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Some people may get excited by a new 72-inch HDTV, others the purchase of a luxury car. I just purchased H.W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage for four dollars, and I am the happiest of men. Fowler was once a household name. Yes, even more famous than Grammar Girl. His Usage appeared in 1926 and became required reading for the likes of Winston Churchill’s staff.
One can open to any page of Usage and find beautiful tidbits. For example, he says of the letter n in a mathematical formula, “It is a dummy occupying a place until its unknown principal comes along, or a masquerader who on throwing off the mask may turn out to be anything.” For the first time in my life, I’m electrified and terrified by the possibilities n may pose.
He says that only vulgarity could cause confusion over the Greek word homo, which means “the same,” and the Latin word homo, which means “man.” I am now a less vulgar individual. Today, we tend to think of vulgar as Miley Cyrus licking a sledgehammer, but times change. I decided to go ahead and look up vulgar in the book, and Fowler says, “When blundering hands are laid upon them and they are exhibited in unsuitable places, [words] are vulgarized.” “Exhibited in unsuitable places” still makes me think of Miley.
Reading on:
“There is little in common between the lyrics of Pindar and those of a modern ‘musical.’” Fowler adds the quotes around musical. He questions the right of the musical to exist as an entertainment. Oh, that I could resurrect him and force him to watch llamas that sound like people on YouTube just to see his reaction.
“One would like to represent to the gossip writers and advertisers that they are desecrating the words epic, glamorous, and fabulous by applying them to cocktail parties, cosmetics, and striptease girls.” I wonder what he’d say about a line from today’s gossip columns: “OMG, Bey’s BF is a total cheating D-bag… Whatev’s! Her va-jay-jay’s too good for him anyway, and she needs to move on!” I wonder if Fowler would take issue with the preposition at the end of the last sentence.
“Anyone can say surroundings and combination and total; I will say ambience and synthesis and overall.” Example: The ambience of the cat’s litter box synthesized feces and urine and needed an overall overhaul.
Last one for today:
“Clichés are plentiful in the linguistic currency of politics, domestic and international. They too, however happy in their original application, soon lose any semantic value they may once have had, and become almost wholly emotive.”
I guess some things never changed.
“The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.” Ralph Waldo Emerson was always saying crazy stuff like that.
Artists of all kinds often tell you that to be a good artist, one must keep a child’s perspective even into adulthood. Picasso writes, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Others claim that true inspiration comes from a divine source. Homer invokes divine muses. Blake says of his writing, “I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me,” and Puccini says of Madame Butterfly, “The music of this opera was dictated to me by God; I was merely instrumental in putting it on paper and communicating it to the public.”
And yet divine guidance and childlike wonder are often overlooked in writing classes or workshops. It’s as if a great carpenter suggests, “If you want to make a house, start with a blueprint,” but instead you start measuring 2×4’s because you would rather start with the known.
Some may not be comfortable with concepts like God or Inner Child. Others will tell you that such “inspiration” is actually the work of your subconscious. I’m not here to make theological arguments or tell anyone where art actually comes from, but I do wonder this: if many artists, including many so-called great artists, believe that inspiration comes from divine sources or childlike wonder, why aren’t these things discussed, let alone cultivated, in writing classes?
If I approached my current graduate seminar and said, “I’m waiting for God to tell me what my next essay should be about,” my fellow students would probably ask me who my dealer is and whether I could score any of the same stuff for them. Then someone would ask me what I meant by the word God because if there’s anything English graduate students can’t agree on, it’s the meanings of words.
In Paul J. Silvia’s book How to Write a Lot, he explains that a writer must sit down and write. He or she must schedule an hour or more each day and spend that time writing or working on writing (i.e. researching, outlining, and so on). I agree with this assertion because writers often procrastinate, but I would add that sometimes during that hour, a writer can play, pray, or meditate.
Imagine a writing class that spends a silent hour next to a lake. Or playing with children. Or dancing naked around a fire. Okay, the last one might be too much for some (I’m imagining my current class doing this and it ain’t a pretty picture), but let’s not forget that literature isn’t just an intellectual practice that counts alliterations and picks apart the misogynistic and racist views of writers past (although I’m not saying such activities aren’t worthwhile), but literature also communicates experiences.
The playwright David Mamet once told an interviewer that theatre is not meant to explain away, but to “celebrate the mysteries of life.” He goes on to say, “What is missing from modern life is spirituality – the connection to the greater truths of the universe.” Then Emerson wryly added (or would have, if he had not written this over a hundred years ago), “Why should we not enjoy an original relation to the universe?”
