(Belated) Commentary on the Election

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a "warm body" democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction.... [O]nce a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader — the barbarians enter Rome."

Robert Heinlein

A pox on both their houses, I say!

That wretched indexer!

"Let me hear no more of him, Sir. That is the fellow who made the Index to my RAMBLERS and set down the name of Milton thus:
Milton, Mr. John

Samuel Johnson

I'm just beginning my journey toward being officially certified as an indexer. I'm told it will take 150 hours of study. I only have 149 hours remaining...

God Save the Semicolon

I love the semicolon; my wife does not. This causes us no marital discord of which I am aware. Nevertheless, wielding this little sword of nuance is still somewhat controversial. That is, if you are a grammar geek.

Kurt Vonnegut called the marks "transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing." Hemingway and Chandler and Stephen King, said [Ben] McIntyre, "wouldn't be seen dead in a ditch with a semi-colon (though Truman Capote might). Real men, goes the unwritten rule of American punctuation, don't use semi-colons."

Well, I use and revere the semicolon, and I am certainly a real man, as any of my concubines will attest (the fact that I hold their green cards in no way influences the level of their adulation). I drink real scotch and scar my face with a real razor blade every morning. I avoid manscaping on principle. I will die early of a heart attack. Who could deny my manliness, even if I engage in the punctuation that dare not speak its name?

The article goes on with a lot of blather about semicolons representing nuance, while Americans want things straight up and black and white. The truth is that American fiction writers have always disliked semicolons in fiction. Non-fiction writers are not held to the same standard. European and Latin American fiction writers use various and sundry punctuation schemes that send your average American running for the latest Jackie Collins novel.

Which makes me wonder, can female authors get away with semicolons in their fiction? The semicolon can be very sexy in the hands of a lady writer.

And if you find this debate "exhilarating," then the posts on this blog must leave you positively breathless.

The Perils of Adaptation

There is a new movie version of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited. I am a huge fan of both the book and the 1982 miniseries adaptation. I was dubious about this new Miramax version, first because a two-hour movie seemed inadequate to capture the complexity of the novel as it traverses over the lives of the characters for quite a lengthy period of time. And second because the screenwriter for the new film stated in an interview that he was ditching the religious aspect of the story, which is central to the book regardless of how one falls on theological questions. Take the Waugh out of Waugh and you have, well, according to Slate magazine's review, you have a complete failure.

But do not, when attempting any course of reading aimed at appreciating Waugh's wit, give undue attention to Brideshead Revisited, a misfit of a book, much loved, and often loved in the wrong way, as the vomitous stupidity of Miramax's new film adaptation attests.

My spell check wants to change "vomitous" to "calamitous" in the above paragraph, but I think the reviewer probably chose the correct adjective.

Which Great Book Have You Negected to Read?

Actually, the British Telegraph asks which great book are you ashamed of never having read. That narrows it somewhat. Many have I not read; few are so essential to a cultured life that I would drop my head in shame over not having read them.

The usual suspects are mentioned: War and Peace, Ulysses, Shakespeare (though why one should be embarrassed at not having read Shakespeare is beyond me), and Dante's Divine Comedy.

No one admitted shame over omitting Boswell's Life of Johnson, Nabokov's Lolita, or Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited from their to-read list. Or how about something a little less predictable? Have you read Stoker's Dracula? Chesterton's The Man Who Was Thursday? Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim?

If not, please make haste to do so! Meanwhile, I'll try to slog through Ulysses. Yes, I know, it's a work of genius.

Bonfire of the Humanities

Yes, I know, that title is already taken by a book critical of the Humanities departments of various and sundry universities, but it is too fitting for the hilarious comic from the website "xkcd: a webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."

The hobby of the blogger/comic is seeing how long it takes people of various professions to realize, in the course of "shop talk," that the person they are conversing with is NOT actually part of their profession. The Engineer takes 48 seconds to figure it out. The Literary Critic...

"You see, the deconstruction is inextricable from not only the text, but also from the self."

And how long does it take to note the deception?

"Eight papers and two books and they haven't caught on."

This reminds me of the book some years back by the NYU Physicist Alan Sokal, Fashionable Nonsense. Sokal submitted politics-laden gibberish to a post-modern journal called Social Text, and they duly published it with great fanfare. The backlash shook much of academia, or so they say.

Personally, I like the comic better. It's shorter, funnier, and to the point.

But how do I blog with a Selectric?

I recently sent my IBM Selectric out to be repaired. It will cost a considerable sum to transfer me back to the pre-computer age. So why do it? Honestly, I miss the machine terribly. I miss the sounds and the smells of the Selectric. I miss being able to type entire documents using only my index fingers (I have severe carpal tunnel in my right hand, so this is actually the most comfortable position for me). I miss the feel of the 20 pound bond paper as I slide it into the machine. Mostly, I just miss typing.

You miss typing? What do you call what you're doing right now?

Uh...computing? It's just not the same.

It appears that I am not alone.

They're clunky, dirty and can't access the internet, yet every year thousands of people buy typewriters when they could probably afford a computer. Why?

Frankly, it has been more than ten years since I thought I had to make a choice between the two. I currently own the Mac on which I am typing this semi-literate quasi-essay, and a PC laptop. Both are useful to the point of being essential. My Selectric is meant to enhance, not replace.

But according to the linked article from the BBC, typewriters sales are falling at a rate of ten percent per year. Hardly surprising, but this does seem to fly in the face of the purpose of the article: to highlight the ongoing popularity of typewriters among older persons, as well as hint at new life for the low-tech devices. Still, the article is well-worth the read, if only to read about novelist Fredrick Forsyth's bullet-scarred manual typewriter, or the journalist who still writes her news dispatches on a typewriter after her computer "blew up."

I fervently hope for a resurgence in the popularity of typewriters, if only to keep the costs of ribbons and repairs down. The market can be very punitive to those who buck the technological wave, even if their reasons are nostalgic and somewhat fetishistic.