We're not supposed to speak ill of the dead, so I'll just say I'm thankful I managed to escape any English teacher intent on inflicting Catcher on the Rye on her students. But there's no denying the impact of J.D. Salinger's semi-autobiographical novel, which has sold 60 million copies, on the American consciousness in the first two decades after its publication. Publishers expect a surge in new sales after his death Wednesday at 91.
Soon after the novel was published in 1951, Salinger went into seclusion, where he remained the rest of his life. He never published another novel, although he did publish a collection of short stories.
Catcher was hailed for its authenticity, spawning many imitations. It is anything but. The novel is thick with the pretentious tone that marked too many novels of the mid 20th century.
You can decide for yourself. Here are some popular quotes from Catcher (note the frequent use of the first person pronoun — 20 times in 10 quotes):
"I'm sick of just liking people. I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect."
"Grand. There's a word I really hate. It's a phony. I could puke every time I hear it."
“It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it.”
“I'm quite illiterate, but I read a lot.”
“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”
“I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.”
“I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.”
“I'm just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don't they?”
Friday, January 29, 2010
Friday, January 22, 2010
Headlines
Am I the only person in America who doesn't care who is the Tonight Show host? How does the breathless drama of Leno's and Conan's respective time slots get so much press day after day? With Haiti and the Massachusetts election and so many other real news events, how does this keep getting headlines? Many Facebook friends are weighing in as if it matters. I don't get it.
But speaking of headlines, I confess to being a fan of Leno's weekly feature with that title. Here are a few favorites, forwarded by a reader, followed by my comments (I can't vouch for their authenticity — the headlines, I mean, not the comments):
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says (that's why they get the big bucks)
Miners Refuse to Work after Death (fine, then they won't get paid)
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant (you'll never know until you try it)
War Dims Hope for Peace (and that headline dims hope for journalism's future)
Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures (ah, that explains it)
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges (paid for with stimulus cash?)
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks (they taste like chicken)
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half (now that's an effective stay-in-school program)
But speaking of headlines, I confess to being a fan of Leno's weekly feature with that title. Here are a few favorites, forwarded by a reader, followed by my comments (I can't vouch for their authenticity — the headlines, I mean, not the comments):
Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says (that's why they get the big bucks)
Miners Refuse to Work after Death (fine, then they won't get paid)
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant (you'll never know until you try it)
War Dims Hope for Peace (and that headline dims hope for journalism's future)
Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures (ah, that explains it)
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges (paid for with stimulus cash?)
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks (they taste like chicken)
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half (now that's an effective stay-in-school program)
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
No toaster
The Poe toaster was a no-show.
Since 1949, a mysterious visitor in a dark cloak has left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at the Maryland grave of Edgar Allen Poe on the author's birthday, Jan. 19. A group of Poe fans gathered this year, as they do every year, to read selections from Poe's works while awaiting the mysterious visitor, who has never been identified. It is not known whether the toaster is the same person every year.
The tradition started in 1949, marking the centennial of Poe's death in 1849, and it lasted until last year, the bicentennial of Poe's birth in 1809.
Since 1949, a mysterious visitor in a dark cloak has left three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at the Maryland grave of Edgar Allen Poe on the author's birthday, Jan. 19. A group of Poe fans gathered this year, as they do every year, to read selections from Poe's works while awaiting the mysterious visitor, who has never been identified. It is not known whether the toaster is the same person every year.
The tradition started in 1949, marking the centennial of Poe's death in 1849, and it lasted until last year, the bicentennial of Poe's birth in 1809.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Writers' resolutions
Here are some writer's resolutions I invite you adopt for the no-longer brand new year:
1. Write. Daily. Schedule it. Two hours is better than one because it takes a while to get into the flow, but one hour is better than none.
2. Read. Good writing will inspire you, but even bad writing has a place — it leaves you thinking, I can write better than this. The ordinariness of most any published work can take the mystique out of writing. That's a good thing if that mystique is an obstacle to getting started.
3. Turn off the TV. It robs creative energy.
4. Walk. A brisk walk outdoors stirs creative energy.
5. Nap. Especially if you stall out. Your thinking will be clearer after a brief rest.
6. Start. Don't let a late start turn into a don't start. Yeah, so it's already halfway through January — so what?
1. Write. Daily. Schedule it. Two hours is better than one because it takes a while to get into the flow, but one hour is better than none.
2. Read. Good writing will inspire you, but even bad writing has a place — it leaves you thinking, I can write better than this. The ordinariness of most any published work can take the mystique out of writing. That's a good thing if that mystique is an obstacle to getting started.
