November 16th, 2010

This post is full of friends

1) Washington, DC, at least as hosted by the wonderous Fred is delightful.
2) AMT (also wonderous) pointed out that the link to Oberon’s site (which you might want to click on for various reasons, including investigating Best Canadian Stories 10) was broken. But now it isn’t.
3) The new New Quarterly is now out and about, with some very interesting portraits (including one of me), stories (including one by Jessica Westhead) and essays (including one by Kerry Clare).

Hooray!

November 11th, 2010

Why not feel good?

I’ve been reading various angry-making things in the newspaper–always a mistake to read the newspaper–and I had considered a long ranty post. But really, I’m about to jet off on a mini-vacation and the weather’s nice, and I’m not really in the mood to rant. So I offer this instead:

Yesterday I got on my bus at the end of the day and zoomed straight to the back, as I always do (because if I’m going to have to stand, I want to be knocked into by as few people as possible). When I got back there, I realized there were a couple seats technically free, but one was occupied by a big tough guy’s sweat-panted spread thigh, and the other by a tough teenaged boy’s backpack. I tried to catch either guy’s eye, both turned away, and I thought I wasn’t going to get into it. I reached for the pole as the bus started.

Another tough teen looked up in alarm. “There’s seats, there and there!” He pointed helpfully. The two-seat stealers shifted nervously.

“It’s ok, I don’t want to…”

Tough teen #2 leaped up as if electrocuted. “You can sit here! Sit here!” And then he went across the aisle to the big guy, shoved his knee aside and sat down.

My hero!

And in case you are not already cheered up, let me introduce you to Josey Kitten, my parents’ new roommate:

Yes, that is my toe–nothing if not a master of photographic composition, me. Josey’s in charge while I’m away.

November 10th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews the Giller Prize show

I have not watched an awards ceremony on tv since…whenever the first time Steve Martin hosted the Oscars (ah, 2001! thanks, wikipedia). I thought it would be fun because I like Steve Martin, but I hadn’t seen any of the films, got bored almost immediately and gave up. As a child, I liked watching the Tonys, but only for the musical numbers.

Historically, I’ve taken little interest in the Giller Prize, for similar reasons—I had rarely read any of the books, no musical numbers, not even Steve Martin. But this year a number of authors I admire—and books I love—appeared on the list, and it suddenly had something to do with me.

I have to say, good as the nominees are, I have not found following the Giller run-up especially rewarding. I liked seeing This Cake Is For the Party flash randomly on the tv while I ran on the treadmill at my gym, and Steven Beattie’s five reviews are always interesting, but the Giller pledge? A seemingly drunken conversation in the Globe about how everyone under 40 is an idiot? I think a lot of stuff went on on tv, which I don’t have except randomly at the gym, which might have been more entertaining.

But I did want to watch the ceremony, so Mark (cableless) found us a home containing the three necessary elements—a functioning tv, cable, and a resident who didn’t mind watching the ceremony.

I gotta say, the CTV/Bravo folks (I didn’t know they were the same until this event) worked really hard. The show was exactly one hour, unlike the long rambling Oscars. Of course, it helps that they had only one award to give away. Mark and I briefly fantasized that perhaps there would be equivalents of the Oscars’ sound and lighting awards—stuff for book design and editorial work—but of course there wasn’t. Maybe next year.

The host—a Michael J. Fox-ish news anchor who was very charming but who made such intense constant eye contact with the camera his pupils seemed dialated—kept things moving at a good clip. Each book was introduced by a famous person who I had never seen in the flesh before, so I kept exclaiming “That’s what Anne Murray/Barbara Amiel Black/Jim Cuddy looks like?” The famous folks were non-literary except for one past winner, but all did admirable teleprompted jobs describing plot and character. Then there was a mini-movie about each author, showing them strolling around town with their partners and kids and talking about writing. Intercut with that was interviews with the judges, who described what was awesome about the book.

