I've been packing books lately since I've moved into a new Trope Topic College building. The move has had the effect of putting me in mind of academic librarianship, literally the care and keeping of books. It has had the effect, too, of putting in hand a valued text from the past, an academic biography I studied forty years ago now, Leon Howard's Herman Melville (1951). You should know that Howard was my Doktor Vater, and as I had not seen his work in years, I took a brief peek.

Howard was a fine scholar trained in the German style at Johns Hopkins — writing the nineteenth dissertation in American literature ("of which there are no extant copies," he happily joked). His long career at Northwestern, UCLA, and New Mexico was highlighted by New Mexico's naming a small library for him in 1983. I thought it fitting, since as Moby-Dick readers may recall, "librianship" is a key theme in Melville's novel.

My own work in that service (getting students into the library and weaning a few from the net) is modest enough, but since books are all helpful, getting folks to read, and even beyond that to "think" about literature, is still more so. You may recall my Whose Words These Are I Think I Know, a January 2005 post centered on finding abstraction, figuration, and organization in books. Today I thought to add a fresh take on still more academic work — work stretching over the entire course of the past century.

Howard's biography can help us in defining it — at least at the boundaries.

As I tell students, twentieth-century literary academics fall broadly into three kinds, scholars, critics, and theorists. All have played one-upsmanship games over time, the older looking down on the younger — and vice versa, of course. Though I am quite non-sectarian, in aging I have grown to appreciate the work of the older scholars like Leon Howard.

Here's how he stakes his claim on "critical" study in his brief "Preface":

To those critics who insist that a work of literature makes its most admirable appearance an an independent object of aesthetic experience, I can only suggest that the arts which we call the humanities are, as a matter of fact, unavoidably human. Of them, literature is the most comprehensive and illuminating in its humanity; and, for my part, the knowledge of human beings, in all their complex relationships, which can be gained from literary study is one of the greatest incentives to its pursuit. I cannot, in short, share the apparently widespread feeling that a rereadable book is so delicate a plant that it needs to be removed from its natural environment before it can attract the imagination.

Those perfect adverbial phrases, "as a matter of fact," "for my part," and "in short," catch Howard's concern: some gathered "facts," "personally" acquired, and all "briefly" shown are, indeed, his point. So, naturally, his conclusion ("Recollection and Renown") drives it home more stylishly.

Critics whose impulse has been to worship Art have found in Melville's works a challenge to their ceremonial ingenuity in rationalizing impressions. So satisfactory has been his reflection of their subtleties that typographical errors in cheap editions of his books and mistranscriptions of his difficult handwriting have inspired them to intellectual gyrations of ectasy. The omission of a comma in modern versions of a sentence addressed to Bulkington in Moby Dick has transformed that character from one of Melville's forgotten men into one of his most "significant" heroes. The error which changed a "coiled fish of the sea" into a "soiled fish" in some editions of White Jacket has been the basis for a lyrical tribute to the author's unique genius in imagery. The probable misreading of Melville's original spelling of the word "visible" as a reference to a "usable truth" in a letter to Hawthorne has provoked discourse on the "usable truth" of both men and inspired a meditation on the "usable past."

What more can I say?

Lots, of course, but any real "usable truth" in this "blog post" cannot sustain — even theoretically — a more "usable past" in his book.

And, less so, that in the Leon Howard Memorial Library.

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Though I've good examples aplenty, seldom do I cite passages from student essays. I mostly prefer professional work. But here I mean to make an exception, with a brief essay drawn from the work of a student last spring in English 101. You might find Steve H's piece instructive.

Steve H. is something of a classic "Man in the Street." At fifty-one, he tells us, he's "been around the block a few times." With twenty-nine years in the metal trades (he's been a machinist, welder, and millwright locally), lately he's been studying for work in habitat restoration. English 101 was a degree requirement, and, as you will see, he earned himself an "A."

For years I've had an assignment in class meant to promote wise reflection on "The Art of Writing." You can read my take on it at Community College English in a short post I wrote called One Helpful Portfolio Cover. But what matters here is Steve's approach, which you have (slightly revised) by permission. It's happily entitled

Integrity vs. Ambiguity: Ethics and the Art of Writing

I left the eight parts of speech behind me thirty-three years ago, though not the imprint they left on my memory. I have always enjoyed quality fiction and non-fiction, but I never understood what separated good writing from bad — save for my difficulty in reading some piece or my inability to attend to it without keeling over from boredom.

Surprisingly, I was good in high school at diagramming sentences and naming their parts (nouns, pronouns, verbs), but I never in fact asked anyone, "What was the purpose?" Now with the understanding that comes from hindsight and having been around the block a few times, I more clearly see the purpose. You must eventually analyze even your own writing to examine subtle relationships among the words. Then you will understand better how to put your thoughts together, tying one to another in good order and learning to communicate clear ideas, beliefs, and feelings.

I believe no one starts out wanting to be the village idiot, for stiff competition alone should prevent us all from ever applying for the job. I also believe in order to be a responsible citizen, you should be able to discern quickly when someone is trying "to pull the wool over your eyes," especially someone from the government.

Among the hardest concepts to master when learning how to write well is what I call "racing the chariot of Aristotle's three steeds of writing" — called ethos, pathos, and logos — the "horses" better known as ethics, emotions, and logic. For someone like me, my ethics seem to make me crack the whip mostly over my emotions — "damn the logic, full speed ahead," I say. This might be acceptable for some B-grade Hollywood movie, but it doesn't work as well in a world where we are all judged by our ability to manage the three — morals, passion, and thought — to achieve real goals.

When this balance is sacrificed for the purpose, say, of deliberately trying to hide our intent within our writing, we set aside proper ethics for personal gain and take up the sword of ambiguity and obscurity to find, as a general rule, something else. Exclusive language, double speak, bureaucratese, and a host of other evasive writing "skills" become a smoke screen behind which we sneak past the guards of moral high ground toward our dark aim.

Of course, there is the old adage "live by the sword, die by the sword," but it never occurs to us we may be the ones to fall under the overwhelming blows of truth.

Being the practical person that I am, one learning from seeing, feeling, and doing, I find it easier to show than tell. The following is the record, as I remember it, of an actual event where the outcome was a direct result of a person's deliberately putting up a "smoke screen" to cover his own dark maneuverings — proof of what happens when you abandon ethics, clarity and integrity for blind ego and ambition.