3. Turn off the TV. It robs creative energy.
4. Walk. A brisk walk outdoors stirs creative energy.
5. Nap. Especially if you stall out. Your thinking will be clearer after a brief rest.
6. Start. Don't let a late start turn into a don't start. Yeah, so it's already halfway through January — so what?
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Strunk and White
For 50 years, writers and editors have relied on a pocket-size grammar
reference book entitled The Elements of Style, but commonly referred to
as "Strunk and White" for its authors, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
You probably recognize the name E.B. White as the author of Charlotte's
Webb, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. The Pulitzer Prize
winning author also wrote for The New Yorker for six decades.
The 1959 publication was actually White's edited and updated rewrite of Strunk's
1918 grammar guide. Strunk had been White's English professor at
Cornell.
The Elements of Style is the best-known and most widely used grammar
guide, having sold more than 10 million copies. But not everyone is
enamored of it.
In an essay for Chronicles of Higher Education in April, University of
Edinburgh English professor Geoffrey K. Pullum shreds Strunk and White.
Pullum's view: "(B)oth authors were grammatical incompetents."
Pullum writes: "The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem
in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges
from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence
has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has
significantly degraded it."
Pullum then picks the volume apart, particularly the authors'
misunderstanding of active and passive voices.
Pullum concludes: "Several generations of college students learned
their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and
the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely
anxious and insecure whenever they write 'however' or 'than me' or
'was' or 'which,' but can't tell you why. The land of the free in the
grip of The Elements of Style.
"So I won't be ... toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and
underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state
of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying
English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and
interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch
of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic
bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten
rules."
The entire article can be found at:
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497
Although Pullum is on target, I still recommend that you keep a copy of
Strunk and White handy.
reference book entitled The Elements of Style, but commonly referred to
as "Strunk and White" for its authors, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White.
You probably recognize the name E.B. White as the author of Charlotte's
Webb, Stuart Little and The Trumpet of the Swan. The Pulitzer Prize
winning author also wrote for The New Yorker for six decades.
The 1959 publication was actually White's edited and updated rewrite of Strunk's
1918 grammar guide. Strunk had been White's English professor at
Cornell.
The Elements of Style is the best-known and most widely used grammar
guide, having sold more than 10 million copies. But not everyone is
enamored of it.
In an essay for Chronicles of Higher Education in April, University of
Edinburgh English professor Geoffrey K. Pullum shreds Strunk and White.
Pullum's view: "(B)oth authors were grammatical incompetents."
Pullum writes: "The Elements of Style does not deserve the enormous esteem
in which it is held by American college graduates. Its advice ranges
from limp platitudes to inconsistent nonsense. Its enormous influence
has not improved American students' grasp of English grammar; it has
significantly degraded it."
Pullum then picks the volume apart, particularly the authors'
misunderstanding of active and passive voices.
Pullum concludes: "Several generations of college students learned
their grammar from the uninformed bossiness of Strunk and White, and
the result is a nation of educated people who know they feel vaguely
anxious and insecure whenever they write 'however' or 'than me' or
'was' or 'which,' but can't tell you why. The land of the free in the
grip of The Elements of Style.
"So I won't be ... toasting 50 years of the overopinionated and
underinformed little book that put so many people in this unhappy state
of grammatical angst. I've spent too much of my scholarly life studying
English grammar in a serious way. English syntax is a deep and
interesting subject. It is much too important to be reduced to a bunch
of trivial don't-do-this prescriptions by a pair of idiosyncratic
bumblers who can't even tell when they've broken their own misbegotten
rules."
The entire article can be found at:
http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497
Although Pullum is on target, I still recommend that you keep a copy of
Strunk and White handy.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Shakespeare?
Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? For two centuries, scholars on both sides of that argument have made passionate and reasoned arguments. Among those who doubted that the real Shakespeare of Stratford-on-Avon wrote the works attributed to him were Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Orson Welles, Sigmund Freud and Charlie Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin wrote: "In the work of greatest geniuses, humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere, but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare. Whoever wrote [Shakespeare] had an aristocratic attitude."
Others point to the shear volume of Shakespeare's works and conclude that no one man could have written it all. Others say the real author left clues of the clever ruse in the works themselves where only the most perceptive can spot them.
More recent skeptics have included Sir John Gielgud, Joe Sobran and Derek Jacobi, the who produced the "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt."
Whom do the skeptics say wrote the works? The leading candidates are Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford; Sir Francis Bacon; Sir Walter Raleigh; and Christopher Marlow, a prolific writer believed to have faked his own murder to escape execution for heresy. Some say Marlow wrote from exile and credited the works to Shakespeare with the bard's collusion. Dozens of others have been suspected of writing the works, including Queen Elizabeth and King James I.
The author and columnist Joe Sobran's 1997 book "Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time" posits that the real playwright was de Vere.
Because the prevailing view that Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare, there is no list of prominent celebrities who argue their case. But plenty of scholars have made convincing arguments. Here's a couple of readable arguments for:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/Shakespeare.html
Others point to the shear volume of Shakespeare's works and conclude that no one man could have written it all. Others say the real author left clues of the clever ruse in the works themselves where only the most perceptive can spot them.