If you are a writer, you may have had this experience: you have a brilliant idea in your head. You think you have a plot so moving that it could solve world hunger. You just know it could. Over the next few days, weeks, months, or years, you think about this idea, you expand on it, you revise scenes and characters, you basically write it in your brain. Not only that, you imagine the world’s reaction to your work. You win all kind of awards, everyone praises your work with words like “Perfection incarnate!” and world hunger becomes a thing of the past.
Finally, you’ve decide to sit down and actually write down your dream novel. Now, keep in mind, you happen to know it’s brilliant. Once you have it written down and people get their grubby hands on it, the light will shine from above and mankind will be saved. How noble of you to sacrifice your time at the writing desk in order to bestow your gift upon humanity.
Then you write your first sentence. Congratulations! You have actually made it farther than other folks with a brilliant idea. Sure, it doesn’t quite live up to the brilliance of the rest of your work, but beginnings are difficult and you can always go back and revise. For now, you just need to get “the juices flowing,” as if somehow your creativity clogs like a water pump. But you’ll pump at it, you’ll spend some time letting the gunk out first, and finally pure inspiration will flow.
Then as you write, you start to see the problem. Writing sucks! And your writing sucks! At least, compared to revelatory novel you had in mind.
You’re dealing with the reality of putting words on paper. That oh-so-clear idea you had in your head suddenly seems fuzzy and incomplete. Major plot points don’t quite fit together the way you thought they would, and that brilliant monologue in your head looks trite on paper. Then, you start to forget words. Words you know you know. You start having conversations with yourself, such as: “You know the word for the thing on your face, you know, the one between your eyes but a little lower.” “Your nose?” “Yeah, your nose!”
And so you give up, the world deprived of that one literary masterpiece that would have ended all suffering.
It’s important to keep in mind that no writer has ever been perfect. Let’s take Shakespeare. Shakespeare is considered by many to be the greatest playwright of the English language. By some, he’s considered the greatest writer in any genre in any language. The literary critic Harold Bloom thinks Shakespeare invented modern man. In other words, Shakespeare’s got rep.
And yet, he had his not-so-great moments. For example, in Romeo & Juliet, one of the characters says, “I am slain” right after he’s, well, slain. I have never seen a production when someone didn’t giggle a little at this line. In another play, A Winter’s Tale, a bear comes out of nowhere and chases someone off the stage. Later we hear the character is dead, and that’s all we really know. Even Bloom, the guy who thinks Shakespeare invented the rest of us, calls Merry Wives of Winsor a “throwaway.” Samuel Johnson, one of the early major Bardolaters, writes, “Shakespeare never has six lines together without a fault.”
Nor has any writer been universally loved. Think about how many people you know that don’t actually like Shakespeare. And before you think these people are uncivilized, think on this: Tolstoy thought Shakespeare’s plays were “detestable,” Lord Byron assumed Shakespeare’s reputation would “go down,” Voltaire says Shakespeare “can please only in London and Canada,” and George Bernard Shaw calls Shakespeare a “household pet.”
And if you still think Shakespeare’s the greatest, you have to admit that even his plays haven’t solved world hunger.
Perfection in writing is nonexistent. It’s like unicorns. Unicorns are pretty and majestic and magical and inspire world peace, but they aren’t real, just like the perfect piece of writing or the Great American Novel.
Some people want to strive for perfection in their writing, even though how one reacts to writing is highly subjective. Often, perfectionism stunts writing, causing good writers to stop writing because they aren’t great writers or because someone criticized their work.
I would like to submit my “basically good” theory. Basically, I state that all writing starts off good but could use improvement. If Shakespeare is right when he says, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” why not just assume your stuff is good but needs improvement. Why fear incompetence? If you’re going to get rejected by somebody somewhere no matter how good or bad you might be, why not think of yourself as good?
That’s not to say that if you want to write speeches for the President of the United States you won’t need to do some work, but you might as well stop beating yourself up. Someone else is going to do it for you. Just keep improving and improving and improving until somebody says, “Hey, I think this guy is the next Rob Lowe!” Who knows? It may never happen, but whether it does or doesn’t, did you ever really help yourself by saying, “I suck”?
I have a problem.
Literally.
It may not be a huge problem, but it’s a challenge that I face every day. I’m not talking about wars or hunger or anything truly worth stressing over, but still.
I can’t stand it.
I’ve already told you what my problem is. It’s the word literally. “Literally” is my problem. “Literally” is one of the most overused, misused, hyperbolic words in today’s common usage.
For instance, let’s take the statement you might hear someone say: “Children are literally little demons.” Now, if we are to take such a statement at face value, we should assume quite factually that all children are servants of Satan. This would mean that children “prowl around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour,” as stated in the Bible. Don’t you think we should do something about it, like maybe kill all the children?
Let’s look at some others.
