Monthly Archives: March 2008

11: Unfortunate Names

People can’t help what they’ve been named, although I know a ‘Barbara’ who became ‘Kim’, and a ‘Jennifer’ who became ‘Emma’. While personal names are cast in legal concrete in the records that follow us from birth to death, the names of the products of our muscles and minds could, at least, avoid certain pitfalls. Two examples:

– In choosing new tubs for a bathroom remodeling project, the design I initially favored was called ‘Slipper’; not a great name for a bathtub.

– Medtner wrote a suite of piano pieces under the name ‘Forgotten Melodies’. This is too close to ‘Forgettable Melodies’ for comfort, even though some of the pieces have very lovely melodies. Too bad the tunes he picked for his piano concertos aren’t as interesting.

END

10: The Semicolon Is Your Friend!

Consider this example: “Max follows, his hands bunch into fists.”

This needs to be fixed. Why and how? The traditional rule is that two independent clauses cannot be linked by a comma. This rule makes sense, because each of these three possible fixes sounds more natural and makes better sense than the example:

Fix number 1: “Max follows, his hands bunching into fists.”

Fix number 2: “Max follows. His hands bunch into fists.”

Fix number 3: “Max follows; his hands bunch into fists.”

Fix 1 adds an extra syllable that doesn’t pull its weight, a syllable that we can do without in a fast-moving narrative. This is a matter of style, not grammar.

The example sentence portrays vivid action. In Fix 2, this action comes to a sharp halt at the period, then resumes. As a matter of style, again, the action needs to continue moving forward at full speed, not stopped and re-started. It is no coincidence that what Americans call “period,” the British call “full stop.”

Fix 3 doesn’t slow the action as much as fix 2 does; it doesn’t add a needless syllable; and it is superior, I believe, in style.

The semicolon is your friend!

END

9: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? or, Reflections on Tense in Fiction

Suppose I assert, in no particular context, “Baby Jane had blue eyes.” How would a listener respond? Probably “Who cares?” But the curious might ask “Why doesn’t she still have blue eyes? What happened?” And I could answer “Her eye color was altered surgically,” or, “She’s dead now,” or even “I knew her long ago,” the third answer implying that one of the two others may be correct, but I don’t know which.

Bernard Comrie (Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics: Tense. Cambridge University Press, eighth printing, 2004) makes the point that, at least in English, a past-tense assertion does not imply anything about the state of affairs at the present time. So, according to Comrie, Baby Jane may still be alive, and may still have blue eyes; and I, the speaker, may even know these facts; and I still use “was.”

Logically, of course, Comrie is correct. But I don’t think that most English-speakers hear it that way, at least in America. Consider a different assertion: “I weighed 200 pounds.” In spite of grammar, I believe that most of us would jump to the logically unwarranted conclusion that I now weigh something other than 200. Comrie points out that English has an expression, “used to” to make it clear that things are different in the present. But most listeners or readers will still assume, reading “I weighed 200 pounds”, that my weight has changed, and that the change was worth mentioning.

How does this affect fiction? Simply this: In a work of fiction told in the past tense, a factual assertion is ambiguous as to whether or not it is true in the present (narrator-time) as well as true in the past (story-time). In some contexts this won’t matter: who cares what color Jane’s eyes are now? But in other contexts, it will matter. When it does, having to disambiguate the meaning can lead the writer into awkwardness of expression or rhythm in making clear exactly what he means.

END

8: Very Long Sentences in Fiction

Should fiction writers always avoid very long sentences? Here’s an example by Thomas Pynchon, from his novel, Against the Day (page 160f):

“She sang mezzo-soprano and had married almost shockingly young, the boys coming along in close order, “the way certain comedians make their entrances in variety acts,” it seemed to her, and about the time Colfax shot his first brace of pheasant, she had abruptly one day packed a scant six trunksful of clothes and with her maid, Vaseline, reinstalled herself in Greenwich Village in a town house floridly faced in terra-cotta imported from far away, designed inside by Elsie de Wolfe, adjoining that of her husband’s younger brother, R. Wilshire Vibe, who for some years had been living in his own snug spherelet of folly and decadence, squandering his share of the family money on ballet girls and the companies they performed for, especially those that could be induced to mount productions of the horrible “musical dramas” he kept composing, fake, or as he preferred, faux, European operettas on American subjects — Roscoe Conkling, Princess of the Badlands, Mischief in Mexico, and so many others.”

That sentence is 165 words long.  Should the writer have broken it into several sentences? The answer is not an automatic “yes” or “no” — judgments as to sentence length (and other questions as well) must be based on a close reading of the piece itself, not on rules of thumb blindly applied.

END

7: Tense in Fiction – Some Fictions

Typical advice to writers of narrative fiction: Each story should be told in one tense, and one only. I think that this advice, no matter how well intentioned, is a piece of unjustifiable dogma that, if followed blindly, interferes with effective story-telling.

Below, I’m reprinting a pretty typical piece of of narrative, courtesy of The Washington Post. It isn’t fiction, but it definitely is narrative. (There’s a good reason why they’re called news ‘stories’.) I counted all the verbs in this story: 63% are present-tense (including present perfect), 36% are past-tense (including past perfect), and 1% are future-tense. Would any creative writing instructor tolerate such a mix of tenses in a story submitted to him? And yet, the story makes sense just as it is. And I contend that telling this story in past-tense only, or in present-tense only, would weaken its ability to communicate, its effectiveness; and also its grace as a piece of writing. Take a look and judge for yourself.

