French courage

From the Northlanders series of comic books, The Siege of Paris: 3, written by Brian Wood :

(These are the first few lines from the comic and they're accompanied by appropriate sketches of war and destruction.)


Paris A.D. 886


The bridge fell.


The tower stands alone.


The men rallied.


The French panicked.


Not fair to the French, for sure. But amusing to read nonetheless.

The Internet isn't all juvenile

So much of what's popular on the Internet feels like it was written for and by 16-year olds.
And I'm sure some of that is probably true.
But, sadly, a lot of it is written by grown-ups trying to sound cool.

Quora isn't one of them.
It's popular. (At least, I hope it is.)
It's usually a great read.
And the answers on it are written by people who don't write like juveniles.

Here's an anecdote I read in an answer about good writing:

He was doing a film, and he explained to his writer that the beginning of the film had to show that this man had been married a long time and that he is kind of tired of it. He had gotten used to his wife and had a roving eye. So the writer brought him four pages of introductory exposition of character. Lubitsch looked at it and said, 'You don’t need all that.' He took all four pages out. 'Just put down this—the man walks into the elevator with his wife, and keeps his hat on. On the seventh floor a pretty blonde walks in, and the man takes his hat off.' 
-- Director Rouben Mamoulian (Love Me Tonight, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand) remembering director Ernst Lubitsch.

Stating the obvious

Sometimes stating the obvious can sound unexpected.

From a scene in Punch Drunk Love.
Adam Sandler, at the table with the woman he loves, in a beach-side restaurant in Hawaii, gazes over the calm waters of the Pacific, glistening in fading sunlight, and says with the honest-to-goodness seriousness that befits his character:

It really looks like Hawaii here.

Life after 30

Joseph Conrad became a sailor at 16. 

But we don't know him as a great sailor.

At 32, he decided to try his hand at writing.

We know him as a great writer.

The most remarkable thing about Conrad, who was Polish, was that he wrote in English, his third language.

He was better at Polish and French.

Until 20, he could barely speak in English, let alone write in it.

Then, while at sea, he taught himself.

And he did it quite well.

Here's Conrad in the Heart of Darkness.

I watched the coast. Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you—smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, ‘Come and find out.’ This one was almost featureless, as if still in the making, with an aspect of monotonous grimness.

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

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn’t even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.

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

Conrad's style, in the Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer—the two I've read—is visceral.

Many of his words, phrases, sentences are impolite at best and, well, much worse at worst.

But despite his choice of words (he wrote this in 1902), which do burst out as a shock, the sense I get from reading Conrad is of a man disgusted with colonialism and with his implicit role in it (by virtue of being an employee for the Empire and by virtue of being white).

Here's another passage from the Heart of Darkness.

A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently, carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.

Relaxed like a sea captain

Patrick O' Brian describes the easy mind of captain Jack Aubrey in The Far Side Of The World:


It seemed a fairly straightforward assignment, particularly as he had an unusually well qualified political adviser in his surgeon Dr Maturin, and off the mouth of Zambra Bay he left the Pollux with an easy mind, or at least with a mind as easy as was right in one who had spent most of his life in the sea, that dangerous, utterly unreliable element, with nothing but a plank between him and eternity.

Writing the law

I don't associate laws and legalities to be the domains of good writing.
But good writing is liquid in that it seeps through.
Today's health care judgement by the US Supreme Court has a few instances of it.
Here's one I liked:

Members of this Court are vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are entrusted to our Nation’s elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices. 

In 3 relatively quick sentences, the passage comments on the constitutional responsibilities of the court, the legislature and the people.
That's pretty impressive.


Perhaps, the most famous of example of judicial good writing is this:

...it is not merely of some importance but is of fundamental importance that justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.

It's from a 1924 judgement in England in which the dangerous driving conviction of a motorcyclist was quashed because the court clerk, who was also prosecuting the motorcyclist in a civil case, had retired with the judges while they deliberated his eventual conviction.

Criticizing greatness

Mahatma Gandhi is one of those men I have untainted reverence for.
(Even my deeply-embedded skepticism hasn't been able to pierce that reverence.)
One of his signature protests was the 250-mile march to Dandi, a seaside town in western India, to make salt.
The British, who were the rulers at that time, had recently monopolized salt production and taxed it.
Gandhi wasn't thrilled.
So he proposed that he'd deliberately gather grains of salt, which, I guess, would've been illegal.
The British ignored it at first, thinking it a farce.
But the Salt March soon attracted the multitude and, with them, reporters.

