How to improve writing (no. 71)

From an appreciation of a poet:

[O]f course the codex form was a primary affinity, as all of his work and life indicates.

This partial sentence made me stop and want to improve it. Notice the inflated diction: “the codex form,” “a primary affinity.” I’ve used the word codex when teaching about ancient texts. It’s a fine word. But there’s no question here of preferring codices to scrolls. As for “a primary affinity,” notice that a form of to be precedes the words, removing any strong sense of agency. The form was an affinity? And a primary not secondary affinity?

And now I think of Richard Lanham’s command in Revising Prose (2007): “Find the action.” And I think of Michael Harvey’s explanation of basic sentence structure in The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (2013): “who (or what) does what.” And I realize that “a primary affinity” is not only an instance of inflated diction but a decidedly indirect nominalization. Who did what?

A possible revision:

As his life and work attest, he loved the printed book.

I chose “the printed book” to suggest a love of the object, rather than a love of reading. I think that’s what the writer means to suggest.

Which sentence do you find more convincing?

*

An afterthought: I now realize that it seems odd to think of someone’s life as attesting to that person’s affection for x. I can’t see any difference between, say, “As his life attests, he loved his family” and “He loved his family.” The second sentence clearly implies that the evidence of love is to be found in the content of the person’s life. So a better revision:

As his work attests, he loved the printed book.

Related reading
All OCA “How to improve writing” posts (Pinboard)

[This post is no. 71 in a series, “How to improve writing,” dedicated to improving stray bits of public prose.]

[Your headline here]

The New York Times explains how to write a New York Times headline. For the Times, a bad pun is “a mortal sin”:

Obvious wordplay, such as Rubber Industry Bounces Back, “should be tested on a trusted colleague the way mine shaft air is tested on a canary. When no song bursts forth, start rewriting.”

Related reading
All OCA New York Times posts (Pinboard)

[The passage I’ve quoted quotes from the paper’s Manual of Style and Usage. As for bad puns, consider the cover of today’s New York Post: “Putin on the Pressure.”]

“Some Other Time”

When On the Town moved from stage to screen, many of Leonard Bernstein’s songs disappeared, including “Some Other Time,” easily the best and most moving song in the show. Oh, well. I guess they wanted to keep things light.

Here is an unembeddable, unforgettable recording of “Some Other Time.” Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green. Blossom Dearie, piano and vocal; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Ray Brown, bass; Ed Thigpen, drumes. From the album Blossom Dearie Sings Comden and Green (Verve, 1960).

Blossom Dearie is a musician I’ve discovered by way of my dad’s CDs. There’s one previous post with her music.

Shittown coda

[No spoilers, unless the post spoils Shittown itself.]

Having listened to the seven-episode podcast Shittown, I feel shitty. John B. McLemore is quite a story: an Ignatius J. Reilly come to life, with a far greater measure of tragedy. Whether McLemore’s life should have become a story is another matter. Shittown, I’ve concluded, is a public-radio version of the more grotesque forms of reality TV, registering compassion for those under examination while nonetheless turning them into spectacle — or the aural equivalent of spectacle.

As Elaine says: next time, we won’t get in line.

Holy war, noble peace

It has been reported that the Kaiser has fled Germany for the Netherlands. Gack, a former student planning on the priesthood, doesn’t believe it:


Hans Herbert Grimm, Schlump. 1928. Trans. Jamie Bullock (New York: New York Review Books, 2016).

Also from this novel
Food fight : “Headed for the Front” : “A few sacks of peas” : “Just poems about spring and that”

Protasis trouble

From a partial transcript of an interview between Donald Trump and Maggie Haberman and Glenn Thrush of The New York Times:

Trump: Elijah Cummings [a Democratic representative from Maryland] was in my office and he said, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.”

Haberman: Really.

Trump: And then he went out and I watched him on television yesterday and I said, “Was that the same man?”

[Laughter.]

Trump: But I said, and I liked him, but I said that was really nice. He said, in a group of people, “You will go down as one of the great presidents in the history of our country.” And then I watched him on television and I said, “Is that the same man that said that to me?”

Of course, what Trump claimed that Cummings said is not what Cummings said. Cummings gave The Washington Post an explanation:

During my meeting with the president and on several occasions since then, I have said repeatedly that he could be a great president if . . . if . . . he takes steps to truly represent all Americans rather than continuing on the divisive and harmful path he is currently on.

Donald Trump apparently suffers from protasis trouble. His distortion of Cummings’s remarks puts me in mind of a disgruntled student: “You said I’d get a B!” “No, I said that this could be a B paper — if you improve the third and fourth paragraphs, and if you clear up the documentation problems, and if you add,” &c.

Gleanings from Maira Kalman

Are things normal? I don’t know. Does life go on? Yes.

*

I go home and wash the dishes. Washing dishes is the antidote to confusion. I know that for a fact.

*

On the wall was a dress that I embroidered. It said “Ich habe genug.” Which is a Bach cantata. Which I once thought meant “I’ve had it, I can’t take anymore, give me a break.” But I was wrong.

