« September 2006 | Main | November 2006 »
All I wanted to do this morning was buy my $1 coffee and $2 oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins and get along on my merry way. But the calm of the transaction was interrupted by this radio ad (the purpose of which was to publicize tourism in...I'm not sure -- Jersey, maybe?):
"Maybe that's why they call this the tri-state area. We'll TRY anything."
Puke.
I have a pole in my apartment. A thickish pole, wrapped in bristly rope, that divides the living room from the short corridor (in New York terms, "office") leading to the bedroom. Various guests have puzzled over the pole's purpose, but in general, guesses have been narrowed to two things: (1) it's a supporting pole, plain and simple, or (2) it's a water pipe, wrapped in rope to protect against injury from fluctuations in temperature.
But these two things are not what I thought of when I first laid eyes on the apartment nearly two years ago. No, what I thought was much simpler, much more ... primal, you might say: Stripper Pole!
My reaction was so organic, in fact, that as soon as I stepped into the apartment, the broker fast behind me, I could not help but run to the pole, grab it, and spin around it in an acrobatic twirl. (I had been with the broker all of an hour, maybe two. But he was a good sport, this broker -- just sort of smiled and giggled and changed the subject to square footage.)
At the end of my apartment search, the choices had been whittled to two. There was the large-ish one-bedroom duplex with a tiny, walled-off kitchen (a minus -- a maker of crudites, canapés and other party treats must be able to socialize with her party guests) but also a deck off the second floor (a plus). And then there was the pole apartment: a large-ish, wide-open, loft-style thing with exposed brick along one long wall and, of course, the pole.
Now, some would argue that the deck should have won the day. A deck for a reasonable price is hard to find in this city. And a space with enough room for private sun-bathing and barbecuing is even scarcer. But you know who cares about sun-bathing room and primo BBQ action? Pale people (which I am not) and carnivores (which I am sometimes, but not vociferously enough to justify taking a particular apartment). And so, the decision, for me, was pretty much a nondecision.
But now, as happens with so many relationships, my love affair with the pole apartment is winding to its close. In a couple of months, I plan to move from my Hells Kitchen lair (it really is a lair, or maybe "cocoon" is a better word -- point being, the apartment doesn't get much light) to the E.V. or L.E.S., land of cheaper restaurants, more abundant bars and cafes, better boutiques and thrifting opportunities, dog runs for big and bitty dogs, and fewer lost tourists with the tendency to ignore the "walk" part of "sidewalk."
Most friends, when they hear of my imminent move, react with a "cool!" But on a recent pool-playing, whiskey-drinking outing, the reaction from one friend, who I will call Cute Overload's No. 1 Fan (aka CO1F), was more like overt disappointment: "No!!! What about THE POLE?!"
Me: "Well, I'm sure there are other apartments with poles."
CO1F: (whimper)
Me: "Seriously, I've seen other buildings with poles. In this neighborhood, too. Like, Grape & Grain has a pole kinda like mine."
CO1F: (whimper)
But fear not, CO1F, for recently, I found the answer to both our woes: the Peekaboo Pole Dancing Kit!
Yes, now you can have your pole -- and take it with you, too!
Broadsheet (subscription required) did a writeup on it, because apparently this thing was being sold in the little-kiddie toy department of the U.K. chain Tesco, and some family-values peeps got their knickers in a bunch. (Tesco is now selling the pole only as a "fitness" item, away from the toddler aisle.)
Now. Before any of my loyal and generous readers get the smart idea to buy and ship me the Peekaboo Pole, let me just say: thanks, but please, no. After all, I may luck out and find that dream apartment in the E.V. complete with exposed brick and hardwood floors and windows that let in daylight and a built-in pole, in which case a Peekaboo will not be required. And even if not, somehow, the Peekaboo strikes me as the kind of product one must really buy on one's own. Kind of like a leather bustier.
And even then, the pole component of my life may have had its day. After all, my commute is about to get longer, I may soon be going back to school, I am totally coveting a puppy -- who has time for pole twirling with all that?