I’m not sure if I should admit this, but I really liked the personal stuff. Most of it had nothing to do with the books, but it was all very sweet and interesting. One relevant bit I especially liked how David Bergen’s university-student son described how he tried to challenge his dad with his philosophical readings, and that had ended up in the book. Some of it—especially the shots of each writer writing—was lame-o, but on the whole pretty tasteful.

After the little movie, the author was called to the stage. I was confused by this—were they going to give a reading?—but no, they were just given little leatherbound books with the Giller rose on them (what were they?), embraced by the presenter, and sent back to their seats. I guess it was a chance to show off their party cloths (wow, everyone looked good—how does a writer know where to buy and how to wear an evening gown? Does the Giller committee have people to help with that?)

I was surprised that there was so much talk about the books, but no readings. I had thought that’s what the authors were going up there for, or perhaps the presenters would do it, but no. Surely the books are the point of it all, and these talented folks’ actual prose would be much more interesting than the back-flap-chat summaries offered instead. I wonder why no readings…? Especially when so much time was lavished before and after commercials on showing the authors standing against a white screen, answering weird questions very badly. Almost all the clips involved them saying the questions were hard or impossible to answer, and that’s what was kept *in*. I wonder what they cut??

In truth, it wasn’t a very literary evening, even though the host kept exhorting viewers—with increasing anxiety, I felt—to read the books. It was really a sales-y style they used, mentioning the Giller effect and actually showing percentages of how much sales of past winners had increased with the win. I’m not sure what the point of that was, but if I was Linden McIntyre, I’d resent being called Mr. 710%, as he was last night. Isn’t it “The books sold so much because they’re awesome” not “The books are awesome because they sold so much”—right?

Those of us in the peanut gallery fell into decidedly non-literary behaviour, exclaiming over people’s clothing and what might be wrong with Barbara Amiel Black’s head (our hostess explained probably Botox). And then Johanna Skibsrud won, which I think was a big surprise to most, but a pleasant one. She was emotional, but still managed to give a good, clear, not-too-long speech. It was really worth the price of admission (well, we paid in Pirate cookies, but even more than that) to see Skibsrud’s sister crying with delight in the audience. That was lovely.

It was a pleasant evening and I’m glad I watched, though I don’t know that I’ll be in a desperate hurry to do so again. The emphasis on promoting Canadian authors in this show was a bit skewed—they’re only promoting five books. And the Giller pledge doesn’t make much sense and offends me in a way I can’t quite put a finger on—why do we have to promise? Can’t we put the books down if we get bored? And yes, I do think everyone should buy lots of Canadian books to keep our publishing industry going, but there was so much sales talk on this show, completely ignoring how much many people depend on the libraries systems, borrowing from friends, etc., and how that’s pretty good for the industry in its own way.

But then again, I don’t even know how to put on an evening dress, so I can’t really say.

November 8th, 2010

Just in case everything sucks…

…Ash Koley videos. I don’t know why there’s two for the same song, but they’re both charming and depending on the sort of day you’re having, you might need’em (the first is my fave).

This one is sad, but it’s got streetcars in it, and it always warms my heart to see TO on the screen. Can you id the street for me, please?

Hope this

November 5th, 2010

A Matter of Influence

Earlier this week, I did a short talk and Q&A with a short story class that’s studying some pieces from Once. The theme I was asked to discuss was influence–what short stories and short-story writers had I learned from, and what, and how much. Well, I extrapolated those questions from the theme given; I think I got it more or less right.

There are so many writers I tried to learn from…ok, imitate…when I was younger. Ok, and I still do. I have never ever been called out on any of this rampant imitation, and here’s why: my mimicry is not good enough to remind any of the writing that I’m supposed to be mimicking. I’m not that good–it takes talent to make your voice sound like someone else’s, a weird and specific talent that few possess.