“ABINGDON, England — Jordan Webb can predict the exact time of day his head will start aching. If the 10-year-old lingers outside the Reynolds grocery store past 5 p.m., a small black device latched onto the storefront and operated on a timer will emit a high-pitched sound that makes the boy’s skull feel like it’s popping.

“It sounds like ‘Eeeeeeeek’ and gives me a big headache,” said Jordan, who then covered his ears and made a face reminiscent of Macaulay Culkin’s famous pose in the “Home Alone” movies.

Jordan is referring to the Mosquito, a $975 transmitter designed to disperse young loiterers by making a loud humming noise that most people older than 25, such as his 41-year-old mother, can’t hear. The Mosquito has sparked a new sort of buzz in Britain, this time among political and civil rights groups that say the device is discriminatory and treats young people as second-class citizens.

Others have worried that the Mosquito is the next step in Britain’s Big Brother society. Britons are among the most photographed, filmed, speed-checked and monitored people in the world, thanks to an interlocking system of computerized government devices.

Many Britons are deeply ambivalent about having a closed-circuit television camera in practically every public space; they appreciate the help in solving crime but worry that the government sometimes comes too close. A new high-tech device to shoo away teenagers like so many pesky squirrels strikes many the same way: a good idea with an unattractive flip side.

On a recent sunny afternoon in this historic town near Oxford, Jordan was kicking a soccer ball outside Reynolds with four other boys his age, all wearing red Manchester United jerseys. At 5 p.m., right on schedule, the grocery store’s Mosquito began squealing. Jordan said he felt a painful “scratch” in his ear, and he hustled across the road to get out of the machine’s 50-foot range.

The device has sold about 3,500 units in Britain since its introduction in 2006, according to inventor Howard Stapleton. Outside Britain, about 1,500 more have sold, including about 200 in the United States, by distributor Moving Sound Technology Inc., which says its U.S. clients are mainly schools and convenience stories. Schools use them to ward off kids at night, and the stores use them to discourage young loiterers, the distributor said.

The gadget exploits a peculiarity of aging. At a certain age, hair cells in the inner ear start to deteriorate and so does the ability to hear high pitches.

“I have spoken to young children across the country, and they are angry,” said Al Aynsley-Green, the children’s commissioner for England, who recently joined several civil rights groups to launch a campaign against the devices called Buzz Off. He has persuaded five stores to remove the units and plans to continue his quest for a total ban.

Aynsley-Green’s counterpart in Scotland, Kathleen Marshall, started her campaign five months ago. “This is a war on young people,” she said, noting that some of the slogans for the device — such as “teen tormentor” — did not go far in winning the hearts or minds of the teenagers who have told her through her Web site that they feel demonized.

Some young people have gotten back by using similar technology — cellphone ring tones in those same high frequencies. Kids can hear them, parents and teachers often can’t, thwarting many an effort to limit the phones’ use.

If the Mosquito devices are shelved, it would be a dramatic reversal for a country that makes a lot of fuss over petty crime and antisocial behavior. A few of the British tabloids are running campaigns (“Broken Britain” in the Sun; “Can It! Stop Kids Boozing” in the Mirror) with reams of copy on loutish behavior.

This kind of talk remains popular politically. Since coming into power in 1997, the Labor Party government has dished out more than 10,000 Anti-Social Behavior Orders, a sort of restraining order that can be issued to children as young as 10 for causing “harassment, alarm or distress.”

But even if the mood did shift, it would be unlikely that campaigners could squash the Mosquito quickly. For starters, the units, being inconspicuous and inaudible to many people, are difficult for campaigners to find.

Officials of the Mosquito’s manufacturer, Compound Security Systems, said their clients range from corner stores to cemeteries to construction sites. But they said it’s still difficult to know, because they can be heard only by young people. That’s harder to detect than the more traditional Barry Manilow method of discouraging teenage loiterers by playing opera or other music that they consider unhip.

Several police officers have said during the recent furor that they are fans of the Mosquitoes. Officers in Merseyside, in the northwest of England, patrol the streets with what they call a mosquito vehicle that allows them to break up unruly groups with a high-pitched sound. An official with the force said it reduced disruptive behavior by 60 percent in some areas.

James Lowman, chief executive of the Association of Convenience Stores, which represents 33,000 local shops, said retailers find it a “very useful tool” for combating vandalism and crime.

Rej Parshad, 53, has owned Reynolds, a grocery store nestled in a run-down mini-mall, for 20 years and said he has never seen anything quite as effective for dispersing young people. Two years ago, he affixed the box, which has a picture of a mosquito bug on it, a few feet above the entrance to his store.

He estimated that petty crime has decreased 80 percent. He balked at the idea that he was infringing on human rights. Youngsters loiter outside his shop and pester customers to buy them alcohol and cigarettes, he said.

“They harass customers, and I lose business,” Parshad said. “You can’t keep everybody happy. You have to look after the customer first.”

Natalie Saunders, manager at Martin’s Newsagent, a store three doors down from Reynolds, said she had no idea that a screech of about 85 decibels, the level of city traffic, filled the air outside for five hours every night. “I didn’t even know it was here,” she mused. She is 25.

When asked about the device, Laura Cook, 17, scrunched up her face and called it a “horrible thing” that didn’t work particularly well because many teenagers just put up with it.

One woman who was happy to hear the buzzing: Cook’s mother, Trina, 39. The only ambient noise she could hear on this particular evening was birds chirping nearby. But the other day she went into Reynolds and heard a “high-pitched whistle that cracks.”

“I must be getting younger,” she said with a laugh.”

END

1 Comment