Eventually, despite the fact that this was the year 1930, Gandhi's walk was covered almost every day by every major newspaper in world. 


With coverage came criticism. 
Much of it focussed on the dangers of a revolution; some of it warned of the threat to European imperialism (a glorious achievement for many conservative Europeans).

But there's one in particular that stands out for me.

(I abhor it for mocking something so courageous and just; but the writing's good.)

It was a comic poem, The Saint and Satan, written by someone named Samuel Solomon under the anagrammatic pseudonym Melusa Moolson:

I had resolved that I, Mahatma Gandhi,

On saintly toe would daintily tread to Dandi,
Where on the far shores of the Arabian ocean,

I'd make poor salt and make a rich commotion.

At once the Press entire took up the chorus

And pestered every mile that lay before us; 

The Press entire, becoming shrill and shriller, 

Published each day some more exciting thriller;
They soon grew indiscreet and indiscreeter;
Sugar was sweet, but contraband salt was sweeter!


Just goes to show that even morally wrong arguments can be well written.


The Salt March was probably what made Gandhi really popular in Europe and America.
He was popular enough that he was written into one of the songs of the hit broadway musical "Anything Goes" (1934):


You're the top!
You're Mahatma Gandhi.
You're the top!
You're Napoleon Brandy.

Peter and the Wolf

Peter and the wolf is a simple story of a boy brave enough to ignore his grandfather's advice and capture a wolf almost single-handedly (he had help from a bird).
What really makes "Peter" great is the fact that it's a musical.
Each character is represented by a different instrument of the orchestra — the bird is played by the flute, the duck by the oboe, the wolf by French horns, and so on.
The result's pretty entertaining even for the adults.

My reason for mentioning the story here isn't the music, of course.
It's the last line.
It goes:

And if one would listen very carefully, he would hear the duck quacking inside the wolf, because the wolf, in his hurry, had swallowed her alive.

This line is one of those little quirks a writer adds as a leave behind.
It's beautiful, and very visual, but it's also unnecessary to the plot; the story really ends on a celebratory procession that includes Peter's complaining grandfather and the gloating bird.
This line comes after — a deliberate loose end that, in my opinion, makes the story itself so memorable.

It's also a good lesson for writers: you may have finished writing the story but don't close the book just yet. There may still be something beautiful waiting to come out.

PS: A must see page of vintage album art for Peter and the wolf here: http://peterandthewolfgallery.blogspot.com/

Quantum wit

I didn't think sub-atomic particles could inspire poetry (it's hard enough with your usual "super-atomic" particles) but, turns out, Updike could write beautifully about anything.

Cosmic Gall
John Updike

Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed – you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.


Anyone who can write that must be the possessor of great wit. (You're welcome, Updike.)
Cosmic Gall was first published in the collection Telephone Poles and Other Poems in 1963.

That was a year after 3 Japanese scientists discovered neutrino flavour mixing, and a bunch of American scientists discovered muon neutrinos (which, I'm told, should never be confused with electron neutrinos).

Yup, the 60s was a great decade for neutrinos.

Oh wait wait. You know how the neutrinos are rumored to travel faster than light?

Well, anyway, there's a joke I read about that.

“We don’t serve faster-than-light neutrinos here,” said the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Har. Har.

Creation

I find that it takes me far longer to buy into something than what I guess is the average for those sort of things.
For instance,  I haven't yet come around to believing in the existence of God.
I mean, now that this world's been created, what does He do all day—whatever the equivalent of a day is in His realm?
I guess He could be busy creating other worlds.
Creation may well be His profession and hobby rolled into one.
Like a kid getting paid to play in a sandbox.
And if He's creating these infinite number of worlds—moving on to the next one when the previous one's done—well, then does it even matter to us if He's there or not?
He must've moved on a long time ago. (Clearly, He has.)
Probably doesn't even remember us, or cares enough to find out what happened to us.
(I bet you'll encounter a blank stare were you ever to mention us to Him.)
So ditch the concept, I say.
If He doesn't care why should we.
For starters, let's drop this need to capitalize the first letter of the word that refers to Him.
Why the special favour for a being that's never bothered about us?
Or ever bothered to prove His his existence?
My proposal would be to ridicule him out of hiding.
Well-aimed criticisms never fail to elicit a response.
In that vein, I like this piece Paul Simms wrote in the New Yorker back in August.
Under the title GOD'S BLOG is his take on how God's peers might react to his creation.