More recent skeptics have included Sir John Gielgud, Joe Sobran and Derek Jacobi, the who produced the "Declaration of Reasonable Doubt."
Whom do the skeptics say wrote the works? The leading candidates are Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford; Sir Francis Bacon; Sir Walter Raleigh; and Christopher Marlow, a prolific writer believed to have faked his own murder to escape execution for heresy. Some say Marlow wrote from exile and credited the works to Shakespeare with the bard's collusion. Dozens of others have been suspected of writing the works, including Queen Elizabeth and King James I.
The author and columnist Joe Sobran's 1997 book "Alias Shakespeare: Solving the Greatest Literary Mystery of All Time" posits that the real playwright was de Vere.
Because the prevailing view that Shakespeare really wrote Shakespeare, there is no list of prominent celebrities who argue their case. But plenty of scholars have made convincing arguments. Here's a couple of readable arguments for:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Troy/4081/Shakespeare.html
Friday, December 11, 2009
Sports talk
Post-game interviews are icing on the cake for those writers who also love sports. Watching coaches destroy the English language is as entertaining as watching Ndamukong Suh destroying quarterbacks. Coaches, many of them with master's degrees, mangle phrases as badly as running backs. And coaches have a particular talent for confusing verb tenses. But you expect more from sports writers, who make a living with the language.
Sometimes sportswriters project their own errors onto coaches in quotes. One writer I read frequently online quotes coaches using "that" for "who," as in "He's a player that shows real leadership" instead of "... who shows real leadership." Another writer leaves off the auxiliary verbs in perfect tense. Instead of "We've got to turn this season around," it is "We got to turn this season around." The writer wouldn't write "He got to get better" or "I got to get better" but can't seem to hear the last part of the contraction "we've" during interviews. It took hearing the coaches' own words for me to realize it was the writers who inserted the errors.
The inability to use verb tenses correctly afflicts plenty of national sportswriters. It has become fashionable for coaches and athletes to speak of past events in present and future tense. "If we score on that fourth down we win the game." Ah, but the game is over and you lost, so it's too late for that.
A CBS sportwriter, in a column about this year's five Heisman candidates arriving in New York for tomorrow's award ceremony, makes six errors in the first four paragraphs. Example: "If there isn't a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout carries all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony."
But there ISN'T a second left on the clock. It ran out — twice, actually, as those who saw the game know — six days ago. The sentence should read: "If there hadn't been a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout would have carried all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony." That turns 28 words into 30. Is that really such a problem?
By the way, I pick Colt McCoy for the Heisman. He's had a strong season to cap a stellar four-year career. Mark Ingram can wait until next year. Suh will have to be satisfied with being selected first in next year's NFL draft. Gerhart managed to take 21 credit hours at America's most selective university while racking up 1,736 yards against tough competition. He deserves it as much as anyone. Tebow doesn't have the stats this season to become only the second player to win the Heisman twice, but if they give an award for greatest all-around human being on the planet, he's a shoo-in.
Sometimes sportswriters project their own errors onto coaches in quotes. One writer I read frequently online quotes coaches using "that" for "who," as in "He's a player that shows real leadership" instead of "... who shows real leadership." Another writer leaves off the auxiliary verbs in perfect tense. Instead of "We've got to turn this season around," it is "We got to turn this season around." The writer wouldn't write "He got to get better" or "I got to get better" but can't seem to hear the last part of the contraction "we've" during interviews. It took hearing the coaches' own words for me to realize it was the writers who inserted the errors.
The inability to use verb tenses correctly afflicts plenty of national sportswriters. It has become fashionable for coaches and athletes to speak of past events in present and future tense. "If we score on that fourth down we win the game." Ah, but the game is over and you lost, so it's too late for that.
A CBS sportwriter, in a column about this year's five Heisman candidates arriving in New York for tomorrow's award ceremony, makes six errors in the first four paragraphs. Example: "If there isn't a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout carries all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony."
But there ISN'T a second left on the clock. It ran out — twice, actually, as those who saw the game know — six days ago. The sentence should read: "If there hadn't been a second left on the clock last week in Arlington, Texas, the fallout would have carried all the way to New York for the 75th Heisman ceremony." That turns 28 words into 30. Is that really such a problem?
By the way, I pick Colt McCoy for the Heisman. He's had a strong season to cap a stellar four-year career. Mark Ingram can wait until next year. Suh will have to be satisfied with being selected first in next year's NFL draft. Gerhart managed to take 21 credit hours at America's most selective university while racking up 1,736 yards against tough competition. He deserves it as much as anyone. Tebow doesn't have the stats this season to become only the second player to win the Heisman twice, but if they give an award for greatest all-around human being on the planet, he's a shoo-in.
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