Now enter our last Aristotelian term

TRAGOS — Definition: A Tragedy

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I'm celebrating my fourth anniversary, though judging from my recent posts, you might say I'm resurrecting YGS. I'm glad to report that summer has been pleasant — though spent less at what Wallace Stegner, in a well-named western novel, calls an Angle of Repose. I spent my summer roofing — at an angle of 53^o.

I was employed on Smart and Soulful's roof in July and August. Though consumed only at day's end, cheap beer was my pay, and hearing loss my pain. We had powerful, pneumatic tools and much fun shooting compressed breezes through our nail guns. I suppose you could say — evoking an old theme — that summer labor has knocked some palaver out of my writing.

But, boy, am I glad to be back teaching.

Which leads me to a quote, one from Isaiah — as in my Pro Deo et Patria: Father-Called, Father-Sent:

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens — wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught.

I still admit I'm hard of hearing, but I try to remember, too, what it means to listen.

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Pacific Northwesterners are lucky folks, having hereabouts the largest new-used bookstore in the world to wander in. It is called Powell's, known in Portland as "The City of Books." Powell's occupies an entire city block, and with 1,000,000+ books in nine rooms on four floors, "once you visit," as they say, "you won't want to leave."

This happened to a portion of my philosophy class recently. A wise administrator gave my class permission to do a short field trip there, and a good choice it was, for as we left I heard my students agree: "Best field trip ever." That is maybe heartening news today with so many plugged into their I-Pods, for books are in some ways, still, "equally technological."

Jack Goody once famously said "Literacy is the technology of intellect" — a wise judgment partly stemming from the old Baconian saw that "Reading maketh a full man." You may perhaps recall Francis Bacon's essay

Of Studies


STUDIES serve for delight, for ornament, and for ability. Their chief use for delight is in privateness and retiring; for ornament, is in discourse; and for ability, is in the judgment and disposition of business. For expert men can execute, and perhaps judge of particulars, one by one; but the general counsels, and the plots and marshalling of affairs, come best from those that are learned. To spend too much time in studies is sloth; to use them too much for ornament, is affectation; to make judgment wholly by their rules, is the humor of a scholar. They perfect nature, and are perfected by experience: for natural abilities are like natural plants, that need pruning, by study; and studies themselves do give forth directions too much at large, except they be bounded in by experience. Crafty men contemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them; for they teach not their own use; but that is a wisdom without them, and above them, won by observation. Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention. Some books also may be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books, else distilled books are like common distilled waters, flashy things. Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And therefore, if a man write little, he had need have a great memory; if he confer little, he had need have a present wit: and if he read little, he had need have much cunning, to seem to know that he doth not. Histories make men wise; poets witty; the mathematics subtile; natural philosophy deep; moral grave; logic and rhetoric able to contend. Abeunt studia in mores [Studies pass into and influence manners]. Nay, there is no stand or impediment in the wit but may be wrought out by fit studies; like as diseases of the body may have appropriate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone and reins; shooting for the lungs and breast; gentle walking for the stomach; riding for the head; and the like. So if a man's wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics; for in demonstrations, if his wit be called away never so little, he must begin again. If his wit be not apt to distinguish or find differences, let him study the Schoolmen; for they are cymini sectores [splitters of hairs]. If he be not apt to beat over matters, and to call up one thing to prove and illustrate another, let him study the lawyers' cases. So every defect of the mind may have a special receipt.

Happily, as we left I noticed no real defect of mind in my own students. For over a meal later in another Portland landmark — The Old Spaghetti Factory — I overheard a pair debating the fate of World Federation Wrestling under Vince McMahon. Though I was about to mention Roland Barthes' great essay on professional wrestling, in Mythologies, I desisted, with some apt Baconian principles perhaps partly in view. Sometimes heated participation in the ring does beat cold theory in print.

Besides, I'd induced one of them to buy a book to supplement his favored music major, Frank Conroy's Body and Soul. For the human arts are, all — don't you think? — really of a piece.

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I don't think I mentioned our trip to Texas. Stylish and I spent spring break in Bandera, "The Cowboy Capital of the World," taking in sights in Houston and San Antonio, Kerrville, Fredericksburg, and Austin, too. Returning two weeks ago last Saturday, we have been busy teaching since.

Ironically, Texas teaching framed our trip from first to last. Initially passing through some dairyland enroute to SEA-TAC, we got word of Barbara Bush's plans to donate — through her son Neil's IgniteLearning company in Austin — COWs (Curricula on Wheels) to Houston's Independent School District. You may have seen the story. Meant partly for Katrina victims, the family largesse looks suspiciously like a clever tax gimmick — and it may just smack of Bushism, too (corporate cronyism).

We didn't reflect on it more till, visiting later in Texas's Bob Bullock State History Museum, we saw in Austin a COW being rolled in for public presentation. Well, you can imagine our surprise: that the thing (pictured at right) was being brazenly displayed in public suggested a better teaching tool I can show a bit more modestly in print — Bill Perry's famous 1963 essay, "Examsmanship and the Liberal Arts." I thought to define its two essentials.

Perry himself calls his piece a study in "Educational Epistemology," turning on the bovine concepts of "cow" and "bull." Here are Perry's definitions:

Cow (pure): data, however relevant, without relevancies.

Bull (pure): relevancies, however relevant, without data.

And again:

To cow (v. intrans.) or the act of cowing:
To list data (or perform operations) without awareness of, or comment upon, the contexts, frames of reference, or points of observation which determine the origin, nature, and meaning of the data (or procedures). To write on the assumption that "a fact is a fact." To present evidence of hard work as a substitute for understanding, without any intent to deceive.

To bull (v. intrans.) or the act of bulling:
To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content.

Today, reflecting on the clan's claims to leadership, I'm wondering if, in public as well as private, the Bushes have somehow got "cow" and "bull" together in a way better recognized, rather more neutrally, as "The Bum Steer."

In any event, to the Georges, Neil, Jeb, and, of course, Barbara, here's my slightly more literal, semi-pictorial version.

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At Trope Topic College I've been busy. Indeed, since my last posting here, I've been testing and grading, conferring and advising, editing and recommending. To give you some idea of my work, I thought to share a single scholarship recommendation, a classic form I've had a few chances to perfect. Happily, my student — Jason Artful — made my own work easy.

   To the Trope Topic College Scholarship Committee:

Jason Artful has asked for a recommendation supporting his TTC scholarship application. As his teacher in English 101 last fall, I can happily comply. Jason is a very deserving applicant.

