[Popular Mechanics, February 1942.]
If you suspect that Sherwin Cody stepped out of the nineteenth century to ask this question: yes, he did. And he asked it again and again and again, with great success, enough even to be in Wikipedia.
*
11:18 a.m.: From an earlier, lengthier Sherwin Cody advertisement (Popular Mechanics, October 1930):
Many people say “Did you hear from him today?” They should say “Have you heard from him today?”Uh-oh, I’m in trouble.
I have an abiding and foolish affection for old mass-market paperbacks that promise to improve one’s vocabulary or writing. No doubt such books play upon a reader’s sense of intellectual and social inferiority. (Is your vocabulary holding you back?) Still, I like the idea that the ordinary citizen, long out of school, might step into a candy-cigarettes-newspapers store, walk over to the paperback rack, and pick out a book to become a better reader or speaker or writer. That effort seems to me a happy blend of self-knowledge, humility, and optimism.
Here is a wonderful passage from one such book, Wilfred Funk and Norman Lewis’s 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. It was published by Funk & Wagnalls in 1942, became a Pocket Book paperback in 1949, and went through sixty-one printings before a 1971 revision. My copy, which my son Ben found for me, is from 1971:
From now on we want you to look at words intently, to be inordinately curious about them and to examine them syllable by syllable, letter by letter. They are your tools of understanding and self-expression. Collect them. Keep them in condition. Learn how to handle them. Develop a fastidious, but not a fussy, choice. Work always toward good taste in their use. Train your ear for their harmonies.Consider it done. Thanks, Ben.
We urge you not to take words for granted just because they have been part of your daily speech since childhood. You must examine them. Turn them over and over as though you were handling a coin, and see the seal and superscription on each one. We would like you actually to fall in love with words.
The opening sentence of a New York Times obituary:
Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized hand soap from a pump, gambling $12 million to prevent competitors from duplicating it, and fragrances like “Obsession,” which he advertised with artful eroticism, died on Aug. 29 in Newport Beach, Calif.To my eyes, the writer has crammed too many bits of information into one sentence — a problem one sees again and again in news writing. Notice especially how long it takes to travel from soap to “Obsession.” The abbreviated Aug. and Calif. (house style, I know) end up looking absurd when a sentence makes room for so much else.
Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized hand soap from a pump and fragrances like “Obsession,” died on August 29 in Newport Beach, California.Or better still:
Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized products as various as liquid soap and the fragrance “Obsession,” died on August 29 in Newport Beach, California.Or again:
A serial entrepreneur who popularized products as various as liquid soap and the fragrance “Obsession,” Robert R. Taylor died on August 29 in Newport Beach, California.The missing details can appear in the paragraphs that follow, where they will have a better chance to register.
It was the only item of its kind in the freezer case. Do you see what’s wrong? If so, you’re a smarter shopper than I was. But I won’t get fooled again.
If you see what’s wrong, or if you don’t, please leave a comment. I want to keep some mystery in the post itself.
In The New York Times, Nora Johnson writes about falling in love at the age of seventy-one with an eighty-three-year-old man:
He seemed to have good health, except for a little diabetes. He had a cane and could still walk — a block or so. There were false teeth, identified by a golden stud that appeared at one side of his disarming smile. He had most of his hair. Best of all, when he talked, it was worth listening to.Johnson is the author of the novel The World of Henry Orient and other works.
I was typing up a page for a class:
Change Beatlemania? Never.
Find Next? Not happening.
Ignore? Impossible. The screaming!
The Oxford English Dictionary takes care of a definition: “addiction to the Beatles and their characteristics; the frenzied behaviour of their admirers.” Again: the screaming!
Related reading
All Beatles posts (Pinboard)
[I was typing the first paragraph of Colin Fleming’s “1963: The Year the Beatles Found Their Voice” (The Atlantic, June 2013), useful for showing how a writer might create a genuine thesis statement for an essay. But 1963? I can’t agree.]
[Thornton Dial, Looking Out the Windows. 2002. Metal grating, fabric, plastic toys, stuffed animals, rope carpet, wire fencing, carpet scraps, metal, corrugated metal, metal screening, wire, nails, paint cans, Splash Zone compound, enamel, and spray paint on carpet on wood. 100 x 50 x 13 in. Collection of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation.]
In 2011, I posted another Thornton Dial work made in response to the events of September 11, 2001: Interrupting the Morning News.
[Image here. Description here.]
[Henry, September 10, 2013.]
Streetside gum machines live on in the panels of Henry. Every day, this strip offers pictures of the gone world.
And here is a gum machine in a New York City subway station, photographed by Stanley Kubrick for Look. Thanks, Ezra, for passing it on.
Also:
To: HenryMore gum machines
From: Michael
Re: Chin
When you grow up, grow a beard.
“It’s taken me a long time to feel secure enough to admit to such simple and obvious practices”: Rachel Toor explains what’s in her little bag of writing tricks. The Find command and ugly fonts: especially useful tricks.
A related post
The F word
At Contrapuntalism, Sean announces an astonishing discovery: there really is a Pencildom.
