English Rulers

The often solitary nature of writing makes it sometimes difficult to gauge one's "progress." It's easy enough to look back at work from a few years ago and shudder at the scribbler one used to be--I giggled with horror at my early college writing from six years ago--but much more difficult to gauge one's present abilities. No one should allow themselves himself to be paralyzed with self-consciousness, but if there is no one way to write rightly, there is certainly a wrong way, often several, and reminders are useful. I went to William Strunk and E.B. White's Elements of Style, a ragged 1979 3rd edition, for just such a purpose. Yet while though much of the advice is still useful, a great deal of it is remarkably, if a little regrettably, obsolete in the information age.

The earliest material, concerning proper grammar, is the most valuable (EDIT: Some dispute this, vehemently.). While vocabulary, idiom, and phrasing has changed a great deal since this style guide was first published, the rules of English sentence construction have remained mostly intact. I still violate rule #1 (Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's), preferring to leave off the additional 's' in 'the the dress' seam.' Most of the others, however,dealing with comma placement and tense agreement, are duly observed and will not likely change. A sentence like "Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap," will always be awkward.

Section II, on composition, is likewise sound, focusing on rules of thumb to keep writing concise and focused.

The third section, A Few Matters of Form, is well-heeded, but in many cases unnecessary. Word processing technology allows the writer to manipulate margins and numerals as he sees fit, while syllabication--figuring out where to put a hyphen when splitting a word between two lines--is a nonissue.

Halfway through the advice begins getting dicey. Section IV's list of "Words and Expressions Commonly Misused" is at its best when arguing, as earlier, for streamlining: "acts of a hostile character" is a dressed up way of saying "hostile acts."

But many of the words and misuses cataloged here have edged their way into acceptable usage. It is probably impossible to get a job today without using the words and expressions 'currently,' 'due to,' 'facility,' 'finalize,' or 'utilize,' on a resume or cover letter. 'Prioritize,' and 'finalize,' both "abominations" by White's reckoning, are among a list of action words I was given to use in my job application process. For the linguistic impotence of resume writing, I blame "professionalization" (notice that ugly '-ize' suffix grafted on and further deformed with the 'ation') as a means of screening an ever-growing number of applicants. It's regrettable, but on this front Strunk and White lost, and badly.

Some of their objections, though, amount to straight-up conservatism. I'll actually cop to being partial their arguments in favor of 'he' as the standard third person pronoun with a distributive antecedent:

The use of he as pronoun for nouns embracing both genders is a simple, practical convention rooted in the English language. He has lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances. The word was unquestionably biased to begin with (the dominant male), but after hundreds of years it has become seemingly indispensible. it has no pejorative connotation; it is never incorrect.

But goodness do Strunk and White get cranky:

If you think she is a handy substitute for he, try it and see what happens.

The objection to nouns being converted into verbs is perhaps what jars most with contemporary language. "Many nouns have lately been pressed into service as verbs. Not all are bad, but all are suspect." Besides being slightly ahistorical (Shakespeare did this often: consider Edgar's "He childed as I fathered"), such a rule has no place in a world where Google, Facebook, and YouTube are commonly employed as verbs. Verbing today is not unusual, cliche, or even faddish: it's an unwritten standard.



The internet and its attendant technology, of course, made the bastard English language--a confection of Anglo Saxon, Norman French, Greek, Latin, and any other tongue it fancied--even more promiscuous. 'Refudiate,' 'tweet,' 'podcast,' 'grok,' 'fisk,' to say nothing of the hated acronyms like BRB and OMG that have started to creep into spoken conversation, have proliferated thanks to the abolition of geography that the internet, and especially blogs and social networks, have given us. I suspect White would have looked at blogging with especial contempt, given the ninth rule in the final section, An Approach to Style:

Do not affect a breezy manner

The volume of writing is enormous, these days, and much of it has a sort of windiness about it, almost as though the author were in a state of euphoria. "Spontaneous me," sang Whitman, and, in his innocence, let loose the hordes of uninspired scribblers who would one day confuse spontaneity with genius.

The breezy style is often the work of an egocentric, the person who imagines that everything that pops into his head is of general interest and that uninhibited prose creates high spirits and carries the day.

Though useful in brushing up on the mechanics of English and composition, a considerable amount of The Elements of Style's content is outdated and simply does not apply anymore. Thanks to the internet, the changes in attitude and approach to writing that would have taken decades if not hundreds of years to spread, now are part of a language currency that is constantly in flux. This is not in itself a bad thing: the rise of chatspeak and thoughts 140 characters long has come about in an era where people are writing more than ever before.

With so much rapid change, casting aside some of Strunk and White's pet rules was inevitable. Yet in a small way this is almost irrelevent. The true believer, after all, can now consult William Strunk's ur-text online at his (or her?) convenience.