GOD’S BLOG
UPDATE: Pretty pleased with what I’ve come up with in just six days. Going to take tomorrow off. Feel free to check out what I’ve done so far. Suggestions and criticism (constructive, please!) more than welcome. God out.
        
COMMENTS(24)


Not sure who this is for. Seems like a fix for a problem that didn’t exist. Liked it better when the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was on the face of the deep.


Going carbon-based for the life-forms seems a tad obvious, no?


The creeping things that creepeth over the earth are gross.


Not enough action. Needs more conflict. Maybe put in a whole bunch more people, limit the resources, and see if we can get some fights going. Give them different skin colors so they can tell each other apart.


Disagree with the haters out there who have a problem with man having dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the cattle of the earth, and so on. However, I do think it’s worth considering giving the fowl of the air dominion over the cattle of the earth, because it would be really funny to see, like, a wildebeest or whatever getting bossed around by a baby duck.


The “herb yielding seed” is a hella fresh move. 4:20!


Why are the creatures more or less symmetrical on a vertical axis but completely asymmetrical on a horizontal axis? It’s almost like You had a great idea but You didn’t have the balls to go all the way with it.


The dodo should just have a sign on him that says, “Please kill me.” Ridiculous.


Amoebas are too small to see. They should be at least the size of a plum.


Beta version was better. I thought the Adam-Steve dynamic was much more compelling than the Adam-Eve work-around You finally settled on.


I liked the old commenting format better, when you could get automatic alerts when someone replied to your comment. This new way, you have to click through three or four pages to see new comments, and they’re not even organized by threads. Until this is fixed, I’m afraid I won’t be checking in on Your creation.


***SPOILER***
One of them is going to eat something off that tree You told them not to touch.


Adam was obviously created somewhere else and then just put here. So, until I see some paperwork proving otherwise, I question the legitimacy of his dominion over any of this.


Why do they have to poop? Seems like there could have been a more elegant/family-friendly solution to the food-waste-disposal problem.


The lemon tree: very pretty. The lemon flower: sweet. But the fruit of the poor lemon? Impossible to eat. Is this a bug or a feature?


Unfocussed. Seems like a mishmash at best. You’ve got creatures that can speak but aren’t smart (parrots). Then, You’ve got creatures that are smart but can’t speak (dolphins, dogs, houseflies). Then, You’ve got man, who is smart and can speak but who can’t fly, breathe underwater, or unhinge his jaws to swallow large prey in one gulp. If it’s supposed to be chaos, then mission accomplished. But it seems more like laziness and bad planning.


If it’s not too late to make changes, in version 2.0 You should make water reflective, so the creatures have a way of seeing what they look like.


S*H*O*E*S!!! Manolo Jimmy Choo Vuitton Prada +++ All sizes Great deals Free shipping! @@@ [www.shoezwarehouze.com]


Penguins are retarded. Their wings don’t work and their legs are too short. I guess they’re supposed to be cute in a “I liek to eat teh fishes” way, but it’s such obvious pandering to the lowest common denominator.


There’s imitation, and then there’s homage, and then there’s straight-up idea theft, which is what Your thing appears to be. Anyone who wants to check out the original should go to www.VishnuAndBrahma.com. (And check it out soon, because I think they’re about to go behind a paywall.)


Putting boobs on the woman is sexist.


Wow. Just wow. I don’t even know where to start. So the man and his buddy the rib-thing have dominion over everything. They’re going to get pretty unbearable really fast. What You need to do is make them think that there were other, bigger, scarier creatures around a long time before them. I suggest dinosaurs. No need to actually create dinosaurs—just create some weird-ass dinosaur bones and skeletons and bury them in random locations. Man will dig them up eventually and think, What the f?


Epic fail.


Meh.

Hiatus

I haven't written anything in months.
Now even this blog entry is a struggle.
Yet I'd be alright if this struggle to write was my only impediment.
I also feel guilty for not writing anything in months.
(I imagine my guilt would've been unbearable if I did actually consider myself a writer.)

Writers who've given up writing, or at least have gone on a hiatus, must find it incredibly difficult to start again.
I think the only solution is to write yourself out of a hiatus.
Sort of what I'm trying to do here.

But writing after a long break can so easily become a descent into ramble.
A writer should know when to stop.
So I stop.
Instead, I present something exponentially better written—by Emily Dickinson.
It's about (I think) death, which, I suspect, is nothing more than a hiatus.