Jason combines good sense with personal integrity and, vocationally, very impressive artistic talent. I have just finished reviewing a shared set of CD images that, like three essays I still possess, affirm the conclusion that he works skillfully. In everything, he succeeds, and I would consider his work still more broadly competitive. For I trust he will transfer one day, and with the pride he now takes in OHS carry on our fine traditions at TTC to bigger and better things. I know he has designs on such, already now partly fulfilled in his recent promotion at Starbucks — with whom he wishes to continue working one day in the design department. Goal-setting, I tell my students, is the real deal, and Jason truly is its exemplar.

He is also an exemplar of the steady application of head and heart to class work. His first essays initially fell short of that task in 101, but without batting an eye — and sitting always up front — he learned his lessons, applying himself and coming away, as he wrote in a final bluebook essay, as "a simple, complete, and focused writer." I wish more students would do the same.

In any event, he deserves everything TTC can give him, and your committee clearly has a fair share to offer. I trust Jason won't misspend it.

                                        Yours sincerely,

                                            Styles Stylechoice
                                            Philosophy/English
                                            Humanities Division

Jason thought that might do the trick, and I concurred. Some few letters do just write themselves. Prompted here by his own well-formed self, Jason's is but a brief, quite colorful, artfully "stylish" example.

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I learned students' names today. It's always my task the second day of a new term. Classes go better on an all-first-name basis, especially if students figure out (fast) that academic literary criticism needn't take itself so seriously.

My trick is simple. Since "writing about reading" is our common theme, I ask everyone to mark in a paragraph the experience of "getting lost in a book." Next I've the task of linking faces to texts — applying names and joking with everyone about their getting suckered by "virtual reality."

I start everyone out with

A Slam Dunk for Thomas Mann

That I missed a basketball game is all I remember. The year was 1962 and Reading University, my alma mater, was playing a home game across the street when one of my dormmates, Bill Keyes, griped loudly of my lackluster enthusiasm: "You mean you are going to stay here in your room while we go off to the game?" Sure enough, I was letting them go off to the game while I sat there reading. I had just begun a translation of Thomas Mann's Death in Venice to support my beginning studies in German. Perhaps because I was so rudely interrupted, I have only a vague memory of the book now. All I have in mind is the sad image of poor Gustav Aschenbach, a famous writer on vacation in Venice who, in tarrying over a vision of ideal beauty in the form of a young boy, succumbs to a cholera epidemic his Italian hosts have hidden from the guy as he soaks up a few rays on a sunny beach. I now think he might have gone to the game. In any case, old Gustav's experience serves to raise an interesting question: "Why should any beautiful work of the human imagination so fascinate us?" With Mann's considerable authority behind me, all I can say is that ideal beauty gets us all at last, as does the grim reaper. Only basketball provides the form for some, and, for others, books do.

You'll be interested to know how I learned today of a "Brandy" who started a small kitchen fire by solving a Who-Done-It one night here, and of a "Leah" who ran her car out of gas to the sound of her husband's reading Riptide over the "Continental Divide" in Wyoming.

As both discovered coasting thirty-seven miles to safety, literary criticism, naturally, I suppose, always goes downhill from there.

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Since commenting on Walt Whitman in Literacy, Halloween Style, I thought to mark my point more explicitly. It turns, implicitly, on more active reading. You'll recall my About-page remarks: "My writing is unfortunately affected by too much old book learning, the revenge of dead trees upon the living." It falls equally upon aging writers, too.

Two great-souled men of philosophy and literature, Francis Bacon and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, today seem apt in their own spirited thoughts on book reading and what I'd call adult-level literacy.

Some books are to be tasted [Bacon claims], others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.

There are three kinds of readers [Goethe judges]: one, who enjoys without judging; a third, who judges without enjoying; another in the middle, who judges while enjoying and enjoys while judging. The last class truly reproduces a work of art anew; its members are not numerous.

You might consider such souls as reminding us anew of our own duties, to get on with life while simultaneously finding meaning — especially on this day — in the full face of death.

It's the triple groundwork — don't you think? — of freedom, of democracy, and, perhaps, of happiness itself.

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Boo! I thought to sustain a ghostly theme today since, ironically enough, I have recently used the word haunted here. For I've a spirited passage to share with a bit of added comment.

Stemming from my cleaning a desk Saturday to make room for a new computer, it's ordered less by space than by time — and for serious consideration of college-level literacy. Here is my tale.

In papers horizontally filed and archeologically found, I chanced to spot an old letter I'd sent a few years ago to my local newspaper. The paper had done a piece on a forty-year-old who had started reading through the dedicated help of our college staff. You can imagine what personal courage it took to tell his story. My thank-you letter appeared as

Literacy begs all pause

"Literacy," according to R. P. Blackmur, "is the form ignorance takes in a society subjected to universal education."

Although disagreeable, even arguable, Blackmur's definition has, like your front-page story last week, an arresting appeal. Literacy begs all pause. We readers are in your debt for the reminder of what it is we do and are. My thanks.

Lest we forget our ignorance, however, we might pause at literacy's definition. Blackmur helps. Ignorance is, universally and ironically, he suggests, an "ignoring" of real education, the education of selves in the sense of their "leading out."

I submit that functional illiterates led out of school to our current boundary line of failure only reveal our definition of success. Our failure now to produce folks who fill out forms or read signs is just that, our failure. We only miss what we call a target.

Clearly, we miss much. My hope is that in years to come when we air education's dirty laundry, we'll find souls merely confessing that poetry or the ways of persuasion passed them by. Though still taking courage, the confession would, for us all, not be embarrassing to read.

It so happens I've some youngsters at my door begging Halloween treats. Understandably, I'd like to tell them how Martin Luther, four-hundred-eighty-eight years ago tonight, changed the world by showing that the real trick — always requiring "missing what we call a target" — demands more "leading out."

As I recall, Luther posted reasons why on his church door and created a Reformation by his effort — one with true Literacy, Halloween Style as its start.

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Revision musings have just prompted from me a new thought. Why not make my stylistic revisions even more eye-appealing? For in my recent Mind's Ear post, I used the formal trick of paired columns to suggest my aim. I thought: "Why not go directly to the power of the screen to make it more colorful — maybe giving readers implied 'earfuls' of heard representations?"

