reason allowed them to be governed rather than ruled.

The Elements of Style, Not Steel

In reading an article in The Times this morning concerning the 50th anniversary edition of The Elements of Style, I reflected on a blog post I wrote a little over a year ago in which I discussed the effect the so-called “little book” had on me as a writer.  It was a small stroll down memory lane inspired, at the time, by a slight detour.  I had read a blog post by Paul Krugman in which he danced a piroette on the wonders of George Orwell’s essay about clarity in writing, “Politics and the English Language,” and I ventured the opinion that not only might Orwell’s essay perhaps not have been “the best essay on writing ever written,” but was, at least in my case, one of the best sleep aids I had ever encountered.  Some days later, I noticed on the dashboard for this blog that there was a link incoming to that post.  It connected to some website devoted to Orwell, and the author of the link added one of the “rules” from The Elements of Style in which E.B. White enjoined the nascent writer to not “affect a breezy manner.”  Apparently my lack of enthusiasm had struck a nerve, and someone who lacked the courage to identify himself had constructed what he thought was a witty rejoinder to my slander against his hero.  That’s how things are done in the digital world.

Unfortunately for our Orwell-loving sniper, my piece, while playful in spots, was not written in a breezy manner, and he (or she; idiocy is not gender-specific) missed the point of a section that White referred to in the book as a selection of reminders.  This point was also missed in a recent article published in The Chronicle of Higher Learning by a professor from the University of Edinburgh called Geoffery Pullum, although, in fairness, Professor Pullum has more reasonable, compelling, and useful ideas to put forth.  Both seem (although I might be misinterpreting Professor Pullum) to be under the misapprehension that The Elements of Style is anything other than a collection of guidelines for the beginner and is not–especially after E.B. White got through with it–a polemic or manifesto.  Of course, they are not alone.  Too many thousands, including the folks who created the grammar wizard in Microsoft Word, have taken the Little Book too seriously.  They treat it as if it were holy writ, not merely some quick ideas that put forth the notion–the same one as put forth by Orwell, by the way–that clarity in the writing of English prose is a virtue.

Because Professor Strunk followed his own advice concerning the making of definite assertions, the early sections of the book do read like an extension of the Ten Commandments, but this can be overcome.  And the second section, the one dominated by White, is far less proscriptive, although, I guess, by the time that people get that far, they have been conditioned enough to jump when commanded that they unconsciously omit White’s advice to season one’s taste of his reminders with a pinch or two of salt.  It is long past time for everyone to relax a little and to remember that The Elements of Style is not a sacred text.  It began its life as a guidebook for college freshmen and not as a learned disquisition on the English language in all its complexity.  It is a style guide, and a decent one, I think, and entertaining to boot.

Now, two more things before I go.

First, I want to make it clear that I am not anti-Orwell.  1984 and Animal Farm are two of the best novels I’ve ever read, extraordinary in every way.  What I failed to make clear previously was that it was that one essay that put me to sleep.  If it is truly as great as Professor Krugman had it, then the fault is mine.

Second, Professor Pullum’s essay should be read by anyone who is infatuated with The Elements of Style and his words heeded.  I think he is right in just about everything he says except in his insistence on taking the book sooooo seriously.  It also seems to me that some of his notions, such as that “[t]he students who know which words are needless don’t need the instruction,” are logically flawed and detract from his overall argument.   (Not that he’s arguing with overalls.  Whoops!  There’s that breezy side of me rearing its ugly head again.  For shame!  For shame!)  I think it would be great to see his essay published with the standard text as an afterword or something.  Everyone would benefit from a bit of scoffing, for there is no animal duller than a sacred cow.

I Get the Picture

Despite checking it relentlessly throughout the day, I don’t always get a lot of value out of Facebook.  I look at my homepage, shrug, and move on.  There’s something about both it and Twitter that I have trouble with.  As egocentric as I am, I still can’t be persuaded that anybody needs to know the excruciating minutiae of my daily life.  Does it really matter what I’m doing at any given moment, as long as it’s reasonably legal and only involves consenting adults?