This is why the old teenage justification–“I don’t want to read other people, because it’ll influence me and my work will be derivative”–is so hilarious. Yeah, you read too much Sylvia Plath or JD Salinger, and you are in *real* danger of sounding exactly like that genius person. That’s the problem.

I don’t think I’ve ever succeeded in sounding like much of anyone except myself. But the writers that I choose to mimic–and thus to read closely and repeatedly and with care–teach me things in small and subtle ways, and point me in directions I never good have found all on my untutored own. I am a firm believer that imitation is a perfectly excellent way to begin; the places where we first hear are own voices in our work are the places where we’ve utterly failed to sound like someone else.

The influencer I chose to talk about with the students is Leon Rooke, and the stories we took up were Leon’s A Bolt of White Cloth, probably one of my favourite stories ever (it’s a long list of faves), and a story of my own that Leon pushed me (both figurively, by inspiring me with his own work, and literally, by tapping my arm and saying, “Hey, this is what you should write!”), “Linh Lai” (sorry, it’s not online).

What’s funny is that I started the talk with the same basic material on “influence” as above, talked about and read from “Bolt,” then talked about and read from “Linh,” then asked if they could see a connection. Partly, I think the students were nervous to have a stranger teaching them (they loosened up later and the Q&A was really fun) but also, the connection is not obvious.

My writing is not very Rookian, more’s the pity. I don’t have that swing to my prose, usually, and Leon’s background and experiences take him to places I can’t go. But *I* feel the connection, and know how much I learned about quotidan magic and wet-laundry romance from Leon, not to mention how to set a scene with just a glimpse of the sky. Just because my imitation is a 99% failure, doesn’t mean that that 1% isn’t in there, beating for all it’s worth.

This is *not* to say that I take my story as a failed story (I love that one, and all my published stories, actually; modesty ought to have forbid me saying that but oh well!)–just that the imitation didn’t work. But nor should it. We already have one human who can write like Leon Rooke, and he carries the mantel admirably. I am happy to just write like me, which is of course the sum everything I’ve known and seen, and everyone I’ve learned from.

November 2nd, 2010

My favourite condiments (numbered list)

So Stuart at Create Me This has created me the ability to make properly formatted lists on Rose-coloured. I am celebrating this gift by making a list of my favourite condiments, which I realize some will say is a truly inane thing to do.

Fair ’nuff. But I think about condiments all the time, and like them far more than most foods they go on. I even have theories of condimentality, and I’m dying to share, and the list is such a handy format (I’ve learned from the list-making greats, after all).

First thing you will notice: this list does not contain ketchup, a condiment that I do respect very much for it’s endurance and cheerful colour and ability to get an enormous amount of sugar into a non-dessert food. However, I don’t put it in the top ten due to lack of versitility–I can put ketchup on hot dogs, hamburgers, fries and, in certain moods, eggs. That’s it. Ketchup on chicken or fish just sounds disgusting to me, and on a melted cheese product=beyond abhorrent (I have a gooey-on-gooey horror–melted cheese *is* the condiment). Also, ketchup can’t be in my condiment hall of fame because I have never had any desire to eat it unaccompanied (unlike the items listed below, which all pass the spoon test). So ketchup loses points, and I guess I am slightly more mature than we thought. Who knew?

Onward!