So here's a draft of a memo I edited some time back, one marking the score in a classic game between school administrators and college teachers. It happily suggested itself to me just now. You'll see its point in the end, but note first my play among dark words (text originals), blue (strike outs), and red (scores), all playing themselves out fully, but still subtly, in my text. Naturally, styled instruction is my aim.

A Brief Curriculum Committee Report, 2001

Summary: Throughout April, May, and June, five members of the English faculty participated in a series of meetings devoted to discussion of teaching and learning in English 101. Topics covered included student preparation, pedagogical and technological changes, evaluation standards, desired outcomes, the ideal vs. the real, and the expected role of writing skills in our students' lives. The consistent focus throughout all sessions, regardless of topic, Regardless of topics, throughout our meetings the consistent focus was the relationship between college English our own courses and those in K-12 English, or between the desired student learning outcomes in composition and the desired proficiencies articulated in the Washington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs). Unfortunately, although time constraints prohibited us from realizing the fullest intents of our original project our implementing all goals fully — which involved collaboration including collaborating with the English teachers in the local K-12 schools our K-12 colleagues — we were still able to accomplish the primary goal of refining the project's primary goal: refining the our common English syllabus in terms of required essential outcomes and assessments. Further Indeed, all participants came away in possession of with new strategies and fresh perspectives that will should be useful to us in the future.

Evaluation: Ultimately, the English faculty who participated in this project are satisfied that — although our teaching styles are distinct differ and our approaches varied, vary — student learning experiences in our various sections of English classrooms are similar in many meaningful important ways. We surely agree upon the importance of several outcomes essential to students' success in 101, including the following:

• thoughtful use of appropriate information in essays
• reasonableness/plausibility of the connection between claims and support
• unity within the essay and the paragraph
• coherence and sequential development of ideas
• clarity of expression
• mature usage use of the Standard English language
• stylistic precision, economy, and freshness
• and use regular employment of reflective revision strategies

Our secondary finding as a result of this project is Unfortunately, we are today forced to conclude that the criteria listed for the tenth-grade writing EALRs are unrealistic in both ambition and specificity — mainly by being too pedagogically idealistic. Indeed, all participants we all agree that we would be much surprised to find high-school students or recent high-school even graduates who met or surpassed these criteria. In fact, we now agree that — in our more than 75 years of collective teaching experience — we had never have rarely encountered a student who, upon graduating with an AA degree, could consistently score passing marks based on the criteria set for all tenth-graders.

Recommendation: Together, we will continue to help students improve their skills and knowledge in composition , modifying and enhancing our methods along the way by modifying syllabi and improving methods. Along the way, we will continue to consult each other one another in order to maintain in keeping a degree of needed professional uniformity in our class offerings. In fact, we will continue to be mindful that some of our students will go on to become K-12 English teachers, and we will approach our classes accordingly. But we will not put too much stock in the particulars of the Washington State Writing EALRs.

Just imagine what I can still hear in these dialectical alternatives to what our committee in fact discussed. Unfortunately, that old dialogue — as you might now guess — is almost wholly unprintable.

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My comp students last week were tweaking characters. I mean they were learning to match grammatical subjects stylistically to persons in their essays. It's a stylistic trick Joseph M. Williams recommends, calling it his "first principle of clarity" (and he is right) — for as Williams claims, readers typically watch people, and all skilled writers usually try to keep persons up front syntactically.

Take my "comp students," adding as well my "I," "they," "Joseph M. Williams," "he," "readers," and "all skilled writers." They are all characters — and if you're like my noon class, you're already good at spotting them.

Last week we divvied them up into two helpful types, called the "rhetorical" and the "logical." The first — the words "I," "You," "One," and "We" — are those "topic-independent personal pronouns rhetorically governing reader-writer relations." They let us be as formal or informal, familiar or distant, as we might wish, serving typically to keep readers in tow.

By contrast, personal nouns come next, naming only those folks we might logically associate with whatever subject we're exploring. But my students ran into trouble Friday. We were all brain-storming their kinds — singular and plural, common and proper — when to my surprise, asked to name the most famous of our writers, they stumbled. Consider:

Danielle Steele? John Grisham? Stephen King?

Older.

Edgar Allen Poe?

No.

Homer?

Doh!

Hmm?

He's having his 441^st birthday tomorrow, and his name is William Shakespeare.

OH!

If you've also forgotten this, I have a memorable quote just for the occasion:

They had not skill enough your worth to sing;
     For we, which now behold these present days,
     Have eyes to wonder, but lack tongues to praise.

And so goes my English teaching today.

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You might recall my December post on Richard Mitchell. Honoring The Underground Grammarian, it noted beyond our mutual fondness for old presses the summer, 1982 interview I did at his home in Pitman, New Jersey. Mark Alexander, keeper of Mitchell's official web site, has just transcribed our talk, publishing it in parts at his own blog, Witnit.

My interview, included in its entirety, was part of a larger project called "A Penny for Your Thoughts: Dialogues on Literacy." Mitchell's remains the deepest of the twenty-plus I did that summer. I'm glad it has now found its proper home at Alexander's fine site.

Except for the last, the section titles are Alexander's:

1 — The Purpose of Language

2 — What is Literacy

3 — The Purpose of Writing

4 — Why We Read

5 — Language is Metaphor

6 — Making Statements

7 — Honest and Dishonest Writing

8 — Illusory Limits

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I've always been a sucker for free books. Last week in San Francisco, at the mere cost of an old email address (employed so that the publisher couldn't easily find my current one), I became the proud owner of The Pen Commandments: A Guide for the Beginning Writer. As Quill and Scroll says, Steven Frank has written a "highly readable book that entertains as it instructs. . . . Even veteran writers will find a new perspective on the whole writing venture. . . . Almost anyone will find the book a delightful, useful tool for writing well."

