Tag: Language

800–LB. GORILLA . . . .

A recent online (members only) discussion of how to save newspapers in our digital age considered perils and advantages of digitilization. Left out, and maybe irrelevant considering the Decline of Taste and Reason in our time, was an editorial rather than technical solution to the decline of newspaperdom, namely to write tighter.

Newspapers such as Chi Trib, what I’m most familiar with, lets people go on and on, leaving unedited and uncut the writer who knows what people ought to know and will tell them regardless of people’s willingness to be told, or at least told so much. The writer knows what’s best for people and supplies it. He must have space or his professional dignity is compromised.

This is not counting those who very carefully use much ink saying something that requires it, which is of course where editorial judgment comes in, i.e. taste. 

Meanwhile, however, readers have turned the page and it’s readers one, newspaper nothing.

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Verrrrry interesting items . . .

* Victorian sentimentality was the product of “an unnatural union of poetry and Puritanism.” – Hugh Kingsmill, Anthology of Invective and Abuse, Dial, 1929

* “Throwin’ up his little finger” means doing a lot of drinking, in fact coming home drunk, in Legends and Stories of Ireland, by Samuel Lover, an 1831 collection published anew in 2006 by Nonsuch (nonsuch-publishing.com). In story “New potatoes,” in which Dublin potato-seller Katty complains to herring-monger Sally of her Mike, who had come home drunk: He “was done to a turn,” she said, “like a mutton-kidney.”

* The word “dickens” = devil. My mother and her mother knew that when they called a kid “that little dickens” of said, “Isn’t he (or she) the dickens?” Thus James H. Montgomery, of Austin TX, translator of Don Quixote. In TLS letters 3/16/07.

* Time Mag worried about a coming ice age in its Nov. 13, 1972 issue. And again in its Jun. 24, 1974 issue. So did Newsweek on April 28, 1975 – “The Cooling World, by Peter Gwynne: “There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically” etc.

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Why he used a manual typewriter

Kevin McGowin, a writer and teacher with two web sites and two computers who was only 30 years old when he wrote this, uses a manual typewriter for writing fiction.

I began this process in 1993, and by the next year had moved to typewriters almost exclusively–because I’m convinced it improves my writing, or at least makes it more like the platonic ideal of the writing I see in my mind’s eye that I would like to produce. And since I’ve made the shift back to the typewriter, I’ve written more and with more discipline, been less hasty and sloppy, and have seen improvement and now feel more confident.

Manual, not electric:

I found that I loved the lack of electricity, of not being “plugged in” to the wall, the feel of the hammers sculpting their shapes onto the paper.

How does it help?

I find my concentration enhanced, my sentences more taut, and by not being able to move around huge blocks of text I find myself more in tune with the narrative flow of the piece.

He’s an afficionado:

I use different machines for different kinds of writing–I’m writing this “personal essay” on my aforementioned first antique manual, a black 1940s Royal KM (like my initials–a famous novelist who admired my poetry gave it to me in 1993). It types small, and works well for essay-type writing. For correspondence, including cover and query letters to editors and publishers, I use a 1935 L.C. Smith upright–I love the way it forms numerals, and the click, the brisk action with which it forms its letters, which are larger than those of the Royal. People like to get letters typed on the Smith, I think–it’s personal, in this age of laser printed mass mailings and the letters are so clear. It types a little slow, which makes it perfect for letter writing, although you might not want to try a novel on it.

For his novels there’s “a beautiful and fast Underwood 11 that has a sound that reminds me of rain.”

Other writers also: novelist Don DeLillo uses a “1950s Olympia Deluxe, [which is] heavy for a portable, but . ..  fast and . . . accurate, a truly great writer’s machine.”

McGowin and his wife live in an apartment now, but look forward to owning “a Queen Anne-style house with hardwood floors and a working typewriter in every room . . . “

Alas, it won’t happen.  Shocking it was to come to the end of his later essay, “Why I Still Use a Manual Typewriter,” part of the beautiful site The Classic Typewriter Page, to read this:

Editor’s note: Kevin McGowin died in an accident on January 18, 2005. He will be missed by his friends and family, by me, and by his many readers on this site and elsewhere. –Richard Polt

May he rest in peace.  I’m stunned.

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How to kill a story

Can’t tell you how annoying this is, when a world renowned newspaper, two actually, LA Times and its sister paper Chi Trib, runs a dumb misuse of a word that changes the meaning of the account but is close enough to be accepted:

RAMADI, Iraq — The commander of U.S. troops in Iraq wanted some sweets, and nothing was going to stop him. Not even tramping through a neighborhood that only days ago had been teeming with snipers and Al Qaeda fighters who would love nothing better than to say they just shot Gen. David Petraeus.

With soldiers casting anxious glances along the desolate dirt road, the four-star general made a beeline for a tiny shop and helped himself to a honey-coated pastry proffered by the owner. Oblivious to the flies buzzing around his head, Petraeus chatted briefly with a man who said his cafe had been damaged in recent battles between U.S. forces and insurgents.

Days ago this might not have been possible, but in a brazen [my emphasis] effort to show off what they say has been a shift of allegiance in Sunni insurgent territory, U.S. and Iraqi officials Tuesday brought an all-star cast of military and political figures to Ramadi.

Brazen?  Susman means bold, or else she chooses to denigrate a brave, dramatic move by a commanding officer.  Are there no copy editors?  At Times or Trib?  Ridiculous.

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About that word you’re using . . .

LOOK OUT: I’m tired of this politically correct restriction. Can’t say the N-word? Heck with it, I’m going to say it: Negro. There. That felt good. Now the C-word. You don’t know what the C-word is? Colored.  . . . .

. . . The N-word is not merely banned as epithet. It’s become unpronounceable. Panic grips hearts at the sound. It has totemic significance. It’s the evil eye looking at you, Boy (and Girl). It knows where you live. . . . .

ELECTION: . . . . the New Leadership Coalition–Dolan, Lyon, Meyer, Shiffer–sounds the bell for fiscal change. Overspending is the Oak Park problem, and spending in the wrong places.   . . .

MANIFESTO: Oak Parkers, wake up! You have nothing to lose but your bill for the costs of letting trustees muck around in commercial real estate!

[Entire column here]