1. Hoisin sauce just got even better in my eyes because when I went to that Wikipedia article linked above, i found out it contains sweet potatoes, another one of my favourite (non-condiment) foods. It tastes like a sweet, sticky soy sauce and goes well on basically anything Asian or just plain meat and vegetables. Or a spoon.
2. Everyone knows what soy sauce is, but that doesn’t stop it from being awesome. It is like liquid salt, but with a dilute and slightly smokey taste. It is also one of the few condiments that can be accessorized well with another–delicious delicious wasabi paste can blend into soy sauce, disappearing while making it delightfully spicy.
3. Balsamic vinegar is dark and sweet, yet tangy and definitely vinegar–some of the fruity vinegars have a lot of sugar in them and taste a bit like Koolaid, but balsamic is the real deal. Delicious on sliced tomatoes or any kind of salad, especially green bean, plus on all kinds of unexpected foods like perogies and bread (as a provincial kid, I was thrilled when a waiter in an Italian restaurant suggested we put oil and vinegar on our plates and dip our bread into it–I skipped the oil).
4. I’m a little torn about peanut butter, because in some contexts it’s actually a food, not a condiment–ie., in a peanut butter and jam sandwich, the peanut butter is clearly the dress and jam’s the accessory, but in ants on a log, it’s the peanut butter that accessorizes (if you make ants on a log with Cheez Whiz I can’t talk to you). In all honestly, I like my peanut butter unadulterated–on a spoon or maybe licked off a cracker. Sorry, was that too much info? Anyway, I find it safer not the keep peanut butter in the house except for special occasions–it’s kind of protein heroin.
5. Swiss Chalet sauce doesn’t sound like a multi-use condiment, but it is. You can pretty much put it on everything available at Swiss Chalet except the desserts and salads–in fact, I’ve tried it on the occasional radish and it’s not bad. I’ve never had Swiss Chalet sauce outside of the restaurant, but I imagine it would go nicely on most meats and potatoes, plus steamed or boiled vegetables. I know, there’s such a thing as powdered Swiss Chalet sauce that I could buy at the grocery store, but it scares me–what if it’s not as good?
6. Barbeque sauce is the bomb! I like it on everything–makes a good salad dressing in a pinch. My dad makes a really good one, but if he’s not available, most of the bottled sauces in the store are just fine. Not for the *Fast Food Nation* faint of heart, but I actually really like the McNugget BBQ sauce. Even better is to eat some of the BBQ sauce, then once there’s space in the little tub, pour in a bit of the McNugget sweet-n-sour sauce. You can stir it with a fry!
7. Honey mustard also makes a good emergency salad dressing. For a mad condiment lover, I don’t really like most salad dressings–they are too greasy for me. Even the totally fake non-oil dressings are starting to squick me a bit, and in the sugar versus fat contest, I MUCH prefer sugar. Honey mustard has a nice little hit of sugar, while still being slightly spicy. Mix it with a little soy and some sriracha sauce (not on this list because it’s too spicy to pass the spoon test) and you have yourself an awesome stir-fry sauce! Also, by far my favourite condiment option at Subway.
8. Marinara sauce is not strictly a condiment–if you have it on pasta I guess it’s sort of part of the meal. But if you have it in a little plastic cup for dipping pizza crust or bread sticks or vegetables (I’m an extrapolator), it’s definitely a condiment, and a delightful one. Just watch out for chain pizzerias that dump a lot of sugar in their marinara, I think in an effort to remind children of ketchup. Marinara should be savoury, and a little spicy! That is all.
9. Frosting. Obiviously.

October 30th, 2010

Rose-coloured reviews *It’s Kind of a Funny Story* and *Frownland*

I saw It’s Kind of a Funny Story because it looked like the kind of zany, not-very-bright Hollywood comedy that I usually like in spite of myself, and it is–but this one uses as it’s backdrop not high-school back-stabbing or the single-girl blues, but a psychiatric ward at a big-city hospital. Despite some fun gags and the presence of the genuinely talented Zach Galifianakis, I just couldn’t stop thinking that this movie is so blithely politically incorrect, so completely irresponsible in it’s treatment of real problems, that I could not feel good about laughing (and I did totally laugh).

But maybe I’m a bit too PC (it’s been suggested) because this movie’s been getting fairly good reviews, many of which seem unconcerned with this depiction of a smart, priviledged white teenager feeling stressed about school and girls, checking himself to Brooklyn hospital because no one seems properly impressed with his problems. I exaggerate–Craig the protagonist is genuinely worried about his suicidal dreams, but I don’t know why the admitting physician in a Brooklyn emergency room would credit this. And I’m sorry, I know I’m lame about these logistical details, but hospital admission for an entire week in the US costs a fortune–where was this boy’s health insurance paperwork?? Did he just happen to have it on him?

