What Writers Do by Shrinkrapper (RJ)

There is an interesting, though disturbing, article, “The Rise of the new Ruling Class and How the Global Elite is Leaving You Behind,” in the January/February issue of the Atlantic. The article is written by Christia Freeland, Global Editor-at-Large of Reuters news, according to Wikipedia, and formerly U S Managing Editor of the Financial Times. She reviews the enormous and growing discrepancy in income between the middle class and the world’s wealthiest people, pointing out that the latter are now a global elite who have much more in common with each other than with fellow citizens of their countries of origin. They have a hand on the entire rule-making-, legislative-, and financial-decision-levers of the world, and use this power to benefit their own quasii-nation first and the world as a whole second, or sometimes not at all.

Happy New Year!

The writers of Evanston Writers Workshop would like to wish you and yours a very happy and prosperous new year.  May 2011 bring us all growth, prosperity, and peace!

During 2011, we will re-launch Evanston ShopNotes with a new editorial staff and Editor in Chief.  We will resume our series with Richard Johnson and have some interviews with the best and the brightest of the writing world.  Stay tuned!

The Delight of Stumbling Around

by RJ Robertson

“Did you read the directions?” A notorious question. It’s a rare guy that doesn’t endure that question every once in a while. On the other hand, when my wife says, “How did you know this was the way?” my chest swells, my face smirks. I graciously say, “Well, I came upon it one day when I had time to check out the possibilities.”

It’s pure delight when a fortuitous stumble propels an unanticipated treat. For example, yesterday, while returning an over-due book to the library I found I had a little extra time, so I decided to wander through the new acquisitions and just-returned shelves. My left arm, unaided by any conscious intent, darted out at one point and grasped a book, “JORGE LUIS BORGES… THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES 1933-1969,” written in large, white letters on an almost-iridescent, pea-green jacket, with a painting of a sprite, in renaissance-art style, in translucent blue on the right of the cover. Below it was a formalized aleph.

All that description—tedious as it might have been—is necessary for you to envision what it was my right eye (the good one) and left arm seized upon. Why? Ah…  that is a question locked in my sub-conscious. Sorry, Dr. Freud is out of the office today. What I can tell you is that the very “old-fashioned-ness” (If I may be pardoned a neologism now and then) was part of the attraction. There are those who would say it’s serendipity. That’s a label, not an explanation.

You see, after a heavy dose of what is winning the short story contests these days, the Curmudgeon escapes the dungeon and tears out into the ancient world looking for a kindred (not kindled, dammit) spirit.

A few months back we submerged into The Brothers Kamarozov.  It took a couple months to finish, but it felt absolutely revitalizing. I surfaced again when I resumed taking long, deep breaths instead of multi-tasking gasps. Then a few weeks later I picked up Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, and consumed it with equal zest.

I know, I hate to think what all this might be saying about me, but never mind. It occurs to me that I have wandered quite some distance from my subject, but it’s all relevant in a random sort of way. Anyway, no sooner had I peeked into the first story, “The Aleph,” (1945) than I encountered the following beginning:

On the burning February morning Beatriz Viterbo died, after braving an agony that never for a single moment gave way to self-pity or fear, I noticed that the sidewalk billboards around Constitution Plaza were advertising some new brand or other of American cigarettes. The fact pained me for I realized that the wide and ceaseless universe was already slipping away from her and that this slight change was the first of an endless series. The universe may change but not me, I thought with a certain sad vanity.

Well, that first paragraph (half, actually) spoke to what in me feels, “Hey wait, world, I can’t keep up… [and then] Oh, to hell with it. Do you see what I mean? I have a meg or two of PDFs. of prize winning stories on an (old-fashioned. i.e. from the 1990s) zip drive, a three inch thick file folder with reviews of books I certainly must read, I see new library stocks, every time I go there, of wonderful looking titles I hunger to chew on. If the guys in the white coats fooling around with stem cells can keep me going another two hundred years—and if publishers stop right now—I shall satisfy my longing to know everything about everything. Meantime, I’m not holding my breath.

The point is, however, that Mr. Borges gave me more than a book full of interesting stories. I don’t know whether he intended or not, but I have a new way of selecting my reading.

Grammar with R.J. Robertson Part 2 (Plus a Quiz!)

Language Evolves and Grammar Lurches Along:
On Keeping a Toehold on Stampeding Style

................