Gott Fag?

Yes, hypocrisy on the gay question really needs to stop. Not everybody who objects to homosexuality on religious grounds is a closet queen, of course not, but these moral oralists are barely convincing to their own congregations (I think the only reason we haven't heard about Rick Santorum's man-on-dog escapades is that he lost his re-election bid, but give it time). Christopher Hitchens summed it up well in his memoir:

Whenever I hear some bigmouth in Washington or the Christian heartland banging on about the evils of sodomy or whatever, I mentally enter his name in my notebook and contentedly set my watch. Sooner rather than later, he will be discovered down on his weary and well-worn old knees in some dreary motel or latrine, with an expired Visa card, having tried to pay well over the odds to be peed upon by some Apache transvestite.

This happens with depressing regularity, yet outside of the bland and clumsy "hypocrite" we don't have a word or term to describe this subset of sleaze. I propose 'Gott Fag,' a portmanteau of a well-known advertising campaign, a derogatory slur, and the German word for God (normally pronounced like 'goat,' but that need not matter for our purposes), in whose name these horny homos hate. The next time you hear of a Catholic priest, a Larry Craig, a Ted Haggard, a Mark Foley, a Ken Mehlman, an Eddie Long... bloviating on how much he really wants to stick it to the gays and not the other way around, one need only ask oneself:

Gott Fag?

The question answers itself.

The Da Vinci Prose

My tastes in books and music have always given preference to the come-and-gone. There are too many classics demanding digestion and too many new releases competing for attention, and so many trends and pop culture artifacts tend to pass me by. Sometimes this means I miss out on some very good things. But it also means weathering the hysteria surrounding the likes of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.

I had seen people sporting the book in public, heard about the “controversy” over its treatment of Catholicism (that the Church took to publicly refuting a work of fiction says a lot about the sand on which Peter’s holy house was built), and had heard the occasional dismissal of it as ‘beach reading,’ ‘airport fiction,’ what have you, but I never took much of an interest in the book myself, not until recently. I chanced upon a website--sadly forgotten, though this is very much in the same spirit--which pilloried and most courteously excerpted its ungainly prose, starting with the book’s opening:

Renowned curator Jacques Saunière staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery. He lunged for the nearest painting he could see, a Caravaggio. Grabbing the gilded frame, the seventy-six-year-old man heaved the masterpiece toward himself until it tore from the wall and Saunière collapsed backward in a heap beneath the canvas.

Reading this was a revelation. Did Dan Brown have an editor? Were readers so undiscerning as to let their fiction be driven by such a loud and ugly engine? The author of the webpage showed several such examples and pointed out just how they were written so perfectly wrong, noting for instance that telling us straight out that a character is a “Renowned curator” is a terrible way to start a book, and an action scene to boot.

I thought there was a good writing exercise to be had in rewrite the given examples, which I did. Then I thought, well hell, why not the whole book? I thought I could learn something about how writing does or doesn’t work, and along the way develop Dan Brown’s halting style into something if not more elegant, than at least less awful. So I went to my local library to pick up a copy, embarrassed enough that I felt like I was buying pornography in public. I read the Prologue and then set about whipping the text into shape.

Here are some examples. The first is a revision of the excerpt from above:

Jacques Saunière staggered through the gallery’s vaulted archway. He lurched toward the nearest painting, a large Caravaggio, and with stiff, arthritic hands gripped it by its gilded frame and pulled. It refused to move. He pulled again, more determined, and it only barely shifted. With all the strength he could muster he gave it one last pull and tore it from the wall and collapsed beneath it.

Nothing special, but you see what I’m getting at. That this is the Grand Gallery will be mentioned later on; right now I’m aiming for boldness and broad strokes in the scene-setting. Then instead of coming right out and saying he’s 76 years old, I mention his hands being arthritic. He’s going to die in a few pages anyway, it’s enough that we know he’s old. The most liberal amendment is the act of pulling the painting down, which takes three attempts, described in some detail. The original version says he “heaved the masterpiece [don’t we all wish we could heave masterpieces?] toward himself until it tore from the wall.” The word ‘until’ suggests it takes some time before it tears free, but the entire act happens in one sentence, confusing the effect. Confusion reigns in Dan Brown’s writing.

The next example is much briefer, thus managing a breathless economy of ineptitude.

“I told you already,” the curator stammered, kneeling defenseless on the floor of the gallery. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

Here’s the redux:

“I… I told you already,” Saunière said, kneeling and putting his hands in the air. “I have no, no idea, what you’re talking about!”