The details that bug me about his life inside the hospital are more serious–there is a clearly two-tiered system of mental illness in the screenwriters’ minds. There are attractive, fun, nice people like Craig and the girl he falls in love with, Noelle, who maybe have a few problems and feel blue once in a while. Noelle self-harms, to the point of having long claw-marks down her her face, but we never learn anything about her background or problems and her performance is typical pretty-girl high school, and could be taking place at a beach instead of psychiatric hospital. By the end of the film she’s “better” and being released, apparently on charm alone.

On the other hand, the rest of the patients in the ward are the lower tier–not attractive and almost impossible to interact with, tagged by amusing tales of drug overdose and paranoid delusions, unlikely to get any better. So what is the point of them? Well, the attractive people can *learn* from them, you see–and realize they are lucky. So useful, those unattractive crazy people!

Zach Galifianakis does the only interesting acting in the film, poised as his character is between the two categories–he’s funny and likeable and loves to interact with Craig (bonus points for loving the protagonist) but he has real problems and has made genuine (we hear) attempts at suicide. We don’t really learn too much about his actual life, but Galifianakis is enough of an actor to let a history of hardship show in his face and voice. He is the only character in the entire hospital ward who appears to actually be suffering.

I probably wouldn’t have judged this film quite so harshly if I hadn’t seen it in such close proximity to a vastly different work that deals with the same themes, Ronald Bronstein’s Frownland. I tried to watch this meandering nightmare of a film the night before the other one. Having read various reviews that compared the movie to an unceasing panic attack, I had fortified myself with a supportive viewing companion and delicious snacks to get through it.

This was exactly the wrong way to go about it–in a warm happy environment, protagonist Keith’s struggle to exist is so insane and depressing and alien that the film was utterly unwatchable. In the first 20 minutes, he is disturbed from watching a monster movie by the sound of the door buzzer. When he answers, the only sound on the speaker is hysterical sobbing. He says “I’ll be right down.” Downstairs, he sits in a car, watching this woman sob more. Then they drive around for a while, her at the wheel, tears mainly under control. Meanwhile, Keith is twitching and squirming violently, trying to work up to saying something. It emerges he has a bad stammer–it takes him perhaps 120 seconds to make it clear that when he was a child, he never cried much. When he finally gets it out, she parks the car and goes into a store.

Waiting for her, Keith holds his eyes open and emits a groaning noise–eventually, it’s clear he’s trying to imitate tears. When the woman returns to the car, he shows her his wet, red eyes and she, incredulous, begins to sob all over again. There have only been two lines of dialogue so far.

We turned it off after not too much longer, but the night after *It’s Kind of a Funny Story,* I was ready to try again. This time, I did it right–alone, in the dark, in the fetal position on my couch, with nothing to distract or comfort me. The DVD has no chapters, so I had to essentially start back at the beginning (my fast forward doesn’t seem to work too well) and live through the whole 106 minutes of Keith’s tragic madness–mad tragedy?

At least there is more narrative and dialogue after that first sequence–we learn that Keith sells coupon booklets door-to-door in ritzy suburbs where homeowners’ associations are always trying to chase him and his colleagues away. For a while it seems that Keith simply lives alone in a kitchen (the oven door opens to make a bedside table) but it emerges that there is another actual room in the apartment, inhabited by his viciously mean roommate, who humiliates him at every opportunity.