“My grandma is literally a thousand years old.” Tell her I’m glad she made it through the Black Death; that was a pretty rough year.
“My heart literally soared.” I am so sorry, but it was nice knowing you when you were alive.
“She was literally glowing after her honeymoon trip.” Did her husband take her to Chernobyl?
“If something doesn’t happen soon, I’m going to literally die of boredom.” I wonder if the CDC knows about this epidemic.
“The movie literally made me bawl my eyes out.” I hope the movie came with a warning that it would be the last one you would ever see.
“You can literally add anything to this recipe, and it will still taste good!” Really? How about an RV?
“I’m so mad; I’m literally about to explode.” Someone call Sunshine Cleaning.
I think you see the problem. If you are going to use the word literally, please mean something literal. For example, “I literally wouldn’t be here if my parents never had sex.” That’s quite true; thanks for sharing. Or “I hate it when someone literally kicks a puppy.” Me. Too.
Now that you’ve read my observations about the word literally, I hope you never misuse it in your writing again.
I thought about ending with the word, “Literally.” It would have made a nice stamp at the end of the article. However, it was too obvious. Obvious endings literally make me want to stab my eyes out. Next time you see me, I’ll look like Oedipus Rex.
One could assume that the goal of language is communication and that those who study language would be the best communicators. And one would be wrong.
Let’s take our friend James Joyce. He held a degree in modern languages; knew old English, Latin, Italian, French, German, and modern Greek; studied Hebrew, Russian, Japanese, Chinese, Finnish and other tongues; and read Norwegian. He says of himself, “I don’t even know [ancient] Greek though I am spoken of as erudite.” Boo hoo. He’s also considered by many to be the best writer of the 20th century. You would think, with all that brilliance and language, he would be the best communicator in the world.
And here’s what he wrote:
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawn-skawntoohoohoordenenthur — nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the green since dev-linsfirst loved livvy.
This is from the first page of Finnegans Wake. It’s not some mysterious beginning that eventually leads to something intelligible. The whole book is like this. And it’s supposed to be funny. Maybe he didn’t intend it to be laugh-out-loud funny. Or perhaps the only thing that’s funny is that Joyce spent seventeen years writing it and people spend lifetimes deciphering it. But Joyce has a reputation. If I wrote it, a nice man would come along to take me away while I express my dependence on the kindness of strangers in Norwegian and French.
I don’t want to use the word elitist because we who do more than scrounge for food and hope the lions don’t eat us are elitists to some extent, but I could probably count on one hand the number of people on this planet of 6.5 billion that could explain this thing to me. That is a very small percentage.
Communication comes from a Latin word that means “to share,” but sharing is not always the goal of language, and sometimes it does quite the opposite. Here are some cases-in-point:
There is a dark side of language. Language can be used to enlighten and inspire, to speak difficult truths, to accomplish great changes and to provide opportunities. Or language can be used to distort, to disenfranchise, and to attack in a mighty game of social or political warfare that destroys language’s greatest asset, the enabling of understanding and cooperation.
I, as a writer, must choose how I will use this thing called language.
There has been increasing self-reflectivity in our intellectual pastimes. Now, we can go to the bookstore and find a whole section of books about reading. Fictional books about reading fictional books. We might read blogs about blogging, or watch YouTube videos about YouTube videos. Currently, I’m reading a prose book called Good Prose and I’ve started writing this journal about writing.
Today we see these things as essential. Do I want to be a good writer? Then I better read about writing. I better take seminars and classes about writing. I better ask writers about the world of writing. Oh my God, won’t someone please tell me about writing?!
Then, when I’m done learning how to write, I can go to a secluded cabin up north and write Reading Montaigne in Montana or some other crazy piece that people will read because they have fantasies of reading great literature in the great outdoors. Never mind that Montana is cold and Montaigne is boring.
I wonder how Shakespeare would have confronted a work like 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I wonder what will happen if I don’t read all those books. I won’t go to heaven or something?
Most likely, Shakespeare’s linguistic education consisted of English grammar, Latin, Greek, and some Ancient Greek and Roman works. Then he went to London, did some stuff (we’re not exactly sure what), and then started writing plays for fun. It’s doubtful he read books like, “Scribe Prettily Anon” or Marlowe’s “Ye Too Shall Playwrite in Success.” If he had, there could have been such timeless wisdom as, “The best playwrights write their sooth.”
Am I saying that I think that all this writing about writing and other activities is bad? Not really, but it may need some tempering with reality.
I’m not going to say it’s bad because most of my education has been in the field of writing and it has helped my writing. If nothing else, it makes you write. There’s nothing that motivates you to write more than an eager and expectant classroom full of likeminded intellectuals who plan to judge and tear your work apart like a five-year old at a piñata party. Unnecessary adverbs seem to be the candy they want to bludgeon out of your writing.