Well, with such a pointedly elliptical recommendation, how could Styles resist: I mean, with so punny a take on a truly biblical theme, Frank's The Pen Commandments seemed even naturally to commend itself to me. And no wonder; its injunctions are wonderfully witty:

1. Thou Shalt Honor Thy Reader
2. Thou Shalt Not Waste Words
3. Thou Shalt Not Kill Thy Sentences
4. Thou Shalt Not Pick on the Puncts
5. Thou Shalt Keep Thy Structure Holy
6. Thou Shalt Describe Thy World, Express Thy Opinions, and Preserve Thy Past
7. Thou Shalt Take Pleasure in Thy Pen
8. Thou Shalt Not Take Essay Tests in Pain
9. Thou Shalt Overcome Writer's Block
10. Thou Shalt Not Covet Thy Neighbor's Prose

It wasn't long, though, before I found myself succumbing to the sad temptation of envying Steven Frank his own style. "Was it a good or a bad sign," I wondered, "right or wrong?" Then suddenly I remembered what Terry Teachout had remarked in his own take on such envy through that old Gershwin standard, "I've Got A Crush on You." You can see as much in A Terry Teachout Reader (2004), where he says this of his long fling with the famed artist-critic Fairfield Porter:

A few years ago, I fell in love — with a prose style. . . . My eye fell on this passage: 'Some art has a very open meaning, and can be written about in terms of this meaning; but the chances are that if the meaning is the most interesting thing about it, it does not stand alone, it does not assert itself. It leans on what it means. An implied meaning is richer.' I immediately snapped to attention — it was as if an invisible man had clapped his hands next to my ear — and by the time I put the book down, my cheeseburger was stone cold.

You can see that I've found in Steven Frank a somewhat less-good teacher than Teachout himself. That's why I thought to end on TT's rather more gracious explanation of style envy:

I do know that for me, style is a project, something at which I am constantly working. Rereading Raymond Chandler made me feel that my prose was too dry, and so I resolved to fertilize it with metaphor; my encounter with Fairfield Porter, by contrast, has made me want to be more direct (not to mention smarter). And, of course, one can also work on matters that go deeper than style: reading M. F. K. Fisher, for instance, filled me with a parallel longing to write about the place of music in life as it is lived. . . .

That's why I'm not planning to settle down with Fairfield Porter. . . . Does that make me promiscuous? No, just a hopeless romantic. . . . That's me, in spades. My bookshelves, like my writings, are haunted by the ghosts of influences past, all remembered with great tenderness, much as one recalls an old flame from college days: Whitney Balliett, Edmund Wilson, William F. Buckley, Jr., A. J. Liebling. Somerset Maugham, Diana Trilling, Randall Jarrell. Otis Ferguson, Joseph Epstein, Neville Cardus. In time, Porter will join them; I hope his spirit is pleased by the company it keeps.

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I've been marking student papers recently. Always trying work, it's nevertheless pleasant, particularly so if, when fortified with coffee, I can pen comments to the accompaniment of Joseph Haydn's fine piano sonatas. They've long been favorite marking aids — especially as interpreted by Sir Alfred Brendel. Brendel's recordings, 11 Piano Sonatas, I've almost burned through with the intense laser light shed on Haydn in sunrise bouts with student writing. In fact, I'm listening to the man now, and he's again having his salutary effect: calming, regulating, teasing, stimulating, provoking, ironizing — all, of course, what teachers most need to mark, beyond accuracy and correctness, what Robert Frost once called "the part where the adventure begins."*

It was yesterday that I began to understand Haydn's heretofore mysterious effect on me. The revelation came from the book I quoted just last week, Russell Sherman's stylish Piano Pieces. Since there's no rule against repetition — especially with some theme and variation — I've thought to share Sherman's grasp of Haydn's use. Though he approaches his own work from a musical standpoint, I can by analogy, at least, mark mine also from a literary. Both go hand-in-hand.

[A]ll teachers are likely to recommend certain favorite composers and pieces deemed useful [Sherman writes] to the growing-up stages of their students. To promote discrimination of ear and execution, some teachers assign Bach; others start with Chopin as the ground of touch and control. For me, the exemplary guide and mind-opener is Haydn.

Haydn instructs in thinking: heart-thinking and brain-thinking. Haydn instructs in faith; Haydn instructs in skepticism. Haydn instructs in resolve and in resignation; in structure and strategy; in caprice and tenderness. Haydn instructs, above all in that which is root, premise, and condition of all else: composition, or how the notes are put together, broken apart, reassembled, and transformed. Everything is up-front, exposed. Life is tragic, life is amusing; things come and go; one is at the center of the storm, and at the periphery.

For the notes are alive. They create and crumble right in front of our bloodied nose.

Since I'm off now to attend a meeting in San Francisco — the annual College Conference on Composition and Communication — today I thought to put Sherman's passage to use as a send-off, including another Sherman passage I find even more appealing.

Haydn provides a pedagogical example in one other respect [Sherman adds], a lesson imperative to contemplate in this day of media glut, of the siren call of cheap fame, and of the triumph of notoriety over talent. In his writings Haydn reflected on the fortunate fact of his relative isolation at the Esterhazy estate, where he served as music man to the prince. For a crucial period of maturity and growth, he was thankful to be distant from Vienna, from the center of fashion and commerce, and thus allowed him to develop his own ideas, personality, and vision.

This is not to say, of course, that I'm not going to enjoy fashionable San Francisco.

But while I'm gone — all of you, please — do give Joseph Haydn a listen.

*"You have got to mark, and you have got to mark, first of all, for accuracy, for correctness. But if I am going to give a mark, that is the least part of my marking. The hard part is the part beyond that, the part where the adventure begins."

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When I last wrote on music in November I collected in my Soul Music of the Night some random thoughts on pianists, classical and modern, black and white — all the way from Ray Charles to Rachmaninoff — and I have thought to extend my theme by focusing on Russell Sherman, a player whose book I've been reading recently.

Long with the New England Conservatory, Sherman is also a fine teacher and, for me, in Piano Pieces, his rare gift of bringing theory to practice is what makes his writing appealing. Take these elegantly, neatly styled two paragraphs on "fluid sponaneity":

Heralitus said that you can never step in the same river twice, a chilling insight into the evanescence of all things. But even the flow of water abides by certain principles, an illustration of the more comforting perception that chaos itself has laws.

The sponaneity of Artur Schnabel or of Thelonious Monk does not flow from unrehearsed consciousness, or because they never thought about things. It flows because they thought about things so hard and honestly that they were attuned to the puzzles and contradictions which demand a leap of faith, or play. Only from a thorough preparation which teaches all and the limitations of all can the conditions arise for inspired "accidents." Only the anguish and amusements of hard work can train one to perceive the charms of chaos, the dynamics of its properties and improprieties.

One sees here that Sherman asks much of his students, and rightly so. But in such cerebration look also on what he asks of their working a "distributive tension" into their performing bodies. It reminds me of Frank Conroy's Body and Soul (1993), a fine novel by another pianist, and, indeed, by yet another teaching writer.

