For Auld Lang Syne

This morning with little remaining of the year Good Morning America did a montage re-cap of 2011. As I watched I reflected on where I was when these major events took place. Like many of you I watched from my television set as Japan crumbled from an earthquake and tsunami.  While driving in the car, I listened to the BBC as I heard about Europe’s economic crisis. And sitting in a café I picked up a newspaper to read about the Middle East dictators being captured, imploded and dropping like ashes. 

As I take stock of my year I think of where we are headed as a nation.  Our economy continues to be in shambles, and so much of our news is wracked with strife, that it’s easy to forget the good that comes our way.  To end the year our troops came home from Iraq and Afghanistan after almost a decade. And although we may never regain the trillions of dollars spent (at least not in my lifetime) the war that was based on poor reasoning is over.  Now we can turn our full attention to pursuing long-term strategic plans for the U.S. to build or should I say re-build our future. There will be no more casualties of the brave servicemen and women who fought abroad and I hail that as our biggest victory of 2011.  Ring out the old, ring in the new. Have a happy and safe new year.

Surrendering Talents

Here's the last post of 2011 from guest blogger and Canadian writer Shane Joseph. 

Monday, September 29th, 2008

I had a dream. An old man was dropping objects from a bag into a lake. I seemed to be able to read his mind. The first items to go in the water were a cricket bat and a ball; they eddied and floated away. “Goodbye little friends, and thank you for the joy you once gave me. My limbs are too stiff for you now.” A theatrical mask followed. I recognized it from when I played El Gallo in amateur theatre, years ago during my youth. “And my voice cannot hold that tenor anymore,” the old man said. “But it was a happy time. Thank you.”

I walked closer and there was an odd familiarity to this old man, I had seen him somewhere. He took out a guitar and set it adrift in the water. “And this can go along too. My fingers cannot reach the chords fast enough anymore – arthritis.” It was a good Catania, one I had played often but never owned, and therefore, always desired.

A tear rolled down his cheek as he took out a well-thumbed notebook. He flipped the pages, smiling at some lines, getting angry over others, looking proudly at the horizon from time to time. “You are hard to give up,” he said hesitantly. “You are all my thoughts, desires, and machinations. You are the messages that came to me from across the water, in the middle of the night, that I recorded; the seeds of the novels and stories I wrote for many years. Until you stopped coming.”

He rose and paced, slowly at first, reaching a furious march, to and fro, scratching his head, gesticulating, pleading with some unseen entity, reluctant to let go of the book. Finally, as if embraced by an invisible but caring hand, he calmed down and turned towards the horizon once again. “What is in here does not belong to me; it was placed in my custody and stewardship, for conversion into lessons for others – my readers. And that I have accomplished. Now, like me, it must return to its source.” He set the book floating out into the middle of the lake, where it weaved and bobbed with his other talents. As he removed his clothing and prepared to enter the water, I rushed over, determined to rescue him, yet knowing I was going to be too late. Who was I to save him? I caught a glimpse of his face as he slipped into the inviting lake. The old man was me.

A tribute to fairy Godmothers

My hunch is that most kids prefer younger adults. As a child, I did not. The perceptions I drew from elders influenced me.  I remember older neighbors and how I made it a point to befriend them. Such as when I watched Mrs. Flory watering her lawn how I learned about the intrinsic value of nature. Sitting in the Irving’s living room snuggled into a big chair and being served liverwurst for the first time while being told about far-away lands.  Sipping lemonade with Mrs. Stokes while she fanned herself southern style I listened on why good manners were to be cultivated. Inside the Bogue’s dining room I got my first introduction to Jazz and the Big Bands.  And last there was my godmother, Aurora who lived in a big Victorian house that had all the trappings of another era; the enormous porch, a cast iron stove, the glass kitchen cabinets, a pond in the backyard, and the foot stool I had to step on to get into a high rise poster-bed.

If any woman could be said to embody and to be confined to a 1930’s cinematic era, it would have been her. Although she wasn’t an actress, like the famous contemporaries of the time—Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, and Dolores Del Rio—she made a number of smart, savvy, sophisticated, moves that poured out of her in the years during my childhood.  She’s as much a part of the 1930's milieu as, say, the glamorous cast of The Women.    

Today I remember her since it would have been her birthday.  But also, like the aforementioned actresses, she personified what was then an era of chic—a time of glamour, attractiveness and magnetic flair.  As a child she came across as gentle and patient, forever a people watcher—forever curious about everything around her she would ask me adult-like questions about my ideas and increased my ability to symbolize, pushing my intellect making me think long after I had given my answer.  And when I gave her responses she asked me for definitions.  In my eyes, no one set the trends and pushed the limits better than she did. She was the quintessential star of my day, and she set the style, the vogue, and the trends in her social circle.  She was dubbed, the brightest, the best dressed, the most elegant, the jewel in the crown.

See No Evil

Having won numerous spelling bees during my childhood and adolescence it’s hard for me not to see errors. My husband is astonished whenever I point out a continuity mistake during a television show or film. And my hairdresser marvels at how I can visually see when he’s off a quarter of an inch on one side. What this boils down to is a miss-nothing-stare. Although I’m not perfect nor claim to be, I thought about Hemingway and his 4 rules of writing, and devised my own list. It includes the 4 most common grammar mistakes I see among bloggers, with suggestions.  