But I will say this: sometimes we tend to read books like Reading Montaigne in Montana than actually read Montaigne.
I’m also saying this: great writing is still a mystery despite the extensive books on writing well. I don’t know how Shakespeare, Dickens, Nabokov and Morrison became great writers. And for each “rule” for good writing, there’s a great writer out there who probably broke it.
That said, here’s some things that I have found to be true for great writers, things I don’t necessary find in the “How to Be a Great Writer” books:
You may be wondering, well, what constitutes a “great writer”? Maybe you happen to despise Shakespeare but E.L. James changed your life.
Then I recommend you get a degree in English (right after you see a therapist). Who and what determine great writing is the debate that’s on the academic table. You’re still going to read dead white men like Shakespeare and novels like Huckleberry Finn for the umpteenth time, and you probably won’t read your favorite author Danielle Steele, but at least you can get intellectually pissy about it.
My strongest writing suit seems to be humor. I can make a body laugh. I can insert humor into something that doesn’t even deserve to be funny. I once spent an entire afternoon writing up a note on Facebook about the three-way relationship between a cat, a dog, and myself. I, an adamant animal lover who believes in a New Age-y way that love fixes all, hated those animals.
Hated.
I don’t know how one typically writes humor into an academic piece of writing. Academic writing is often dry and convoluted although clarity and reader’s attention are given lip service. This piece of evidence comes from Literacy in American Lives by Deborah Brandt, a required reading in a graduate course I took last year.
“Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (19).
Read an entire book of this material, and that bottle of antifreeze starts to look fairly appetizing.
So how can one inject humor or at least entertainment into such a passage, or for that matter, should we?
First, let’s get to the nitty gritty: what the heck was that sentence about? Clarity is key. The sentence is defining a term the book will use extensively: sponsors. What are sponsors? “Sponsors, as I have come to think of them…” First, let’s get rid of “as I have come to think of them.” I teach my writing class to leave out terms such as “I think” or “I believe,” and I’m going to ask the same of Dr. Brandt. “Sponsors are any agents, local or distant…” Is the last part necessary? Local and distant? Doesn’t that pretty much mean everywhere? Simplify! “Concrete or abstract…” I.e. everything. “…who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy.” In other words, any agent that affects literacy. “- and gain advantage by it in some way.”
That last phrase is the mystery of the sentence. Sponsors are not just agents that affect literacy, but sponsors also “gain advantage by it in some way.” What does that mean? Why is it necessary? Having read the entirety of the book, I’m still not sure. I imagine a sponsor as anything that affects a person’s or persons’ literacy. Why do we need to state that they gain advantage from doing so? Is the author attempting to separate out, say, teachers, who get paid to teach literacy, or churches, who spread religious teachings through literacy, from some homeless stranger on the street who hands you Strunk and White for no apparent reason. I think we understand that a sponsor gains in some way, so I suggest the statement be stricken from the record.
Here’s my proposed sentence: Sponsors are anyone or anything that changes reading and writing abilities.
One may argue that the meaning has changed, that Brandt’s nuances have been run over by the simplicity train. I would argue that the rest of Brandt’s sentence has already been implied by the simplified sentence and in addition, newfound clarity has been provided. Any further discussion, such as whether a sponsor can be “concrete or abstract,” ought to have its own discussion with clarifying examples. What’s an abstract agent? Tell us!
So, do we add entertainment to such a concept, or would that distract from the purpose of the sentence, which is to define sponsors?
Side note: I looked up “entertainment” in the online Merriam-Webster dictionary. It said, “the act of entertaining.” I looked up entertaining and it said, “providing entertainment for.” It’s a wonder that signifiers mean anything to anybody.
However, I was able to find this definition: “something diverting or engaging.” Obviously, I don’t want to divert from the message. So that leaves something engaging. How can I make my definition more engaging?
So I decided to make the sentence into a rap. So instead of:
“Sponsors, as I have come to think of them, are any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, and model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold, literacy – and gain advantage by it in some way” (19),
I wrote:
Check it, sponsors yo,
They be all up in your face, or no,
With the “Read that” and the “Write this”
And the “Write that,” and the “Read this”
I don’t even know, yo,
If it be helpin’ or no go.
My apologies to Professor Brandt and pretty much every other academic (and rap artist) I’ve probably offended.
However, I still want academic writing to hold up to the same standards as other writing: simplicity (even while conveying complicated ideas), death to extraneous words, concrete examples, an attempt to hold the reader’s interest, and so on. In other words, an academic writer should help the reader understand and engage.
Now, my original concern was, “Does humor have a place in academic writing?” I still don’t know, despite all my ranting. What does that tell you?
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