A Clock Stopped

A Clock stopped -- not the mantel's
   Geneva's farthest skill
Can't put the puppet bowing
   That just now dangled still.

An awe came on the trinket!
   The figures hunched with pain,
Then quivered out of decimals
   Into degreeless noon.

It will not stir for doctors,
   This pendulum of snow;
The shopman importunes it,
   While cool, concernless No

Nods from the gilded pointers,
   Nods from seconds slim,
Decades of arrogance between
   The dial life and him.

Wicked Ahticle

How to speak Bostonian.
A 2004 article in the Boston Globe that's still funny.

Listen up: Just say 'ah'

July 25, 2004|John Powers, Globe Staff

In Boston, the Mayah lives in Hypahk. That's Hyde Park, as in the place Eff Dee Ah lived -- but in another city, another state. In this town, maps don't tell you what we call our neighborhoods, especially if you're from Noo Yawk or another foreign country.

Roslindale is Rozzie, Dorchester is Dot, and Jamaica Plain is JP. South Boston is Southie, the South End is the South End, and the West End was demolished decades ago, even though we still can tell you where it is.

When native Bostonians talk to newcomers or outsiders (we can't always tell the difference), we tend to assume you were bon heah, even though the census tells us that more than half of the citizenry has arrived during the years AR (After Raybo, as we call former mayor Raymond Flynn). That's why our directions are confusing: We'll tell you to take Route 128 when we mean I-95 and/or 93. Or we'll tell you to walk past the old Jordan's ( Jawdnz) and take a left "where Raymond's used to be." We figure you already know that we filled in the Back Bay 150 years ago, and that there's no school on School Street or joy on Joy Street.

In the Hub of the Universe, (originally the solar system), which Boston was until sometime around 1807, it's always about the past, and we assume that you were here for all of it. Everywhere else, 1918 is when World War I ended. Here, it's the last time the Sox won the Series.

It's "the Sox," of course. "Red" is superfluous. Nobody else's Sox matter. If we had it first (and what didn't we have first?), we simply use the definite ahticul. The Marathon, the Cape, the Latin School. It's also the Mayah, the Guvnah, the Rivah.

If you want to talk like us, just open your mouth and say "ah," as if you're at the doctah. As in: "Nomah hit a homah!" We save the Rs for words ending in A, like Chiner. It sounds b'zah, but remember, we're not the ones with the accent. We've been here since 1630. John Winthrop dropped the R into the Hahbah one day on his way to the State House and we didn't find it until the Big Dig.

So when we say pasta, we mean the priest who runs a parish. When we say pahster, we're having it with clam sauce. Buddah is what we put on con. We have suppah during the week, but dinnah on Sunday. Eating and drinking, we'll admit, can be a challenge in what you call Beantown. (We don't call it that, by the way.)

A milkshake has no ice cream in it. If it did, we'd say so. What you probably want is a frappe (pronounced "frap"). If you ask for a "frappay," we'll send you to France. Tonic -- meaning everything from Coke to ginger ale -- is our word for what you probably call soda, while we call soda water soder, and tonic waddah is what we pour gin into. Pop is your dad.

Boston cream pie, of course, is a cake. Scrod is whatever turns up in the fishing net that day. And nobody puts tuhmaydiz in the chowdah. (For the real thing, go to Legal's. It's wikkid pissah.)

That's the ultimate compliment around here. Wikkid, as in extremely. Pissah, as in excellent. We're not shuah who first said it. We think it might have been Cotton Mathah. What is definitely not wikkid pissah is the driving, especially with the Dig still being dug. Traffic is bumpadabumpah, especially if there's a fendabendah on the Ahdery or somebody from Alabamer stuck in a rotary.

And you cahn't pahk anywayah, certainly not in Hahvid Yahd. If you do, they'll tow you to Meffa (Medford) without your khakis (car keys). That'd be retahded. Almost like leaving Pedro in against the Yankees.

If you're here long enough, you don't need a last name. We'll call you Kevin or Dappah or Larry or Teddy or Natalie or Whitey or Red or Julier. We're not all proper Bostonians who talk only to God. Feel free to ask us for directions -- we'll tell you that you cahn't get theyah from heah, especially on the T. And if you see Tommy (you know, the Mayah) getting scrod at Legal's, ask him how things are going in Hypahk.