Grammar Mistakes 

1. Your vs. You’re

This one is extremely common among bloggers. All it takes to avoid this error is to take a second and think about what you’re trying to say.

“Your” is a possessive pronoun, as in “your car” or “your blog.” “You’re” is a contraction for “you are,” as in “you’re messing up your writing by using your when you really mean you are.

2. It’s vs. Its

Another common mistake easily avoided by thinking through what you’re trying to say.

“It’s” is a contraction of “it is” or “it has.” “Its” is a possessive pronoun, as in “this blog has got its audience.” Here’s an easy rule of thumb—repeat your sentence out loud using “it is” instead. If that sounds odd, “its” is likely the correct choice.

3. There vs. Their

This often gets overlooked.

“There” is used many ways, including as a reference to a place as in, “let’s go there” or as a pronoun; “there is no hope.” “Their” is a plural possessive pronoun, as in “their bags” or “their opinions.” Always do the “that’s ours” test.  Are you talking about more than one person and something that they possess? If so, “their” will get you there.

4. Affect vs. Effect

As with any of the other common mistakes people make when writing, it’s taking that extra minute to get it right that makes the difference.

“Affect” is a verb, as in “Your ability to communicate clearly will affect your income immensely.” “Effect” is a noun, as in “The effect of a parent’s income on a child’s future is well documented.” By thinking in terms of “the effect,” you can usually sort out which is which, because you can’t stick “the” in front of a verb. While some people do use “effect” as a verb such as an attorney- “a strategy to effect a settlement”, you should avoid this if you want to write in the manner in which people speak.

Five Rules

I often refer to Ernest Hemingway masculine declarative sentences. I’m almost finished reading The Sun Also Rises one of his masterpieces and a classic example of his spare but powerful writing style. Rather than embracing the flowery prose of the literati, he chose to write simply and clearly. With that in mind I’ve come up with five ways to emulate his style.  Let’s see what he can teach us about effective writing.

1. Use short sentences.
Hemingway was famous for a terse minimalist style of writing that dispensed with flowery adjectives and got straight to the point. In short, Hemingway wrote with simple genius.  Perhaps his finest demonstration of short sentence prowess was when he was challenged to tell an entire story in only 6 words: For Sale: baby shoes, never used.

2. Use short first paragraphs.
See my opening.

3. Use vigorous English.
Vigorous English comes from passion, focus and intention. It’s muscular and forceful. It’s the difference between putting in a good effort and trying to move a boulder…while sweating, grunting and straining your muscles to the point of exhaustion!

4. Be positive, not negative.
Since Hemingway wasn’t the cheeriest guy in the world, what do I mean by positive? Basically, you should say what something is rather than what it isn’t. Stating what something isn’t is counterproductive since it directs the mind in an opposite way. Even a word like inexpensive, can have a more positive tone; instead use economical. Another example; the word error-free can be stated as either consistent or stable.

5. Never have only 4 rules.
Although Hemingway only had 4 rules for writing, they were those he was given as a reporter at the Kansas City Star in 1917. But, as any writer knows, having only 4 rules isn’t really possible. So, in order to have 5, I had to dig a little deeper to get the most important writing tip and this quote says it all: “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit,” Hemingway confided to F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1934. “I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

A great feast of language

What exactly does it mean to get acquainted with a literature classic by watching a television show? What happens when students are exposed to great works of literature by what they view versus what they read? Does this cultural literacy mean that literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed that way?

Certainly a producer can argue when defending a TV adaptation of a classic that students who would have never read a book would at least watch a TV series based on it and get acquainted with literature classics in this way. And that argument seems to be valid. But there are those who can also argue that contemporary TV adaptations of classical novels are often simplistic and add elements of vulgarity believing it will keep the viewer engaged when it pollutes the storyline.

So which is correct? Both may be correct to a certain degree. But they are missing one important point: literary classics have become part of pop culture and should be viewed in that way; not as something whole or pure.

A good television or film adaptation can certainly provide pleasures of its own, but they are the pleasures available in that medium. A good film requires careful attention, just as a good novel, but the kind of attention being paid is not the kind required by fiction. Films can provoke us into immersing ourselves into the scenes since the image moves and forces us to keep track of the information conveyed through editing; it is ultimately the work of the eye and ear keeping pace with appearances. We have to look and listen. Fiction requires a kind of looking, but even our visual registering of a word, phrase and sentence, and the way these elements arrange themselves in a style distinctive to the author we're reading, is an internally-oriented mental process rather than an externally-oriented process of sorting sights and sounds.  Our imaginations then have to finish the job the writer has started. We have to mentally transform the words, phrases, and sentences into actions, thoughts, and the emotions of the characters. 

Seeing a film as either a supplement to or as a replacement for reading classic works, doesn’t make sense to me. It's based on the assumption that works of fiction are stories about characters and that, since a visual medium is able to tell stories about characters, if you faithfully tell the story and present all the characters you've adequately reproduced the book. While it's true that some literary classics, especially those written in the 18th and 19th centuries, have stories and characters, surely it isn't the case that they are conveyed to us in the same way.  What gets lost in the adaptation is narrative voice, fluctuations in point of view, subtleties in characterization, and shades of description. Most importantly, what gets lost is the encounter and richness of  language.