The bouncing up and down of happy hands [Sherman writes] represents the physical analogy to feel-good methods for boosting the psyche. The bogeyman here, as always, is vile tension, lean as Cassius and mean as Iago. But, in fact, how does tension develop?

Tension arises from insecurity, and insecurity arises from ignorance. Ignorance, in our line of work, means not knowing the notes — an umbrella charge covering a multitude of sins, such as not knowing how the notes are organized, related, structured, and composed. That is, one's not knowing the composition leads to a good deal of insecurity even if all the tactile and mnemonic devises are functioning. Spurious gestures of liberation superimposed on a shaky foundation and insufficient grounding in the detail provide only a film of authority.

If, however, the notes are securely fastened and the mechanism is orderly, the answer lies not in the elimination of tension, for tension is the sword and glue of music, but in the distribution of tension. The spine, the arms, the shoulders, the legs, the torso all must share in the musical enterprise, and by their breathing and coordination convert it into a statement of convictions. Tension, nerves, psychic and metaphysical uncertainty are in fact the actual ingredients of musical pathos if properly balanced and exploited.

Today I've thought to note Sherman's book not so we can perform on his keys, but so that we can grasp "the keys to performance" — in writing and music alike.

The two go hand-in-hand, don't they?

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Recently I have been prompting class rewrites. It's often hard work. I read essays, add needed comments, schedule room conferences, coax reflection, cajole enterprise, and often promise help till the cows come home. Naturally, my work isn't all that formal, since it ambles casually in and out of classroom doors, plops comfortably down in armchairs, and gets done typically in hallways — often, in a rush, in the copyroom. Frankly, it's mostly messy, but I do like it. It has a nice, real-world, naturally "analogue" feel to it.

I was thinking about that word last week. I was chatting with Mike, a twin I have in English 101 now. Dan, his brother, is the better writer — an artist — but Mike has the more charming, digital personality as you might guess. I remember when I guessed right that Mike is a Fedora-Linux fan, and understandably thinks "open-source" means global salvation. Well, last week, when I tried to convince him that 99% of his life was lived in analogue, wouldn't you know he shot back, "Yeah, but I live for the digital."

So for Mike today — and for you, too — I've thought to provide, if not an Insight into writing as yet, at least an InSite into its current marketing.

Do enjoy.

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Last week I put grammatical moves on my students; I touted the strength of active verbs.

Comp teachers always have similar advice: to "prefer" them. We're so moved by them that, when passives appear, we are seen to hang our heads low, or at the sight of linkers, often to fall into a deep, existential angst. You might recall symptoms of that behavior even here, in my On Parsing English Justice.

Today I thought to beg the collegial but not yet psychological help of a great Civil War historian, James McPherson. His essay on Ulysses S. Grant, "The Unheroic Hero" (The New York Review of Books, February 4, 1999), I've long used to help students assess such verbs. McPherson's examples are instructive, not only in literature, but in life.

McPherson claims Grant's greatest stylistic achievements are two: "triumph in war, and success in writing [a] book [Personal Memoirs] in a race against death." Both are in turn based on a similar reality: "words," McPherson notes, not only "produce action — they become action."

Consider Grant's field orders in the Champion-Hill campaign at Vicksburg (1863):

To General Francis P. Blair, Jr.: Move at early dawn toward Black River Bridge. I think you will encounter no enemy by the way. If you do, however, engage them at once.

To General John A. McClernand: The entire force of the enemy has crossed the Big Black. . . . Disencumber yourself of your [supply] trains, select an eligible position, and feel the enemy.

To General James B. McPherson: Pass all trains and move forward to join McClernand with all possible dispatch.

To General William T. Sherman: Start one of your divisions on the road at once with its ammunition wagons. . . . Great celerity should be shown in carrying out the movement. The fight might be brought on at any moment — we should have every man on the field.

As McPherson explains, "[i]n the manner of Ceasar's Veni, vidi, vici, these sentences bristle with verbs of action: 'Move . . . engage . . . disencumber . . . select . . . feel . . . move . . . start.' Grant used few adjectives and fewer adverbs and then only those necessary to enforce his meaning: 'early dawn . . . engage at once . . . move with all possible dispatch . . . great celerity . . . every man.'"

Still more impressive was Grant's final battle against death. Fighting ruin and throat cancer, he rushed to finish his impressive Memoirs with a courageous command of language nowhere better shown than in a note, penned three weeks before his death, to his physician. Unable to speak, he wrote two short sentences every teacher might claim as the paradigmatic truth about verbs:

A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three.

That life lesson, too, my own students have already begun to learn.

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You should maybe hear in my title a poetic line from Robert Frost. It's changed, of course — his "woods," from "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening," turn (without acknowledgement) now into my "words."

I begin this way because, poetry notwithstanding here, my subject today is history — especially this Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. We Americans celebrate it each January, of course. My own day I've spent preparing for a writing class tomorrow, one King has long figured in. Of interest has been a scholarly essay noting King's quoting of black clerics, but citing white, in My Pilgrimage to Non-Violence (Keith Miller, "Composing Martin Luther King, Jr." PMLA, January 1991).

Miller's claim is interesting. He explains how in borrowing from black preachers, King is not rightly to be charged, thoughtlessly, at least, with plagiarism. My students always take his essay to heart.

My purpose, however, is neither to commit nor commend such borrowing, but rather, in the interest of study, to inform solid, scholarly reading — which, as I tell my students, necessarily includes three key tasks:

• abstracting the main ideas,
• noting any ordered figures of speech,
• and observing the main divisions of topical organization.

Here I thought to note just the second, implicitly giving you the gist of Miller's essay. Fit to the task is an email I wrote Friday to a student who, down with an incipient cold, asked me for a short study update. Here is our exchange.

Student: I will not be able to attend class today (1/14), and I sincerely apologize for this. I have been trying to fight off a bad head cold (even though it's just beginning). I would greatly appreciate any information you could give me as to what the class read or discussed today, granted no new hand-outs were given. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Styles: My thanks for your note. Since not everyone finished it, we had a conversation today about Miller's essay. I stressed only his use of figures, ignoring everyone's suggested titles and Miller's topical divisions. We'll do them Tuesday.