From Garner's Quotation of the Day:
"There may be some writers in this world who never get stuck, writers whose fluency is so great that it carries them without a break from the beginning to a predetermined end. I am not one of them. I wouldn't believe anyone who claimed to be. I get stuck with depressing regularity, and I find that the best way to become unstuck is to start over as if I were writing a letter to a friend. This prescription also seems to work well for others who have tried it." -- Ernst Jacobi, Writing at Work: Dos, Don'ts, and How Tos 4 (1976)
Warning: Rant Ahead
Every pay day, like so many other working Americans (well, the fortunate working Americans [and here, as you'll soon see, even "fortunate" is relative]), I have a hefty chunk of money taken out of my check for this thing called Health Insurance. Ostensibly, this means that when I need to go to a doctor -- a doctor approved by my Health Insurance, as confirmed by my Health Insurer's Web site -- I should be able to walk in, pay my small co-pay, and be examined and treated, and that should be the end of it. But it never works that way. Oh, no. Because that would require the Insurer to be beneficent instead of evil. And after receiving yet another erroneous notice of "payment due" in the mail today, I am convinced all over again of one thing: The Insurer is evil.
Why is the Insurer evil? you may ask. Well let me tell you.
The Insurer is evil because each time I go to the doctor's office, I do all the right things: I arrive on time, I present the right card, I fill out all the proper and redundant forms divulging an abundance of private information that I'm sure one day will be handed over to the evildoers to use against me. I wait as patiently as possible, I see the doctor, I pay my small fee, and I leave without causing a scene, even though sometimes I really, really want to cause a scene, as in those times I'm kept waiting 45 minutes for an appointment that lasts 5. The waiting time is not the Insurer's fault. (Right? Or maybe it is. I wouldn't be surprised. But because I have no evidence, I won't blame the Insurer for that one.) What is the Insurer's fault -- and this is where the evil part comes in -- is the fact that each time I go through these very proper motions, a few days later, without fail, I receive a notice in the mail: $130 for a doctor's visit, not covered; $180 for blood work, not covered.
Like hell they're not. Remember that thing about paying all that money into Health Insurance? I am definitely covered. But the Insurer, being evil, is extremely savvy. It is hoping that since $130, though a large amount, is not obscenely large, I may decide to forgo the hassle of visiting my benefits office and filling out a claim form and instead just scrape up the money, write a check and stick it in the mail.
I'll bet a lot of people do that. These invoices arrive on official-looking paper, filled with insurance-jargony language that can be difficult to decipher even for an extremely literate person. And when faced with such a formidable document, it can seem so much less stressful to just make the payment and get the insurer off one's back. Because that's another thing: These notices? They come relentlessly. Every week, you'll get a new notice, maybe multiple notices, telling you that this particular appointment was not covered (even though it was), even after you've visited your benefits office and filled out the claim and started the process of getting the paperwork all straightened out. It's harassment, this barrage of evil crap, stinking up the mailbox day in and day out.
It doesn't make sense, of course. If I pay good money into the health fund, it's a reasonable expectation that the money will be there and ready to work for me the very few times a year I actually need it. But no, it becomes this major headache every time, to the point where I don't want to go to the doctor at all. Growth on my foot? Mole on the neck looking a little funny? Pain in my ovary? Eyeball falling out of its socket? I'm going to wait five years to do anything about it because I want to stave off the post-appointment B.S. And that is where this system becomes not just annoying, but dangerous -- when reasonably sane people like me (don't laugh) do rather stupid things like avoiding the doctor, even in the face of potentially serious health problems, because they would rather not deal with the angst. And I say people like me because I know I'm not alone. A lot more people would make a point of going to that annual checkup if visiting the doctor were as simple as making an appointment to have their nails done. When our health is at stake, you would think someone would try to make it that simple. But that would make you logical, which our Health Insurance system certainly is not.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for the people who have far worse health problems than I do -- chronic problems, requiring multiple doctors' visits, and therefore multiple go-rounds with the evil Insurers.
I can only hope that when the day comes that I have joined the ranks of these people with chronic conditions, it will be many, many years from now, and maybe, just maybe (I know, probably when pigs fly, but whatever), the issue of Health Insurance will have become much simplified, much more egalitarian, much more humane. But until then, I am stuck receiving these infuriating notices, to the point where I want to stick my head out my window, a la Howard Beale in Network, and scream for the entire city to hear: "I'M MAD AS HELL! AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!"