Part 2 (If you missed part 1, click here)

Well, enough of excuses and allusions. My discussion is in four parts. In the first I will detail ten of the commonest errors one encounters in everyday speech and writing. It is in the form of a quiz. If you get all or most correct, you might be satisfied to go your way in peace. Or, even if you don’t, you could simply resolve not to do it again, and still go your way in peace.  If you endure to the second part, I will present the rationale for the correct choices in common sense terms. In the third part I will say a bit about the parts of language, and how they require the currently-reigning rules. (Heaven knows I’m no expert at it, but I do have the basics, and we’ll muddle through.) Finally, in the fourth part I will reverse course and propose that, if you hang around long enough, many of the things I criticize (following Strunk and White) will be common practice.  Off we go, then.
……………………….
Which statement in each of the following pairs is correct?  (Answers below)
1a “Mom came to town this morning, and her and me had breakfast before I came to the studio.”
1b. “Mom came to town this morning, and I and she had breakfast before I came to the studio.”
2 Which of the above statements do you think a young, radio announcer actually said as she started work?
2a (1a.)       2b (1b).
3a. ”I got tired while reading the article and lay down for a short nap.”
3b. “I got tired while reading the article and laid down for a short nap.”
4a. “No sooner had I lain down than I fell sound asleep.”
4b. “No sooner had I laid down than I fell sound asleep.”
5a. “You could see John was trying to impress Nancy. He was laying it on pretty thick.”
5b. “You could see John was trying to impress Nancy. He was lying it on pretty thick.”
6a. “Mary handed the groceries to him and I.”
6b. “Mary handed the groceries to me and him.”
7a. “Its been a long time since I studied grammar – if ever.”
7b. “It’s been a long time since I studied grammar – if ever.”
8a. “I’ts still important for a writer to know a little punctuation.”
8b. “Its’ still important for a writer to know a little punctuation.”
9a. “There was no one to whom I could give my report.”
9b. “There was no one to who I could give my report.”
10a. “Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.”
10b. “I was able to buy the house very cheap, because of its dilapidated condition.”


Answers to the quiz:
 1 - b; 2 - a; 3 - a; 4 - a; 5 - a; 6 - b; 7 - b; 8 - ( a ringer, “E, none of the above.”); 9 - a; 10 - b.

Comments on the quiz items:
On 1) I tried to tempt you by putting the speaker’s partner before the speaker. This would be considered, perhaps, a little more polite, but it is a distraction; a. is grammatically incorrect, polite or not.
2) calls for a guess, of course, and so is not a real test of grammar, but it emphasizes a point. I heard it on a local radio station – driving through Nebraska a few years back. If that is what one hears from a radio announcer, for God’s sake, what’s going on?
3) is straight forward, just a test of which of two wholly different verbs gives the correct meaning
4) again straight forward – each is the past tense of a verb, but which is the correct verb?
5) a test of which of two verbs – having some forms in common – is correct here. The transitive verb, lay, is called for, because John was laying it (the object) on.
6) once more I threw in the “politeness” ambush just to mislead. It might seem more courteous to hand the groceries to him and me, than to me and him, but either statement is grammatically correct while the other is incorrect, because it has the conjunction, and, linking an objective case with a nominative case.
7) For questions about punctuation, see Truss.* It’s (contraction of ‘it” and “is”) true that the word, it, is extra complicated, because grammarians had to find a way to distinguish the contraction of “it is” from the possessive case of it, which has to be it’s to conform to the rule of showing possession by apostrophe (‘s). Example: “After biting the apple I said, “it’s rotten,” meaning it is rotten.
8) What can I say? Am I supposed to follow my own rules? I threw these misused apostrophes into the quiz because Truss fulminates against them as she finds them all over the place: signs in store windows, announcements of various agencies and even newspapers.
9) This one can be quite annoying, as many people have it just backwards.
10) Unintended humor of this sort results from unnoticed ambiguity.
* Truss gives a raft of hilarious examples, worth the price of the book by itself.

A Literary Quiz, or why speech identifies your social status.
1. Who was the English language author referred to in Heinlein’s motto at the top?
2. Name the work from which the reference is taken.
3. What character speaks the line that Heinlein cites?
3. Name the musical comedy based on this work.

Answers to the literary Quiz:
George Bernard Shaw, the playwright.
The play Pygmalion.
Professor Henry Higgins, a linguist who bets he can transform a street girl’s speech so that she can be passed off as a duchess in fashionable circles.
My Fair Lady.