Stieg Larsson’s novels

I haven't read "The girl with a dragon tattoo" series but I've heard both good and bad things about them.
(Well, to be honest, the only good thing I've heard about them are sales numbers: 14 million in US alone.)
There's an excellent piece in The New Yorker where Joan Acocella tries to answer why the books are so popular.
[You can read it here: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/01/10/110110crat_atlarge_acocella?currentPage=all]
One paragraph of hers is particularly funny—the ending is killer.

However much the book was revised, it should have been revised more. The opening may have been reworked, as Gedin says, but it still features an episode—somebody telling somebody else at length (twelve pages!) about a series of financial crimes peripheral to the main plot—that, by wide consensus, is staggeringly boring. (And, pace Gedin, it is preceded by a substantial description of a flower.) Elsewhere, there are blatant violations of logic and consistency. Loose ends dangle. There are vast dumps of unnecessary detail. When Lisbeth goes to IKEA, we get a list of every single thing she buys. (“Two Karlanda sofas with sand-colored upholstery, five Poäng armchairs, two round side tables of clear-lacquered birch, a Svansbo coffee table, and several Lack occasional tables,” and that’s just for the living room.) The jokes aren’t funny. The dialogue could not be worse. The phrasing and the vocabulary are consistently banal. (Here is Lisbeth, about to be raped: “Shit, she thought when he ripped off her T-shirt. She realized with terrifying clarity that she was out of her depth.”) I am basing these judgments on the English edition, but, if this text was the product of extensive editing, what must the unedited version have looked like? Maybe somebody will franchise this popular series—hire other writers to produce further volumes. This is not a bad idea. We’re not looking at Tolstoy here. The loss of Larsson’s style would not be a sacrifice.

Why Delhi?

A great answer for people ('non-Delhiite' Indians mostly) who disparage Delhi's status as India's capital. 
From an article in Open, an Indian magazine:
...if anybody has a problem with Delhi being the Indian capital, I must quote my colleague to bring a tremor of relief to your heart: “If not Delhi, it would have been Calcutta.”

Leaving India

I don't usually expect well-written prose in newspapers anymore.

I guess most reporters/columnists barely get time to digest the news let alone crafting their response.

But now and then I do chance upon something enjoyable—most often in the New York Times.

I read this piece, written by NYT's Anand Giridharadas, more than a year ago and then re-read it yesterday.

I'm not discounting my obvious India-bias, but I still think it's very well-written.

July 5, 2009

Farewell to an India I Hardly Knew

MUMBAI, India — The first thing I ever learned about India was that my parents had chosen to leave it.

The country was lost to us in America, where I was born. It had to be assembled in my mind, from the fragments of anecdotes and regular journeys east.

Now, six years after returning to the country my parents left, as I prepare to depart it myself, the mind goes back to the beginning, to my earliest pictures of it.

India, reflected from afar, was late-night phone calls with the news of death. It was calling back relatives who could not afford to call you. It was Hindu ceremonies with saffron and Kit Kat bars on a silver platter.

India, consumed on our visits back, was being fetched from the airport and cooked a meal even in the dead of night. It was sideways hugs that strove to avoid breast contact. It was the chauvinism of uncles who asked about my dreams and ignored my sister’s.

It was wrong, yet easy, to feel that we did India a favor by coming home. We packed our suitcases with things they couldn’t get for themselves: Jif peanut butter, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Gap khakis. These imports sketched a subtle hierarchy in which they were the wanting relatives and we their benefactors.

My cousins in India would sometimes ask if I was Indian or American. I saw that their self-esteem depended on my answer. “American,” I would say, because it was the truth, and because I felt that to say otherwise would be to accept a lower berth in the world.

What it meant to be American was to be free to invent yourself, to belong to a family and a society in which destiny was believed to be human-made.

I looked around in India and saw everyone in their boxes, not coming fully into their own, replicating lives lived before. If only they came to America, I told myself, so-and-so would be a millionaire entrepreneur; so-and-so would be as confident in her opinions as her husband; so-and-sos’ marriage would be more like my parents’, with verve and swing-dancing lessons and bedtime crossword puzzles; so-and-so would study history and literature, not just bankable practicalities.

I moved to India six years ago in an effort to understand it on my own terms, to render mine what had until then only belonged to my parents.

--------------

I grew up in America defining myself by the soil under my feet, not by the blood in my veins. The soil I shared with everyone else; the blood made me unbearably different. Before I loved India, I loathed it. But that feeling seems now like a relic from a buried past.

I leave now on the journey’s next stretch, with sadness and with joy, humbled by India, grateful to have been at the revolution and to have known the revolutions within.