But the roommate’s anti-Keith diatribes are a little funny, or at least resonant, because Keith is utterly repellant. The struggle for speech is so intense that he is constantly grimacing and grunting and repeating himself. But he demands attention–he feels entitled to it, and he won’t shut up even when he can’t really speak. His boss–who drives the coupon team around in an industrial van–is about as mean as the roommate, but Keith persists in trying to apologize to him for some unknown offense, despite the boss’s complete lack of interest and then aggressive contempt. Over and over, Keith says, “I’m sorry, you’re totally right,” to no particular end. When a woman refuses to buy his coupons, he tells her how his father died. I lost a lot of the content in the garblings of Keith’s speech, but the content was not the point anyway–he just wanted to be heard.

To me, the saddest scenes are with Sandy, Keith’s one “friend.” It’s not really clear how true a term that is for their relationship, but before the movie starts, they had spend an evening at Sandy’s pleasant quiet apartment, talking. Keith leaves a dozen messages thanking him for that, which Sandy does not answer until Keith calls at 3 am, insisting he left his work badge there. Sandy says he would have seen it, but Keith asks him to look in a series of unlikely places, until Sandy finds it under a book–clearly Keith has hidden it there for the excuse to return, like a woman dropping an earring in a man’s apartment.

Keith’s interest in Sandy is not sexual; he just wants to be near another human being who doesn’t hate him (he falls asleep soon after he arrives). But Keith is so far out from social norms, so weird and needy and constantly desperate, that he is extremely hate-able. The only calm, coherent conversation in the entire film is with his psychiatrist, and even that only barely. What’s interesting about that dialogue is that it’s completely irrelevant to Keith’s problems–earning a living, keeping his apartment, protecting himself from violence. To ignore all this and talk about a strange (and funny) incident from his childhood seems a strong joke against modern psychiatry, especially in the warm’n’fuzzy cure-all version of films like *Funny Story.* But then again, take note: Keith is having the time of his life on that couch. He has an unencumbered audience, and that’s all he really wants.

In the end, the job, the apartment, and the relationship with the woman from the beginning of the film–who turns out to be a high school student–all fall apart, and even the borderline functionality Keith had been maintaining crumbles. He turns to Sandy, but so great is Keith’s hysteria and his grief that it feels he has turned *on* Sandy–shrieking into the apartment intercom that if Sandy doesn’t let him in he will kick and scream at his door doesn’t feel much like friendship, but Keith is beyond all reason. As it must, this search for comfort eventually turns stupidly violent.

I never did figure out what was wrong with Keith–another reason the scene on the psychiatrist couch was farcical. Aside from the crippling speech impediment, it seemed almost as though he suffered from a disease of metaphor–he kept trying to explain his problems using a code of images no one could crack. His last interaction with Sandy featured a repeated shouted story–fractured beyond my comprehension–about an old woman with black teeth. Having watched the earlier scenes, I knew this must have something to do with Keith’s violent evil roommate, but Sandy hadn’t been watching the movie and didn’t know even that–it just sounded like mad ranting.

Films like *Funny Story* want to draw a firm thick line in the sand between the real crazies and the film-ticket-buying public. *Frownland*, though it’s protagonist is terrifyingly weird, never draws that line. I loathed Keith, but sometimes, when I could understand him, I knew exactly what he meant. That is *Frownland*’s genius and it’s horror–that it gets the viewer (well, this viewer) to empathize with Keith’s loneliness and his desire to explain himself in complicated metaphors, to somehow get the details of his soul known by another human. The scary thing about Keith is not that he is so alien, but that he is so relateable. It made me feel that that line between sane and insane wasn’t thick or clear at all.

After watching *Funny Story*, I went out for dinner and joked around with my brother; after watching *Frownland*, I lay in bed sweating and stiff as a board and thought about how lucky I am to have people in my life who care about me, as well as (most of the time) a reasonable articulateness. Watching *Frownland* was a ghastly experience that I can’t really recommend to anyone, but it is a work of emotional art and I will never forget it.

October 29th, 2010

Forthcomings

Sometimes things seem so far away they are beyond “Next” and so I don’t put them on the “Now and Next” list. But now has a way of becoming next and time is flying! So in a blink, the CD version of Earlit Shorts 4 is now available from Rattling Books. It includes the work of many fine writers, plus my two stories, “Christmas with My Mother” and “The Weatherboy.”

