I have three micro fictions forthcoming in the fascinating, lively Hooghly Review and expected in January: ‘Birdcall’; ‘Martha and Jonathan’; and ‘Please list the sensations in order of their occurrence’. Martha and Jonathan had previously been rejected nine times, so I’m relieved they’ve found a home.
I’d really like to get away from this theme, but the examples keep finding me. On reflection it’s mostly the plaudits on the covers of books which contain sloppy writing, that annoys me to the point of complaint. It’s also, of course, a way of warning myself to keep being attentive and particular in my own writing.
This example is from Whereabouts by Jhumpa Lahiri, in her own translation. The narrator’s ageing frail mother, apparently not far from ‘dramatic decline’, delivers a speech of some 18 sentences, covering almost a full page (p138-139). We are told that the mother delivers this speech ‘all in one breath’. I tried reading it aloud and managed six and a half sentences. Perhaps the publisher’s editor has greater lung capacity.
This example doesn’t particularly offend, it’s just funny (and, yes, laughably sloppy). The author has little excuse, having also been the translator. And is it unfair to ask if the editor actually read the work? I begin to wonder, is being able to read a pre-requisite for becoming an editor?
Previously:
In decades gone by, I used to give presentations on the societal implications of the emerging information technologies. One of the points I made occasionally was that the most impactful technology that humans ever invented was the alphabet. The effect of making this observation was typically silent scepticism, at least among the tech-besotted, but at least some people pondered the point. The alphabet is a technology, because it can be used to make other things, and on its own it's pretty much useless: and the ramifications of those other things has been in all respects transformative across civilisations. And I’ve just come across an observation that augments the point — everything is written about:
“There are few events which don’t leave a written trace at least. At one time or another, almost everything passes through a sheet of paper, the page of a notebook, or of a diary, or some other chance support… on which, at varying speeds and by a different technique depending on the place, time and mood, one or another of the miscellaneous elements that comprise the everydayness of life comes to be inscribed” (Georges Perec, Species of spaces, trans John Sturrock, 1974 (1997), p12).