His main concerns are three: the key word "borrowing" (which when critics quote it may be ironical), his two phrases "shared treasure" (suggesting money and coinage) and "the black folk pulpit" (preachers preaching, literally, at Ebenezer Baptist Church), and, last, his key claim that King's discourse is whole-cloth weaving not quilt-making ("tapestry" not "patchwork" [p. 75]). You should note, however, Miller's prior use of "mine," "weld," and "alloy" — metallurgical terms — which he does not, of course, stress so much.

This reading, though technical, is really quite helpful in understanding Miller's argument. We all began, by the way, saying whether we agreed or not with his claim, however much we really understood it.

Do get well. I'll start analyzing his text and thought more Tuesday. Then you can share your own suggested title.

This short title, a classroom heuristic I use, will take the form tomorrow of "_____________, _____________, and the Idea of _________________." It helps my students inform their understandings of what I call an author's "conceptual topic." But tonight my topic is just bedtime, or, as Frost might say (echoing a prayerful rhyme), "Now I lay me down to sleep."

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I've never been a teacher given much to rules, though should you think I'm loose, my students might counter that I'm at least not lax — though they do sometimes find me late.

I've taught philosophy in a science building at some distance from where my comp students have often sat waiting this term. So my arrivals have sometimes prompted smiles, smiles occasioning a few of us to grasp an important principle of indulgence: how one sometimes meets his limits on the long climb from science to art.

I begin this way because I have one happy rule to share today, what I call Handy-Dandy Rule 22½:

Be matter-of-fact and plain as a rule and clever only when you're feeling wicked, else you'll get in trouble.

I've of course tried to follow it myself because it aptly underlies so much of what I try to teach. Still, I've thought to offer another's more stylish discussion of it today, that of the fine English writer, F. L. Lucas:

In short, you may ironically overstate, or ironically understate; but I suggest that you should always flee from blind exaggeration as from a fiend.

Now among the various passions that tempt a writer to distort, one seems to me especially dangerous. And that is a passion for his own cleverness. Well for those who can be both wise, and good, and clever; but this third quality, thought the least valuable of the three, has a horrid habit of playing cuckoo in the nest to the two others.

Although seldom from my example have students ever begun to learn it, I'm pleased to say that, in student portfolios I'm grading now, I'm beginning to see the rule's steady application — which Lucas marks, indeed, much better than I:

But, be poetry as it may, my conclusion is this [he writes] — that a prose-writer should not overstate, except when he carries overstatement to such outrageous lengths that he is obviously jesting. . . . For the rest, a prose-writer should state exactly what he feels; or else — and this is often more effective — deliberately understate. But how difficult to persuade young writers of this! So often their impulse is to assume that talking big is the same as talking vigourously. As well suppose that the best way to sing well is to sing loud. I have been told that when the late Sir Edward March, composing his memoir of Rupert Brooke, wrote "Rupert left Rugby in a blaze of glory," the poet's mother, a lady of firm character, changed "a blaze of glory" to "July." I cannot guarantee that this is true; but it is worth remembering.

And of course, so it is.

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I'm resurrecting an old sartorial theme today. Should you recall My Unfashionable "Carlylean" Take on Sartorial Elegance you may wince here at the thought that I'm donning old rhetorical duds again. I'm sorry; I'll try nipping and tucking things today.

But I come by my theme honestly. I mean, I was getting fitted Sunday afternoon for a quite classy, stylish sport coat hereabouts. As you'll likely not see it, I'll just say that it's a Hickey-Freeman bought so cheap that tailoring wasn't included. The thing does need, perhaps, "Carlylean" editing.

Indeed, I just had a chance to say so in a comment posted Sunday at Jocalo's A Writing Teacher's Blog. Conveniently linked there (as "Sartorial Rhetoric") in a follow-up post Monday, Close, Cloze, Clothes, I thought you might like reading it. Its ironic subject is Dressing for Success.

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My school year ended yesterday. Today's · You Got Style · subject is quite apropos, periodicity. It is delaying the rhetorical point: suspending grammatical attention better to mark logical emphasis. It naturally thrives (if you think about it) on ceremony.

Yesterday, for instance, a colleague here learned he'll have his name forever gracing an existing natural landscape. Our board-approved declaration included a long, indeed a ceremoniously-long WHEREAS list, one followed necessarily by a THEREFORE emphasizing, at last, HIS NAME.

I even got in the mood, since our president is also getting a proposed campus building named for him. So today I thought to share something I wrote yesterday before graduation. Here with my point following (but with names, times, places omitted) is a routine classroom visitation report. Its subject, as you might guess, is retired.

At _______'s request I visited Mr. _______'s 101 class on May __, leaving with a positive impression of his teaching. He clearly commands the respect and attention of students. Addressing Bruce Catton's famous comparison of Civil War Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee, he marched his students across a field of historical-literary ideas with impressive authority, and with the pedagogical challenges of expository writing always clearly in view.

I was especially impressed by his strategic inquiry skills. Working from simpler to more complex matters, he engaged student attention directly, following what seemed a planned route of real learning from biographical-historical to rhetorical-logical detail. Although he ignored one student's too-quick grasp of a crucial logical point — perhaps analogous to one's ignoring Grant's "genius" for topographical thinking — he yet served students well, grasping clearly how such points all eventually appear.

But Mr. _______ also himself grasps good beginnings. I was taken by his initial quiz. Gathering facts and judgments alike, it focused inquiry by training student attention, whether students quite understood things or not. As a result, all were dutifully "engaged."

Clearly, Mr. _______ merits general commendation for his work, perhaps even a medal, especially now in retirement. Obviously, ___ is well served.

My own point? Simply, if belatedly, to wish our newly-honored colleagues deservedly happy retirements.

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"The following passages, though differing some in substance, differ widely enough in style to merit critical ranking — say, good, better, best."

With those words, I have long asked my English students to pass critical judgment on three short passages included below. A colleague years ago introduced me to the helpful classroom exercise, and my mother — everyone should have one so judicious — to my chosen criteria: "Good, Better, Best," she said: "Never let it rest, till your good is better and your better best."