If you hear me shouting, go ahead and join me. You know you want to.
End Rant
Has landed!
Cue music to 2001: A Space Odyssey...And...
And...
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: GULLIVER THE SMALL!!!
Coming itenerary:* Wilmington (A Place to Be Somebody), Delaware
* Novato (No, Not Nevada), California
* Berlin (Land of Hobbits), Germany
Stay tuned...
"They" being the New School. I go in for an interview next week. (Teeth chattering, knees wobbling. Eee eee eee!)
In response to a query about that last post, I'm moved to expand: Embracing grammar does not mean an author must sacrifice rhythm or style. That's the point Francine Prose starts to make here: "Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought."
Let's explore that.My interpretation of what Prose is saying is that understanding the way sentences are structured will give writers more power, not less, when it comes time to play with that structure -- to, at their creative will, "break the rules," and break them well. The thing is, in writing, the rules are infinitely bendable. Writers can choose "wrong" words (from a pedant's viewpoint) but go on to employ them in such a way as to make them, in context, seem more "right" than the reader could ever have imagined. What doesn't work is the writing that takes the rules and abuses them to such an extent that a sentence becomes impossible to comprehend -- or just plain groan-inducing. (How many times have you read tortured prose where the writer was obviously trying to stretch a bit too hard? Take my word for it: Editors run into that sort of thing almost daily.) At that point, the breaking of the rules serves no one -- not even the author, for who wants to read a book made impenetrable in its gobbledygook?
In the very same chapter in which Prose makes the case for grammar, she also says it's "essential to find a style manual with a loose interpretation of the whole concept of style[*], lest you be advised against ever writing the sort of sentence fragment that animates the Philip Roth passage" (a mesmerizing excerpt from American Pastoral
Let's linger on that word for a moment: CLARITY. In all the verbal pyrotechnics a writer may employ, it comes back to that. At the end, do we understand what we just read? After a 181-word sentence -- which is the length of a Virginia Woolf sentence Ms. Prose uses to make her point -- are we still breathing? Is the brain electrified, or is it confused? This is where Prose goes on, after her discussion of grammar, to write at length on the importance of rhythm, using the Woolf sentence and those of several other writers as examples. And she illustrates her point with a couple of lovely sentences of her own (again on Woolf):
Because as her sentence winds on, everything proceeds in an orderly progression from that participle "considering" and that introduction of "illness" as the noun that can subsequently be summoned up by the pronoun "it." Pausing to breathe at each comma, we find ourselves amid a series of dependent clauses that break over us like waves, clauses that increase in length, complexity, and intensity as the aspects of illness that we are invited to consider grow more elaborate and imaginative, whisking us from undiscovered countries to deserts to flowered lawns and down into the abyss from which we are lifted by the voice of the dentist whom we mistake for God welcoming us into heaven.
Comma. Participle. Clause. Pronoun. See how that works? What she's saying is that the building blocks are all still there, that they can be applied to the most dazzling and unconventional of sentences by Woolf, by Roth, by Joyce or by Hemingway. But they're employed in a way that makes sense, one that breathes with the help of -- wait for it! -- the happy little pieces all coming together harmoniously. In fact, speaking of harmony, here's another Prose analogy: "It's helpful to consider the parallels to music, the way that, at the end of a symphony, the tempo slows down and the chords become more sustained or dramatic, with overtones that reverberate and echo after the musicians have stopped playing."
Where that music becomes discordant, though, is in the misapplication of some of the building blocks. I'm going to play with Prose's own sentence here and rearrange the commas. Note how the random insertion or deletion of the commas impedes the breath, even changes the meaning, and turns this into something less than lyrical:
Pausing to breathe, at each comma we find ourselves amid a series of dependent clauses, that break over us like waves clauses that increase, in length, complexity and intensity as the aspects of illness, that we are invited to consider grow more elaborate and imaginative, whisking us from undiscovered countries to deserts to flowered lawns and down into the abyss from which we are lifted by the voice, of the dentist whom we mistake for God welcoming us into heaven.