Any writing teacher will tell you the ironclad rule of writing is “show, don’t tell.” It makes no sense to tell us the curator is stammering when the speech we are given is in complete flowing sentences. Nor should we be told he’s defenseless when the particulars of his defenselessness can be described. And we already know he’s in the gallery, it doesn’t need to be reiterated in the heat of a death threat. There is also the matter of Dan Brown’s tic of referring to characters by their occupation. Nearly 15 times in three pages Saunière is referred to as “the curator.” All of these are obtuse generalities that inflate the action without telling us anything of substance. I may be interested in reading about a defenseless stammering curator, but when I do I’d like to hear Jacques Saunière say “I… I…” with his hands in the air. Dan Brown is telling us about what’s happening and not what actually is happening.

One more, this time from the end of the Prologue:

Alone now, Jacques Saunière turned his gaze again to the iron gate. He was trapped, and the doors could not be reopened for at least twenty minutes. By the time anyone got to him, he would be dead. Even so, the fear that now gripped him was a fear far greater than that of his own death.

I must pass on the secret.

Staggering to his feet, he pictured his three murdered brethren. He thought of the generations who had come before them… of the mission with which they had all been entrusted.

An unbroken chain of knowledge.

Suddenly now, despite all precautions… despite all the failsafes…Jacques Saunière was the only remaining link, the sole guardian of one of the most powerful secrets ever kept.

Shivering, he pulled himself to his feet.

I must find some way…

My edits:

Saunière wiped his brow and, shivering, rose to his feet. He was trapped, and the doors could not be reopened for at least twenty minutes. By the time anyone got to him, he would be dead. That did not matter. Next to the secret, his death was trivial. He thought of his three murdered partners. He thought of the generations who had come before them, of the mission with which they had all been entrusted, of the unbroken chain of knowledge they had formed. He thought of how suddenly now, despite all precautions, despite all fail-safes, he was the only remaining link of that chain, the sole guardian of one of the most powerful secrets ever kept.

The original is quite lengthy, and my whole point is it need not be. One of Dan Brown’s more obnoxious habits is to include and italicize characters’ thoughts, usually the ones that ought be accompanied with booming BUM-BUM-BUUUUUUUM drums. In this case, the effect is additionally maddening by weaving the thoughts with the narrative, instead of settling on just one of those approaches, and then having the narrative elaborate on those thoughts (after Saunière thinks of “an unbroken chain” the narrator describes Saunière as “only remaining link”). It needlessly wastes space switching between the two, and ends up reading more like a bad back cover synopsis that tries to be exciting as possible to entice readers, perhaps because the actual back cover was already filled up with glowing, and wholly undeserved, endorsements, one of which considers this book “pure genius.”

Also in this sample, Saunière pulls himself to his feet, after staggering to his feet. Pure genius!

I had thought I would redo the entire book, but after reworking just the prologue took me a couple hours, I doubted the idea. Then I read the first few chapters and quickly realized rewriting would be impractical, not only because the prose is so painful, not just because I could never do anything after investing so much effort into it, but because there are things I could not do without changing the entire nature of the book. For The Da Vinci Code is, in its own idiot savant-like fashion, an ideal marriage of form and content.

The book tells of the unraveling of an elaborate conspiracy of the Catholic Church’s covering-up evidence of a secret relationship between Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene, or something of the sort. It’s an elaborate conspiracy, and so needs to be as absolutely impenetrable and busy as possible. So we get things like—and this is just the first few chapters, mind you—a sadomasochistic albino priest trying to kill the “renowned curator” but instead deciding to leave him to bleed to death, giving him twenty minutes to screw up the Grand Plan. But instead of just calling expert symbologist Robert Langdon on his cell phone like any sane person would if they were about to die, he engages in some ridiculous symbolic exercise which Langdon must then decipher. All of this is cheap baiting of the reader, to get them to go on to the next chapter: ‘Saunière only has twenty minutes to live. WHAT’S HE GOING TO DO?’ ‘Saunière did that to himself. BUT WHAT ELSE DID HE DO?!?’

The writing describing all this is, accordingly, full of sound and fury. When characters act ridiculously, with their actions being described ridiculously, they will also speak ridiculously:

“Excellent. I had feared the brotherhood’s reputation for secrecy might prevail.”

“The prospect of death is strong motivation.”

“So, my pupil, tell me what I must know.”

The Da Vinci Code is plotted like a parody of a conspiracy thriller, and so it is only fitting that it be written thus. So you see, one cannot go in and attempt to “fix” its wretched writing, for it is tied inextricably to the brutally mechanical goings-on it describes. To make these creatures talk like real people would entail making them act like real people and not morons enslaved to Dan Brown’s needlessly Byzantine plot machinations. The entire story, such as it is, would collapse under the strain of logic and credibility and well-observed characterization.

And so I realized my time was too important to waste on The Da Vinci Code. I had better authors, like Fitzgerald and Rushdie, to absorb. That I had to take the most circuitous route possible to reach this obvious conclusion, I am sure Dan Brown would be proud.