In the interests of preventing this from happening again, I’ll let you know that my short story “Sweet” (originally in Canadian Notes and Queries will soon be reprinted in Best Canadian Stories 10 from Oberon Press.

And finally my story “Dream Big,” the one that sparked the whole book, will be published this winter on Prairie Fire

That brings us firmly into the future, I think–anything I’ve forgotten, I guess we’ll know it when it happens!

October 28th, 2010

Grammar ranting (no, not again!)

Note 1: This post has been edited because, ironically, part of it wasn’t very clear the first time out.
Note 2: I’m not really that obnoxious in restaurants.

I could be accused of ranting about spelling and grammar in this space–I have no choice but to hang my head in shame. I’ve been making resolutions to stop it, to accept that language is fluid and evolving (well, I’m trying, AMT>) but every time I read certain things, I want to get back into the grammar ranting game.

On the weekend, I was thinking about about what sort of post I could write that would, a) help people care to some grammar rules and b) not come off as pretentious and bitchy. And then last night I had this magical dream (did you just stop reading this post? probably). I was eating a nice Italian restaurant called Lemon House (not real, but should be!) and having a really hard time deciding on what to eat. The waiter came over and we spent a long time discussing what I might like. For some reason, once I decided, I asked him, “What is a waiter’s job?” And he responded, “A waiter is your advocate in the kitchen.” (for the record, I got some fancy pizza that was excellent).

When I woke up, I knew the dream was about editors. Editors are readers’ advocate with the writers–they try to get good stories for readers the same way waiters try to get good food for hungry people. Really good editors take what the writer *wants* to say, and tries to help the reader understand–by removing excess words, replacing ambiguous phrases, tightening structure, and correcting errors. Editors also word towards “felicity”–work that sounds good and pleasing to the ear. But the definition of “felicity” is best left to the debate between the writers and eds themselves.

My point is, most editorial work is not about telling writers they are “wrong,” but helping writers get their ideas to readers in a way that will be understood and appreciated by the most people possible.

Which is why certain language “mistakes” can probably allowed to stand–though it kills me, spelling “all right” as “alright” probably confuses no one. Other sorts of error, though, I’m going to keep right on ranting about, because no matter how common they get, they still impede meaning.

Like what, Rebecca? is what I know you are asking.

Like using the posessive pronoun to modify a singular noun when a plural is meant. I don’t even know why people do this–typing that “s” is not that exhausting. It’s sadly common, and the results can be really baffling. Like this:

“I can’t stand that hipster couple. They both always park their car right over the sidewalk.”

So–was that hipster couple sharing a car, and whoever is driving it consistently parked over the sidewalk? Then the sentence above is correct. However, if a very common error has been made, there were two cars–each individually parked over the sidewalk by one person each (I think this is where the erroneous idea takes hold) but definitely plural in the sentence above.

In this particular case, you could eventually say “who cares? People are so mean to hipsters” unless you are a bi-law officer, in which case you could go look at the sidewalk and count the cars. But my point (eh?) is that if 10 pages later, the two hipsters have a head-on collision with each other, the reader has been prevented from making a clear picture in her head, and worse, drawn out of whatever the writer wants her to think about (evil hipsters) to wonder, “I thought they had only one car?” which in fact the number of cars shouldn’t matter at all.

This is a very small issue, but it’s only small when you make yourself perfectly clear, so the reader doesn’t think of herself as reading grammar, just a story.

Thank you, magic dream waiter.

October 21st, 2010

Julie Wilson on Richard Ford and Eleanor Wachtel

I’m having a “This file is corrupt *too*??” sort of day and no real time to spare, but no matter, because Julie Wilson can describe what I did last night quite beautifully–no need of additions from me.

So, anyway, back to the files.