Good,   Better, Best Since La Rochefoucauld once remarked that "everyone complains of his memory, none of his judgment," my students typically disagree on their styleful choices, but after brief discussion they come at last to some agreeable consensus. Today I thought to share my exercise. You might even be willing to share your own opinions:

Three Passages

Judgments:   Good # ___   Better # ___   Best # ___

1. A formal course in writing can be a revelation to an undergraduate, opening up new powers of thought and expression, as if one were given new eyes for keener sight and a new tongue for more fluent speech. But it can also be a futile exercise in the degrading art of conformity. Students can learn to create sentences that flow in rhythmic patterns, or to avoid grammatical errors; they can be encouraged to discover the solid shape of real ideas, or to follow mass-produced blueprints for paragraph development; they can find how to make sense, or how to make an end at 500 words.
2. What's the use of English 101 anyway? More often than not you'll find a frustrated teacher droning on about participles and non sequiturs and deadwood and stuff. While the class is thinking: this guy is the deadwood and I wish he'd sequitur his participle somewhere else. Keeps interfering with my serious dreaming. True enough, sadly, more often than not. But occasionally, just every once in a while, some kid in the back row thinks: "Hey, I get it! Sentences are sounds that make sense, that make sense gracefully. That's all. Like a good song or a good joke or a great Ted Williams' homerun." And that, that moment of revelation, is one of the uses of English 101.
3. The process of learning how to write is one of the unique facets essential to a successful career in college. Because of this fact, it is important that the purpose and motivation for a course in writing be made perfectly clear at this point in time. Sometimes this is not done with adequate thoroughness, with unfortunate consequences for the one who is involved in the problem. Therefore the unique purpose of the course should be clearly stated at the beginning, so that every student is motivated to succeed in this important aspect of his career.

Naturally, Mom — paleo-matriarch that she was — could have nixed my final pronoun here, but she might also have overlooked, I think, such obviously politically-incorrect behavior. Of course, I'll leave that substantive judgment to you. It's judicious style I'm after now.

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No, today's title today isn't a fashionable allusion to John Ruskin, though you might think so. It's my reference, rather — a day in advance of its glad approach — to the end of my quarter.

"What do you mean?" Well, at term's end, I count down the days remaining in my classes always like this from fancy to plain:

• Antepenultimate Day: Not the last day of class, but the third day from it.

• Penultimate Day: The second day, naturally, from the last day of class.

• Ultimate Day: The very last day of class.

• Final Day: The day that any class takes its final.

• Last Day: The day my own grades must go in.

I'm glad today to say I'm nearing "This Last."

Of course, if you missed Unto This Last, luckily I do happen to have a makeup quiz.

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I'm up to my neck in homonyms today. I'm not, I confess, considering San Francisco-style weddings, or anything subject to pending constitutional amendment. Rather, as Shakespeare says, I'm giving myself to the marriage of minds, minds truly fit to the task of forming written words "stylishly." As I tell my students, it's a smart, fourfold task.

"Write, Right, Wright, Rite," I tell them. They get a kick, of course, out of my injunction since I can pose as a sadly repeating, redundant, reverberating punster. Whenever they all get around to asking what I mean, I simply say, "Check out my definitions":

• Write, (rīt), v.t., to form or inscribe (words, letters, symbols, etc.) on a surface or screen, especially with a pen, pencil, or computer.

• Right, (rīt), adj., specifically in accordance with fact, reason, or some set standard; being correct in thought, statement, or action.

• Wright, (rīt), n., a worker, maker, creator; a person who makes or constructs: used chiefly in compounds, as, cartwright, or, even, word wright.

• Rite, (rīt), n., any formal, customary observance or procedure, often expressly or implicitly religious.

Here I'll make my way straight to my principal point, which, if you think about it, is but the plain styling of a single sentence: Do Correct Work Religiously.

Naturally, the full conversion of all workers to the work is at times difficult, though they do take to it when (with Jonathan Swift) they maybe see its sharp point: "proper words in proper places."

I should perhaps let you decide what our busy bee ("at right") is doing.

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I've been reading Christopher Lasch's volume of writing advice, Plain Style: A Guide to Written English. Printed for graduate history students at the University of Rochester (1985) and published in paperback by the University of Pennsylvania Press (2002), the book lives up to its apt title. I heartily recommend it.

Plain Style, edited with a helpful introduction by Stewart Weaver, catches well the late historian's political savvy. Christopher Lasch, author of books like Haven in a Heartless World (1977) The Culture of Narcissism (1979), and The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (1995), addresses the fuzzy imprecision of public discourse today, going to the heart of rhetorical-political concerns George Orwell raises in his great "Politics and the English Language."

According to Weaver, Plain Style "is something of an essay in cultural criticism, a political treatise even, by one for whom directness, clarity, and honesty of expression were, no less than for George Orwell, essential to the living spirit of democracy." Weaver's allusion is no mistake, for Lasch holds to Orwell's belief that, as Orwell's own "Politics" makes clear, "the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts" — that "an effect can become a cause . . . A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks."

To second Orwell's claim, I thought to share Lasch's sharp styling of the thought in one spirited paragraph from his third chapter, "Characteristics of Bad Writing" — a paragraph entitled "Abstract Language":

Abstract Language   Bad academic writing [Lasch writes] avoids concrete (literally solid or coalesced) words and phrases as assiduously as it avoids the active voice, and for the same reason: it seeks to convey an impression of scientific precision, of painfully acquired learning and scholarship, of Olympian detachment from the commonplace facts of everyday life. It prefers phenomena to things or events, socialization to growing up, orientation to position or location. Abstractions are often indispensable, of course (as are forms of to be). Sipped in small amounts, they may even have a slightly intoxicating effect, not inconsistent with verbal clarity. Over-indulgence, however, leads to slurred speech and eventually destroys brain cells.

Lasch's own happy take on Orwell tells. Beyond one tipsy academic, though, it's worse to see America's sober-sided politicians from the President down reeling so clearly now under the inebriating influence of such abstractions as "The Axis of Evil" and "Strategic Outsourcing." You'd maybe think that they would foreswear such stuff, rhetorically as well as politically.

A justly temperate nation might, I would suggest, ask them to try.

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"There are some punctuations that are interesting," said Gertrude Stein, "and there are some that are not." Stein's judgment, quoted from Joseph M. Williams's Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, I have long found helpful in my teaching. The marks we silently take for granted, I've discovered, make for useful classroom conversation.

Typically, after introducing my students to the two chief means of grasping punctuation ("regulatory" and "syntactical" I call them), I turn everyone loose diligently looking for "interesting" punctuations. My students take to the task well, finding in what they have first read for pleasure larger lessons in compositional technique.

For fun I have thought to share two such finds. Each comes from a now-dated class textbook handy for reference, Lynn Bloom and Edward White's Inquiry: A Cross-Curricular Reader. You, too, might find my students' punctuations "interesting."

Begging what I call "regulatory" que