It means “I have enough.” And that is utterly true. I happen to be alive. End of discussion. But I will go out and buy a hat.

From Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty (New York: Penguin Press, 2007).

Related posts
Maira Kalman on her daily routine : Strunk and White and Kalman

[I’ve ignored line breaks and spacing.]

“Without aging”

Joseph Joubert:

One can advance a long time in life without aging.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection  , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).

Also from Joseph Joubert
Another world : “As real as a cannon ball” : Being and nothingness : Brevity : Doing something well : “Everything is new” : Form and content : Irrelevancies and solid objects : Justified enthusiasm : Lives and writings : New books, old books : ’Nuff said (1) : ’Nuff said (2) : Politeness : Resignation and courage : Ruins v. reconstructions : Self-love and truth : Thinking and writing : Wine

Review: Duke Ellington, An Intimate Piano Session

Duke Ellington. An Intimate Piano Session. Storyville Records. 2017.

Storyville’s latest Ellington release includes sixteen recordings from the “stockpile,” music recorded at Ellington’s expense and never released in his lifetime. Ten of the recordings are of the piano player (as he called himself), alone at the keyboard. One is with a mystery drummer (“Loco Madi”); five are with the band’s singers, Anita Moore and Tony Watkins. These sixteen recordings, all made on August 25, 1972, are a considerable addition to the body of Ellington’s work as solo pianist and accompanist. There is gold here, beginning with “The Anticipation,” the previously missing first section of The Uwis Suite, a work Ellington wrote for his 1972 residency at the University of Wisconsin. “The Anticipation” establishes a mood of urbane introspection that runs through many of these performances. We hear Ellington taking liberties with tempo and harmony in his compositions (“The Single Petal of a Rose”) and Billy Strayhorn’s (“Lotus Blossom”). He plays (twice) a relative rarity, Strayhorn’s “A Blue Mural from Two Perspectives.” Most striking to me is “Melancholia,” first recorded in 1953. The deliberate hesitations and silences in this performance recall Thelonious Monk’s 1957 recording of “I Should Care.” It’s the best “Melancholia” I’ve heard.

Ellington never liked arranging for singers, but he excelled as an accompanist, so it’s a treat to hear him as the sole support for Anita Moore and Tony Watkins. Moore is persuasive in her ballad performances (“I’m Afraid” and “I Didn’t Know About You”). Watkins is commanding in “The Blues Ain’t,” but in “Come Sunday” and “My Mother, My Father and Love,” his heavy vibrato is just not to my taste. I’m hardly alone: in 1973, an audience booed Watkins and prompted a disgusted Ellington to cut short a concert.

And speaking of concerts, happier ones: the last four performances on this CD are encores from the November 7, 1969 concert released last year as Rotterdam 1969. Most of the band has left the stage, but Ellington keeps going, with Wild Bill Davis (organ), Victor Gaskin (bass), and Rufus Jones (drums). Here too there is gold. Ellington announces ”The Lake” as a piece this quartet had never before performed. “Satin Doll” has an especially exuberant version of the finger-snapping bit. And in “Just Squeeze Me,” the interplay of the two keyboards goes on for chorus after chorus. “I like that, one more time,” Ellington says, again and again. So much good feeling in that hall.

A recent biography of Ellington trades in cheap suggestions that he was, well, a lazy and irresponsible fellow. At the time of the 1972 recordings on this release, in his seventy-third year, Ellington was nearing the end of a four-week engagement with a small band at New York’s Rainbow Grill, playing two sets a night, with Sundays off. He twice went into the studio during that engagement to record for the stockpile. On a Sunday off, he traveled to Boston for a concert with the full band. On a Saturday, he traveled to Tarrytown, New York, for a benefit concert with a starting time of 6:00 p.m. — early enough to get to the Rainbow Grill for the night’s first set. We should all be so lazy.

The program:

The Anticipation : Le Sucrier Velours (1) : Lotus Blossom (1) : A Blue Mural from Two Perspectives (1) : I’m Afraid (Of Loving You Too Much) : I Didn’t Know About You : Loco Madi : Lotus Blossom (2) : New World A-Comin’ : Le Sucrier Velours (2) : Melancholia: The Single Petal of a Rose : The Blues Ain’t : Come Sunday : My Mother, My Father and Love : A Blue Mural from Two Perspectives (2) : Black Swan : The Lake : Satin Doll : Just Squeeze Me

Related reading
All OCA Ellington posts (Pinboard)

[Ken Vail’s Duke’s Diary, Part Two (2002) has the details of Ellington’s itinerary, 1950–1974.]

No New York Times ever!

Agatha is worried about Carlos:


[Zippy, April 5, 2017.]

Subscribing to The New York Times is a smart thing to do in these times. I finally started a digital subscription in February, after years of reading online for free. There’s no paper Times delivery here in the sticks.

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

[Post title with apologies to Joan Crawford.]