However, I have just had an interesting experience on Facebook.  The niece of one of my “friends” (he and I were true friends during high school, but are, in reality, something less than  acquaintances now) posted a series of pictures taken at some family event.  Now, of course, there’s a very human tendency to remember people as they were rather than as how they are.  This was brought into sharp focus for me when I came across, among these photos, a shot of my friend’s parents.  I remember them as they were 30 or more years ago, probably about the age I am now.  And here I saw them, aged appropriately, still easily recognizable for who they were, who they had been.  And yet it was still a shock.

The smiles were still the same, hers open and friendly, his more wry and knowing.  He looks at her with love, as he always did, and I am transported.  I am young and callow, thin as a straw and riddled with acne and insecurity.  We are in their kitchen in the sturdy yellow house on a quiet small street.  My friend’s mother is cooking or cleaning or waiting on someone.  His father sits at the table at the wall by the door, reading the paper which is spread flat before him.  He sips a beer in tall, slender beer glass at patient intervals, spicing it with a taste of salt taken from a supply he keeps in the crook at the base of his thumb.

This is a happy memory for me.  More than that, it is a memory content.  This is a home for me, a second home, not in opposition to my real home as is so often the case, but an extension of it.  Another haven of acceptance and accord.

To see these people again, the mother, the father, the brother, the sisters, to see the person who was once the friend of the person who was once me is a pleasure, a welcome wave of sentiment and remembrance.  Many years have passed and all of these lives, mine and theirs, have gone in ways discrete and different.  I am, such as I am now, mostly unknown to them and they to me.  And yet in  my memory, so many years ago, I feel their presence and their being.  And amongst the strains and trials of life, amongst the difficult people and the slights and troubles that refuse to be forgotten, I still have that haven.

The Joke’s on You

As I’ve noted before, I keep tabs on the A Prairie Home Companion website the way that a boy keep tabs on the girl who broke his heart, and a Post to the Host there has gotten me thinking about practical jokes.  Apparently, on a recent show, Garrison Keillor revealed that Buddy Holly hadn’t died in that plane crash on the winter of 1959 and that he was now a minister with the Church of Christ working the lower westside of Manhattan.  One listener, confused, posted to the host and asked for clarification.  Mr Keillor thereupon took the opportunity to expand on his story, and even threw in that Holly now went by the name of the Reverend Charles Holley, with an “e,” which is the way his family spelled his true, nonstage name.  Now, a cursory Google search revealed that the named church, the Manhattan Church of Christ,  was not on W. 12th Street, but rather on on E. 80th Street, and that there was no Charles Holley ministering there.  So, the whole thing is a spoof.

And that’s fine, except that it makes me uncomfortable in the way that almost all practical jokes make me uncomfortable.  There is something fundamentally cruel and heartless about practical jokes.  The basic premise of these attempts at humor is to make one person look like a jerk for the amusement of others.  And while such an activity is certainly legal and Constitutional in the most trivial possible sense of the word, is it, in fact, civil?  Is this a way for a well known radio performer, humorist, and novelist to be acting?  And does this suckering of a listener–and most of his loyal listeners are nothing short of adoring–betray a well hidden contempt for the very people who make him a success?  Doesn’t Mr Keillor make a very nice living from the attentions of people like our unfortunate Thad and other hapless listeners like Carla, who posted a comment begging for clarification?

Personally, I’m not big on playing people for suckers, especially people who (and they are few in number) would look up to me and who would support my projects and celebrate my creativity.  As I was rereading Of Mice and Men over the weekend, I was struck by a passage in which George tells Slim why he stopped playing practical jokes on Lennie.  He says,

Tell you what made me stop that.  One day a bunch of guys was standin’ around up on the Sacramento River.  I was feelin’ pretty smart.  I turns to Lennie and says, “Jump in.”  An’ he jumps.  Couldn’t swim a stroke.  He damn near drowned before we could get him.  An’ he was so damn nice to me for pullin’ him out.  Clean forgot I told him to jump in.  Well, I ain’t done nothin’ like that no more.

That, of course, is a small parable on compassion.  When we see people as suckers, we see them as objects.  We shield ourselves from their humanity so that we can feel a tiny bit superior and so that we can “have a little fun.”  And yet, you can never tell where your “little bit of fun” ends and someone else drowning begins.  It doesn’t hurt to err on the side of compassion, especially when a person occupies a higher, more powerful social position.  And perhaps it is a good trait in an artist to see in his readers and listeners fully formed human beings rather mere suckers.