Monday, October 21, 2013

BREAKING THE LAWS OF GRAMMAR: Bargain Wash and Clip


(NOTE: Oh, a little monkey playing on his one key/Gives them all the cue/To do the Monkey Doodle Doo/Let me take you by the hand/Over to the jungle band/If you’re too old for dancing/Get yourself a monkey gland/And then let’s/Go, my little dearie, there’s the Darwin theory/Telling me and you/To do the Monkey Doodle Doo)

Crime. Looks ominous, right? With its connotations of dark skullduggeries, nefarious plots, underhanded schemes, foul play, and shrouded identities, crime appeals to the inner child still smarting from the spanking it took for bad behavior in the late eighties. To be a criminal is to be free from the adult world where laws circumscribe the days. A criminal can do whatever she or he wants, and when.
Laws are for citizens; crime is for the daring, the swashbuckler, the pirate, the elusive and always romantic highwayman demanding, “Stand and deliver.” Ask any career criminal, especially those smart enough not to get caught, what is the sweetest crime and they will say it’s the one committed with knowledge of the law being broken. That’s where the true charge lies, more so than the money or property acquired.
BACK IN THE REAL WORLD
The writer, like a citizen obeying traffic lights, depends on the laws of grammar to travel from one reader to the next. Grammar gives shape to language and encourages understanding. A declarative sentence must have a subject, verb, and predicate. Never join independent clauses with a comma. Statements must always be in the positive form. The list grows as a writer learns more about their craft and can be overwhelming when trying to express an idea or action that calls for breaking the laws. Should they be good and follow Strunk and White? Go ahead, you writer, be a criminal.
CHANDLER’S DAMN EDITOR
After years of publishing with Alfred and Blanche Knopf, Raymond Chandler jumped to Houghton Mifflin in search of greater sales. He had been well edited at Knopf, but the people at Houghton did not understand Chandler’s approach to storytelling. His characters had to sound real and reflect the American English he heard on the streets, in the bars, and riding with on duty police officers in Los Angeles. After submitting the manuscript for The Long Good-bye to his new publisher, it was returned to him scarred by an editor’s blue pencil. Some of the corrections he accepted, and for others he had this to say: “When I split an infinitive, I mean it to be split, damn it.”
Grammar had been pounded into him during his years as a public schoolboy in England, but he was adamant that the story came first. Anything less would harm the reader’s trust in what he was doing and why.
BAGGED AND TAGGED
An attendee at a writer’s conference complained on her assessment, “The instructor you stuck me with kept talking about grammar. That crap is a waste of time.” Only a tyro would say something that dumb. A professional writer thinks about grammar every time they sit down to a blank screen or empty page. When the temptation arises to leave the laws behind, it is done with full knowledge of the transgression, making the result as sweet as the most daring crime. Good writing is subversive, criminal, and much more fun to write and read.

ANOTHER PLUG IN A SERIES OF PLUGS
Cool autumn comes in and a writer’s fancy turns to The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95). Your local independent bookstore has copies available for reading after an afternoon of raking leaves and putting up preserves. You deserve the relaxation provided by this thin volume of thick thoughts. Summer was too hot for doing much anyway, except drinking adult beverages. Perky salespeople at your local independent bookstore will accept either cash or credit, and offer a receipt in return for next year’s taxes. The Dog promises and delivers what you need to know now. Log on to www.indiebound.com for the store nearest you.

NEXT: You Call That a Collar?

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Saturday, October 12, 2013

A WORD TO RETIRE: No Bones Before Bedtime

(NOTE: May seem peculiar
/How I think of you
/If you want me, darlin’/
Here’s what you must do/You gotta give me
/’Cause I can’t give the best/
Unless I got room to move/If you want me darlin’/
Take me how you can/
I’ll be circulatin’/’Cause that’s the way I am/You gotta give me
/’Cause I can’t give the best/
Unless I got room to move)

ALL IN A DAY’S PAGES
Good readers sometimes write, but every good writer reads a lot. Books such as Slow Reading in a Hurried Age by David Mikics (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2013), Slow Reading by John Miedema (Sacramento, CA: Litwin Books, 2009), and The Art of Slow Reading: Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement by Thomas Newkirk (Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2011) show how reading is active, not passive, and the skill is much more than an ability to turn pages. A reader has to get inside and mix it up with character, setting, and themes to find what the book is really about. Reading slow reveals the unlimited possibilities of language. Skipping through a book like a morning jog is a disservice to the story and the reader. Any book worth reading deserves to be read well, and more than once.
Like all good practices, reading slow has its drawbacks. The reader of contemporary books sees words used more for fashion than meaning, like oligarchy (who are the oligs?), paradigm (a nonfiction favorite from the late eighties and early nineties), ebullient (say it fast three times to win a prize), and the absolute worst offender, pathetic.
ROOT FOR THE ROOT WORD
The Latin (patheticus) and Greek (pathetikos) roots of pathetic have the word meaning that one is able to feel or be impassioned. Further down the etymological line, the word relates to those who suffer, who have suffered, and who will suffer real soon. Modern usage has pathetic as a hard slap to the cheek meaning weak or outright stupid, and a description of tawdry surroundings. Pathetic appears in dialogue when a more appropriate word cannot be found. Besides, it gives the speaker a chance to sound educated, always good when belittling the bad guy.
At the end of the eighteenth century readers knew what pathetic meant. Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6 in B minor, is also known as the Pathétique, for the suffering the composer underwent while finishing what would be his last symphony. Somehow the word changed and now we are stuck with pathetic as imprecise, rarely used where it should be, and not much use to the writer.
CONCISE WORD, CONCISE EMOTION
Writers begin with a close relationship to the dictionary. They find a portable one for hauling around in a book bag and spend too much for a big dictionary at home. Both are necessary on account of the English language has about 250,000 words (excluding twerk) and no one knows all of them. Words whither and die like any organic substance; they depend on frequency of use for continued life. What keeps language alive are the writers who put the correct word in the correct place. When a word has its meaning watered-down or taken too far from its beginnings, it’s time for public internment. Pathetic is ready to be measured for a coffin and sunk deep into barren ground.

BETTER NOW, NOT LATER
The Dog Walked Down the Street: An Outspoken Guide for Writers Who Want to Publish (Cypress House, $13.95) is a wonder of ink and paper. Many of its pages are numbered for easy reference. Recent readers have said many nice things to the author, never seen in public without his masculine silver tiara of genuine pre-war plastic and who is prone to blushing. The good-looking staff at your local independent bookstore will be thrilled at your discernment in purchasing this swell book, full of information about writing and publishing and the proper use of pralines. The Dog is for writers and readers eager to know the unknowable and dress better. Log on to www.indiebound.com for the nearest independent bookstore ready to slip this well-behaved corgi into a plain brown wrapper, just for you.

NEXT: Bargain Wash and Clip

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