Re: rools
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Tue, 03 Mar 1998 08:32:15 -0500
> Tim tells us he cringes to confess he's never read A.A.Milne.
> In England, by & large, we cringe to confess we *have* - & try
> to blame it on careless guardians of our childhood. (Remember
> Dorothy Parker's Tonstant Weeder ?)
Ah, yes -- so I retract my shame!
> I can't speak for Pynchon (who is to me what Milne is to Tim)
> but surely people like Blake & Swift (& innumerable writers of
> those periods) used capitals in what was then the straightforward
> convention of the time & not - as seems to be case with Milne
> & Salinger - to achieve a rather deliberate, contrived effect.
>From my (miniscule) knowledge of etymology, my angle on Blake and Swift and
friends is that the language then was rather in the state it's in now.
In earlier times, as I understand the development of English, there was
still considerable influence of Middle English and German -- and writing,
publishing, and literacy were still at an early stage. (I think of the
pamphleteers of the time, who made sure that we who speak a common language
would not live under a common royal umbrella.)
There is something to be said from the writer's point of view about today's
technological changes, which (a) allow us to virtually self-publish, and
(b) are helping to malform the language of the mid-to- late 20th century to
something resembling ... I don't know what. I'm pressed to provide an
example because each time I look at commercial copy I find a new
abomination! It's a language in which virtually any noun can be
substituted, in a pinch, as a verb. And in which in advertisements, which
contain hypothetical sentences ("Can you let your dog eat anything but
CatSnappers, the taste treat that lasts."), end without question marks.
> I know I'm not adding to my popularity by saying so, but no one
> seems willing to question if Salinger may occasionally be mistaken
> in his mannerisms. It's understandable that a Salinger list should
> attract Salinger enthusiasts but isn't it permissible occasionally
> to question some of the great man's habits ? Personally, I find
> his use of upper case in the way we're presently discussing one
> of the things that put my teeth on edge. It seems so ARCH.
Ah, yes! That's true: it *is* arch. And a bit precious. And in spending
much time in there, one begins to question what's real: the atmosphere in
here? Or the atmosphere out there. (I myself prefer liberal helpings of
the latter and choice morsels of the former which, to me, are not unlike a
dish that unexplectedly contains shaved truffle.) It reminds me too of
Vonnegut's charming or irritating habit of adopting a catch phrase and
lacing it through a book ("and so on," "hi ho"). Another authorial tic.
In any case (no pun intended), I wouldn't worry about your popularity. I
think you're a fine contributor to the correspondence here, and I actually
enjoy it when you adopt a stance with which I disagree. Because you tend
to have rationale to back up what you're saying. And even if I don't care
for your argument, I still welcome it.
In fact, I think in that last paragraph you have hit on something
significant. That is, the concept of the Great Man and the questioning of
his motives. I am a Salinger enthusiast (although not maniacally so), but
I think dissent is great. (What in hell would the worlds of literature,
psychology, religion, physics [and so on] be without healthy dissent and
contention?) You and I and a few other people have strangely overlapping
perspectives, like Venn diagrams that overlap in sections (e.g., the
Olympic logo). On some terms we simply disagree on our interpretations.
That's literature for you. I love it. And for what it's worth, I would
seriously miss it if you decided you had enough and hit the eject button.
> Boredom quickly settles in, no doubt, when I return yet again to
> lower case sentences, but I wonder why no one seemed to notice
> when I pointed out that Salinger himself warned against `Cubism'
> in writing & that one should follow one's modest, lower-middle-class
> instincts ?
Well ... after some time recently spent in the neighborhood of the Glasses,
I'm trying to figure out how they can live in a building of the old-style
they live in, with its many rooms and its ladies in fur, without having a
second bathroom. As a good low-middle-class fellow who knows people
obsessed with the number of bathrooms they have, I've been pondering this,
without a solution.
But that's not really a consideration of language, unless we want to talk
about the ubiquity of porcelain.
> Whatever about Dylan's honesty condoning unorthodoxy, it seems
> to be the case, sadly, that the more restrictions an artist places
> on himself - whether rules of scansion or rhyme or grammar or
> whatever - the cleaner, leaner & more enduring the final product.
Yes, that can be true -- as anyone here who has written a haiku or a poem
or a good tight short story will attest. Shoot, even if you choose to
write your email so that the lines are all the same length without padding
them with spaces, you know the feeling. (Unfortunately, in my case, my
mailer wraps the lines at 65 columns or so, and therefore I cannot get the
effect here.)
Orthodoxy has many purposes -- something to define a thing, something to
rebel against, something to put our cosmos in the kind of order our minds
can understand, something to fall back on when we don't know where to go
next. I'm not so fond of orthodoxies in life, but I value their place in
literature.
So, I guess I'm saying that there is plenty of room, in my opinion, for
latitude in answering these questions and continuing this discussion. Or,
as Zooey might have said, "We have plenty of room. But plenty. Go ahead,
Bessie, and check on your sacred chicken soup."
--tim