How to improve writing (no. 36)

When the context is serious, and a pun would do no more than call attention to its maker’s cleverness, block that pun. From a New York Times article on suspected forgeries of modern American painters:

A few details, however, have dripped out in court documents and through interviews with other players in the case, enough to sketch out what happened.

Notice that the metaphor is mixed: it would be awkward at best to sketch with what’s been dripping. Better:

A few details, however, have come out in court documents and in interviews with other players in the case, enough to suggest what happened.

[This post is no. 36 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

Related reading
All How to improve writing posts (via Pinboard)
1 PUN MULTI

Resurrect Dead

The documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles (2011, dir. John Foy) tracks three self-made researchers in their effort to unlock the secret of the Toynbee tiles, mysterious messages embedded in city streets in the United States and several South American countries. The tiles offer several variations on the above message:

TOYNBEE IDEA
IN MOViE ‘2001
RESURRECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPiTER

Who’s creating these tiles? What do they mean? With determined effort and remarkable luck, Justin Duerr, Colin Smith, and Steve Weinik push forward to an answer.

Like the 2010 documentary Catfish (dir. Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman), Resurrect Dead is best viewed with little or no foreknowledge. If you plan to see the film, I’d suggest not following the link below.

[Image from the film’s website.]

My name is [your name here].

E.B. White, in a 1969 Paris Review interview:

Television affects the style of children — that I know. I receive letters from children, and many of them begin: “Dear Mr. White, My name is Donna Reynolds.” This is the Walter Cronkite gambit, straight out of TV. When I was a child I never started a letter, “My name is Elwyn White.” I simply signed my name at the end.

This observation reminds me of what I wrote in my post on how to e-mail a professor:

Why sign with your name, class, and meeting time? It’s a courtesy, yes, but it also avoids the awkward “My name is . . . , and I am a student in your such-and-such class,” all of which is taken care of in the signature. It occurs to me that “My name is . . . , and I am a student in . . .” is telling evidence of the unfamiliarity of e-mail as a way for students to communicate with professors.

“My name is” does sound childlike, doesn’t it? Or spammy: “Hello My Dear One, my name is,” &c.

Edward Luttwak on Homer Inc

“The old firm is doing very well in new markets far from America”: Edward Luttwak on the Iliad in Arabic, Chinese, and English: Homer Inc (London Review of Books).

Esther Williams’s Proust questionnaire

Esther Williams responds to Vanity Fair’s Proust questionnaire:

What is your greatest fear?

The pool is unheated.

Related reading
All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

The Alabama Syncopators

[Click for a much larger view.]

In November 2006 I wrote a post about a little piece of ephemera in my possession, an invitation to a 1927 Chicago dance. (That post is still one of my favorites.) Back then I could find no information about the orchestra hired for the dance, A. Pellegrino and His Original Alabama Syncopators. But I just did, on a page from the Chicago newspaper the Suburban Economist, May 13, 1925:

There are few dance orchestras more “zippy” than this one, to be at WBCN about 11:45 o’clock Thursday night, and which is shortly to take to the stage for a few weeks. While these boys, who travel under the name of the Alabama Syncopators, have been heard before from WBCN, their last appearance was several months ago and many who heard them may have forgotten their unusually “dancy” tempo. From left to right, those in the photo are: Pasquale Venuso, trombone; Frank Martello, trap drums; Joseph Pellegrino, cornet; Edward Kapek, piano; Anthony Pellegrino, saxophone and clarinet (director); Nicholas Pellegrino, saxophone and clarinet; James Tarentino, banjo.

The Social Security Death Index lists just one Edward Kapek (1901–1985) and one Pasquale Venuso (1907–1979). There’s a Frank Martello (1905–1976) whose last residence was in Chicago, and an Anthony Pellegrino (1902–1979) and a Nicholas Pellgrino (1906–1970) whose last residences were in Illinois.

Looking at the faces in this photograph, particularly those of Martello and Venuso, I see a group of kids, really — school friends perhaps? — all together on an adventure in music. I wonder how long it lasted.

[This journey into the past has been brought to you by the Internets. The Internets: making the past present for the future.]

Timothy Barrett, papermaker

At the New York Times, Mark Levine profiles Timothy Barrett, papermaker:

Barrett, who is 61, has dedicated his life to unlocking the mysteries of paper, which he regards as both the elemental stuff of civilization and an endangered species in digital culture. . . . “Sometimes I worry about what a weird thing it is to be preoccupied with paper when there’s so much trouble in the world,” Barrett told me, “but then I think of how our whole culture is knitted together by paper, and it makes a kind of sense.”

Bonus: there’s a slideshow.

Kay Davis (1920–2012)

Kathryn McDonald sang as Kay Davis with the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1944 to 1950:

Kay Davis was an honor student of Northwestern University, where she studied opera and majored in music. She had perfect pitch, could sight-read, and had all the gifts, so we decided to use her voice as an instrument. . . . I shall never forget her first Carnegie Hall appearance in January 1946. Subtitled “A Blue Fog You Can Almost See Through,” “Transblucency” was a last-minute kind of composition, and the two featured musicians (Jimmy Hamilton on clarinet and Lawrence Brown on trombone) had to have music stands at the mike, because it had been completed too late for them to memorize. So we put Kay’s part on a music stand at the mike, just like those of the musicians, and the performance was a smash.

Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973).

Here from 1946 is “Transblucency.” And here from 2009 is a short film about Kay Davis, The Voice of the Ellington Orchestra. Are Herb Jeffries and Maria Cole (Marie Ellington) now the last links to the 1940s Ellington orchestra?

Related reading
Soprano was one of last links to Duke Ellington (Chicago Sun-Times)

[For any singers out there: yes, Ellington should have written instrumentalists, not musicians.]

Betty Flowers: madman, architect, carpenter, judge

Betty S. Flowers says that one who writes must be, in turn, madman, architect, carpenter, and judge. I’ve found this four-part metaphor tremendously useful in helping students to see the different kinds of work that good writing requires.

A related post
Granularity (“one thing at a time”)

Margaret Edson on writing

From a New York Times article on playwright and teacher Margaret Edson, author of Wit:

Writing itself . . . is something to which she is deeply committed, and she usually ends each class quietly, with a writing assignment. “Sitting by yourself, forcing the swirl of thoughts into a linear, systematic journey forward — it makes you smarter,” she said. “It’s like a pastry bag, literacy is. It presses you into one clear line.”

Don’t miss Edson’s 2008 Smith College commencement address: “I love the classroom. I loved it as a student, and I love it as a teacher.” Here’s a transcript if you’re pressed for time.