“In fiction, men often die as a result of their own actions; they have character flaws that lead to their own downfall. Women, on the other hand, are victims of random violence, of cancer, of someone else’s bad choices. The fact that so few of these stories actually center on the journey of the female character only further highlights their function as a plot device—as little more than a piece of simpering scenery.”
A new book responds to our modern anxieties about language by explaining calmly but firmly how our rules came to be.
“There are two extreme views about punctuation,” he writes, “the first is that you dont actually need it because its perfectly possible to write down what you want to say without any punctuation marks or capital letters and people can still read it youdontevenneedspacesbetweenwordsreally.” The second view is that punctuation is essential, not only to avoid ambiguity but also because it “shows our identity as educated people.” Crystal walks the reader through the history of punctuation, from scriptura continua—that is, words written without spaces between them—to the more punctuated present. In Old English manuscripts, punctuation is idiosyncratic; to denote word divisions, writers tried a variety of strategies: dots, spaces, “camel case” (that is, using capital letters rather than spaces ToMarkTheBeginningsOfNewWords). Then the rise of printing created the demand for a standardized system.
"I like limber, lasting, fierce words. I like them applied to myself — and I like them in newspapers, courts, debates, Congress.” Walt Whitman, is as per usual, totally on point. I, too, like limber, lasting, fierce words. It’s also a brilliant reminder that, when we’re all sitting around bemoaning the state of modern English, this shit is nothing new. We’ve been bastardizing the heck out of English since we got here. Let’s keep it going.
“Anyway, I was researching cockney slang when I came across “thieves cant,” a language of thieves that has this truly incredible Wikipedia entry: “It was claimed by Samuel Rid that thieves’ cant was devised around 1530 ‘to the end that their cozenings, knaveries and villainies might not so easily be perceived and known’, by Cock Lorel and the King of the Gypsies at The Devils Arse, a cave in Derbyshire.” Sadly, Wikipedia goes on to inform me that, while thieves cant most likely “originated in this period, the story is almost certainly a myth.” Bummer, right? But at least we got to read about the fantastically named Cock Lorel and his cozenings and knaveries and villainies (lions and tigers and bears, oh my!).
“As it turns out, English isn’t the only language with a thieves cant. The Germans had Rotwelsch, which pulls in words from Yiddish and Romany languages to create a verbal hodgepodge. But it’s also a highly literal language without abstractions, so instead of calling winter by an arbitrary name, it’s called “Blibberling,” which is the word for “shivering.” (Also, how great is it that both shivering and blibberling feel incredibly onomatopoeic? Just imagine trying to stammer out blibberling between chattering teeth.) Similar, criminals in Yugoslavia once spoke in Šatrovački to hide their knaveries. Šatrovački seems a little like a Slavic pig-latin, in which words are distorted by changing around the order of the syllables. (For example: trava—grass, often used for marijuana—becomes vutra instead of vatra, meaning fire and pivo—beer—becomes vopi.)
“It’s amazing how, while these languages were created for mendacious purposes, they’re still so damn beautiful...”
Nancy Drew, an attractive girl of eighteen was driving home along a country road in her new, dark-blue convertible. She had just delivered some legal papers for her father. Her father, Carson Drew, a well-known lawyer in their home town of River Heights, frequently discussed puzzling aspects of cases with his blond, blue-eyed daughter.
Are you ready for Halloween? Check out Electric Literature’s infographic of literary monsters. Pair with our essays on reading House of Leaves on Halloween and long hallways in horror films to get in the spirit.
Hey, look up!
Don't make a shadow of yourself,
Always shutting out the light.
Caught in your own creation.
Look up, look up!
It tore you open
And oh, how much!
'Cause there's a hole where your heart lies
And I can see it with my third eye.
And oh my touch, it magnifies
You pull away, you don't know why...
That original lifeline,
Original lifeline...
Hey, look up!
You don't have to be a ghost,
Here amongst the living.
You are flesh and blood!
And you deserve to be loved and you deserve what you are given.
And oh, how much!
'Cause your pain is a tribute
The only thing you let hold you
Wear it now like a mantle
Always there to remind you
I am the same, I'm the same,
I'm trying to change...
The long read: The world is full of needless suffering. How should each of us respond? Live as moral a life as possible – even giving away most of our earnings? A new movement argues that we are not doing enough to help those in need
“Ambivalence towards do-gooders also arises out of a deep uncertainty about how a person ought to live. Is it good to try to live as moral a life as possible – a saintly life? Or does a life like that lack some crucial human quality? Is it right to care for strangers at the expense of your own people? Is it good to bind yourself to a severe morality that constricts spontaneity and freedom? Is it possible for a person to hold himself to unforgiving standards without becoming unforgiving? Is it presumptuous, even blasphemous, for a person to imagine that he can transfigure the world – or to believe that what he does in his life really matters when he is only a tiny, flickering speck in a vast universe? There are powerful forces that push against do-gooders that are among the most fundamental, vital and honourable urges of human life.