Enh. Feel like you're hyperventilating? I sure do. The haphazard placement of the commas destroys the sentence's natural flow. The good news is that even without having all the comma rules memorized, talented writers can usually still get by, helped by their natural ear for the language. (And as the above example should illustrate, even people who aren't writers have enough of an ear to recognize when something is off. This is what I referred to in my earlier post.)
I've mentioned before how I often get e-mail from old friends or new acquaintances (even parents) asking me to please forgive them their sins of syntax, goofs of grammar, perversions of punctuation. What's truly amazing (even heartbreaking) to me is when they include these kinds of caveats up front, then go on to write an amazingly gorgeous letter. A letter in which, sure, they've bent or broken some rules, or used nonsense words, or made-up words (something I do all the time, by the way), and yet from a writerly standpoint, there is absolutely nothing wrong with what they've done. I'm frequently left dumbfounded by these apologies, but then I realize it all comes back to the root problem: These people are convinced they're abusing the writing because they feel unclear on the rules, insecure about their mastery of them; and if they're unclear on the rules, they think they must be breaking them, they must be committing embarrassing gaffes -- they're just not sure which ones.
This is again where grammar becomes a tool -- to if nothing else relieve these writers' paranoia. Some writers obviously have more of a natural gift for rhythm, for the layering of clauses, for the ingenious use of vocabulary. What's funny is that in exercising their gift, they're most likely already using most of the helping tools of grammar. They just don't realize it.
* To this, I'd add that it's helpful to have not just one style manual, a "loose" style manual, but rather a collection of manuals of style and usage to weigh the advice of various authorities and then make an informed decision of one's own. By studying the ideas of different experts, you pick a variety of tips and tricks, not just the ideology of one grammarian.
In her chapter on "Sentences," Ms. Prose imparts some wisdom, and a charming analogy:
What's strange is how many beginning writers seem to think that grammar is irrelevant, or that they are somehow above or beyond this subject more fit for a schoolchild than the future author of great literature. ... Mastering the logic of grammar contributes, in a mysterious way that again evokes some process of osmosis, to the logic of thought.A novelist friend compares the rules of grammar, puntuation, and usage to a sort of old-fashioned etiquette. He says that writing is a bit like having someone to your house. The writer is the host, the reader the guest, and you, the writer, follow the etiquette because you want your reader to be more comfortable, especially if you're planning to serve them something they might not be expecting.
I couldn't have put it better. It's an odd feeling, reading a book and having the sense that something is off -- realizing, as you're trotting along, that at some point a few words back, you must have taken a wrong turn, because all of a sudden you've arrived in a place that seems foreign, disjointed. And you have to go back, retrace your steps, try to figure out where the sentence led you astray, where some rapscallion of a comma showed up in the wrong place or flashed the wrong warning signal. A lot of people, when reading, can recognize when something is amiss but don't always have the tools to explain what, precisely, that is. The authorities who set the rules don't make it very easy for us, either, throwing out all these enigmatic terms like "apposition" and "participial" and "restrictive" and "subjunctive mood." (How is it helpful when you're looking for an explanation to something, but in order to understand the explanation, you have to go to the dictionary for translation?)
So I feel the writerly people's pain. It's tough to get it down. And yet, in the long run, trying to figure it all out can only help.
Francine Prose, in Reading Like a Writer
"More often the connection has to do with whatever mysterious promptings make you want to write. It's like watching someone dance and then secretly, in your own room, trying out a few steps."
Its GULLIVER!!!
O.K. Deep breath. Actually, it's not Gulliver. (Gulliver looks like this.) But it's a monkey that looks an awful lot like Gulliver. It must be Gulliver's long-lost cosmopolitan cousin -- Cousin Gomi Taro from faraway Tokyo. Gomi Taro's eyes are farther apart, and his nose isn't quite as jaunty, and he looks a little thicker in the middle. But the family resemblance is UNMISTAKABLE.
Gulliver would be so proud of me for tracking him down. I think I must make Gomi Taro mine. If anyone will know how to find Gulliver, it will be Gomi Taro. Oh gods of the interweb, please, please send Gomi Taro to meeeeeeeeeeee!
UPDATE: The gods of the interweb have responded and funneled my call to GomiTaroLand. The monkey is on his way!