“For instance: there is family and there are strangers. The do-gooder has a family, like anyone else. If he does not have children, he has parents. But he holds himself to moral commitments that are so stringent and inflexible that they will at some point conflict with his caring for his family. Then he has to decide what to do. To most people, it is obvious that they owe far more to family than to strangers; caring for the children of strangers as much as your own, say, would seem not so much difficult as unnatural, even monstrous. But the do-gooder does not believe his family deserves better than anyone else’s. He loves his more, but he knows that other people love their families just as much. To a do-gooder, taking care of family can seem like a kind of moral alibi – something that may look like selflessness, but is really just an extension of taking care of yourself.
“There is one circumstance in which the extremity of do-gooders looks normal, and that is war. In wartime – or in a crisis so devastating that it resembles war, such as an earthquake or a hurricane – duty expands far beyond its peacetime boundaries. In wartime, it is thought dutiful rather than unnatural to leave your family for the sake of a cause. In ordinary times, to ask a person to sacrifice his life for a stranger seems outrageous, but in war it is commonplace. Acts that seem appallingly bad or appallingly good in normal circumstances become part of daily life. This is the difference between do-gooders and ordinary people: for do-gooders, it is always wartime. They always feel themselves responsible for strangers; they know that there are always those as urgently in need as the victims of battle, and they consider themselves conscripted by duty.
“What would the world be like if everyone thought like a do-gooder? What if everyone believed that his family was no more important or valuable than anyone else’s? What if everyone decided that spontaneity or self-expression or certain kinds of beauty or certain kinds of freedom were less vital, or less urgent, than relieving other people’s pain? An extreme sense of duty seems to many people to be a kind of disease – a masochistic need for self-punishment, perhaps, or a kind of depression that makes its sufferer feel unworthy of pleasure. Surely those who suffer from a disease like that must live dark, narrow lives, forcing themselves always to think about the misery of others and to endure misery themselves.
“In fact, some do-gooders are happy, some are not. The happy ones are happy for the same reasons anyone is happy – love, work, purpose. It is do-gooders’ unhappiness that is different – a reaction not only to humiliation and lack of love and the other usual stuff, but also to knowing that the world is filled with misery, and that most people do not really notice or care, and that, try as they might, they cannot do much about either of those things. What do-gooders lack is not happiness but innocence. They lack that happy blindness that allows most people, most of the time, to shut their minds to what is unbearable. Do-gooders have forced themselves to know, and keep on knowing, that everything they do affects other people, and that sometimes (though not always) their joy is purchased with other people’s joy. And, remembering that, they open themselves to a sense of unlimited, crushing responsibility.”
Photo: Darwin Bell Life is an onion—you peel it year by year and sometimes cry. ―Carl SandburgHere’s a practical writing tip: if you’re stuck, write “Once upon a time.” Go on, try it—I think you’ll find that even the action is soothing. It’s not just that now you have something on the page, although you do. The... Read More »
“Here’s a practical writing tip: if you’re stuck, write “Once upon a time.” Go on, try it—I think you’ll find that even the action is soothing. It’s not just that now you have something on the page, although you do. The words themselves are calming.
“Where did I encounter this piece of advice? I don’t want to rob anyone of credit, but misattribution would be bad, too. I think it was in the cookbook The Splendid Table’s How to Eat Supper, but I can’t swear to it. Anyway, in this book, one of the authors relates a time-honored tip passed down from her grandmother: if you don’t know what to make for dinner, just cut up an onion and put it on to cook. The action, the aroma, the fact that an onion is the basis for so many dishes—these factors will conspire to prompt a plan. And if nothing else, you’ll enjoy the savory smell of industry.
“This is good advice, and with a bit of adaptation it can apply to many things in life. Any sort of improvisation must arise from a basic technique. And just as important, the advice understands that there’s nothing more intimidating than a pristine kitchen, a blank canvas, an empty screen. (The blink of a cursor can become downright insolent, when you’re in the wrong mood.)...”
“In the Slate piece, Bennett quotes Jia Tolentino, the features editor at Jezebel, who states this obsession with personal first-person confessionals has created ‘a situation in which writers feel like the best thing they have to offer is the worst thing that ever happened to them’—and I would argue, as many have done in the last few days, that this is particularly true of women writers...
“I’m wondering how much of our cultural memory is doomed by habit to pay more attention to a woman’s autobiography and any of her so-called confessional writings, and to inflate their place in a woman writers’ oeurve, even as we at the same time condemn a woman for such publicly self-indulgent frivolity.”
dailybridgerton
ellievsbear
turnnoffyourmind
blakekathryn
areudirty
yousharknotpass
romaincrisis
