Southern Bookman

Cecelia Watson's ode to the semicolon

Cecelia Watson's "Semicolon: The Past, Present and Future of a Misunderstood Mark" moves from a brief history of the pesky punctuation mark to a call for liberty from restrictive grammar rules.

White and Strunk's "The Elements of Style" probably has crippled more writers than encouraged them. Subverting the tyranny of usage guardians, Watson calls for writing creativity, especially in the application of semicolons.

A professor at Bard College, Watson doesn't support complete anarchy. She believes in an understanding of grammar, without allowing a slavish adherence to stifle writing.

Watson gives examples of excellent writers who have imaginatively used the semicolon beyond its common role of separating two interdependent complete statements. Passages from Shakespeare, Irvine Welsh, Rebecca Solnit and Raymond Chandler illustrate how semicolon flexibility enhances writing.

The punctuation mark, invented by the Italian scholar and printer Aldus Manutius the Elder in 1494, is shown as an essential writing tool.

She doesn't mention Saul Bellow, but I thought of his liberation from language strictures in "The Adventures of Augie March." A look at the novel's celebrated first paragraph reveals how Bellow's semicolons boost his writing.

Watson's small book, with lovely woodcut illustrations, raises enthralling questions about the philosophy of writing. Grammar purists will warn that she's opening the gates to increased language promiscuity, but her own work shows the effectiveness of elegant English.

Her treatise ends by skewering David Foster Wallace's admonition to students to conform to the standard English dialect.

I'm not sure how far she would go in allowing freedom from spelling and grammar rules. I suspect she would oppose complete abandonment of grammatical norms. However, she speaks for the value of speech outside of narrow syntactical channels. Her thorough historical analysis of how those rules developed points to their arbitrariness.

In Watson's viewpoint, semicolon mastery is a hallmark of vivid writing. Those who might think of her book as a dull pedantic exercise will discover a witty, expansive work touching upon history, philosophy, literary criticism and personal reflections. Her footnotes are like jewels in a stream.

All hail the semicolon; Watson seeks to free the funny-looking mark, and writers' thoughts. Already, I'm throwing semicolons around like doubloons from a Mardi Gras float. I don't fear the language police.

 

Alan Bennett in annual diary remembers Jonathan Miller

Noted British playwright Alan Bennett in his latest diary in the London Review of Books pays homage to fellow "Beyond the Fringe" member Jonathan Miller.

For years, Bennett has brightened the new year with his annual chronicle of the previous 12 months, published in the LRB. Bennett's record of his life in 2019 runs in the LRB's Jan. 2 issue.

The polymath Miller, who died Nov. 27, excelled in medicine, the theater and television. He was especially known for his opera productions, and hosting the TV documentary "The Body in Question."

Rising from their college days at Oxford and Cambridge, Miller and Bennett joined Dudley Moore and Peter Cook in the satirical revue "Beyond the Fringe," which eventually played on Broadway.

Along with serene depictions of the London literary world and unhurried life in suburban Yorkshire, Bennett can be cutting in his views. An entry in his 2019 diary gives a chilly assessment of Miller.

"Ours was a not unrivalrous relationship, with neither particularly generous about the other's work," Bennett says. He confesses to never seeing one of Miller's operas, and suspects Miller never watched one of his plays.

Bennett ends on a warmer, regretful note. "Now that he's gone I feel remorse as well as sorrow. But, jokes apart, it was a question of survival. I needed to write. Jonathan needed one to listen."

The diaries increasingly chronicle Bennett's aging. This year's entries often reference Bennett lying on his couch or in bed, suffering from severe arthritis. He also gives an alarming account of a fall on his bicycle, from which he suffered bruises but no broken bones or head injuries.

A disturbing sign of Bennett's looming mortality is that the diary is much shorter this year; he missed several months during the spring and summer because of open-heart surgery.

With all of his suffering, the diary is again a treat of refined thinking, with references to obscure films, actors and British writers. The diaries reflect his cultured life in suburban Yorkshire, where he enjoys gardening, old houses and reading. Bennett's at times fussy writing reveals a disgust with conservative politics, an enjoyment of small town life and an appreciation for small pleasures.

His diaries mirror my own aging, giving me encouragement and comfort. I hope to read Bennett's annual missives for years to come.

Charleston among leaders in innovation jobs growth, report finds

I was surprised to see Charleston listed tenth among American cities that had gained the most "innovation" jobs from 2005 to 2017.

The insular Southern city where the Civil War began with the firing on Fort Sumter joined such heavyweights as No. 1 San Francisco, No. 2 Seattle and No. 3 Silicon Valley on the high-tech jobs rankings compiled by the Brookings Institution, according to The New York Times.

Charleston fell far behind San Francisco, Seattle, Silicon Valley, No. 4 Boston and No. 5 San Diego. Those cities garnered nine out of 10 innovation jobs created in the country during those years, but Charleston's making the top 10 is impressive.

A charming city of old homes, fine restaurants and waterfront vistas is apparently drawing high-tech firms with its easy-going lifestyle. The home of the Daughters of the Confederacy and a towering monument to John C. Calhoun must also have a strong population of well-educated workers. I didn't realize that the College of Charleston and the Citadel were rivals to MIT.

I'm skeptical about such reports, although the Brookings Institution is highly regarded. San Francisco made the top spot, but the Wall Street Journal editorial page frequently chortles that the city by the bay is hemorrhaging jobs because of its high taxes and expensive housing. Other reports agree with the WSJ.

Charles Schwab Co., which might not qualify as an innovation company, recently announced that it will move its headquarters from San Francisco to Dallas.

Dallas was No. 3 for innovation jobs lost, according to the Brookings report. Who knew; I thought Dallas and the rest of Texas is booming.

Washington, which recently was awarded an Amazon headquarters, hit No. 6 on the negative list. Chicago led the lost jobs category, followed by Philadelphia. Los Angeles came in at No. 4. Poor Wichita, Kansas, was No. 5.

Charleston before the Civil War led the nation in the slave trade. Now it beats Los Angeles in gaining innovation jobs.

Farewell, Ernest Gaines

Many writers look back from exile at their origins. Ernest Gaines was different. To tell the stories of the illiterate, impoverished black people he knew growing up in rural Pointe Coupee Parish, he had to return to his native Louisiana.

Gaines, who gained international recognition for his books about his small plot of earth, died in his sleep Tuesday at his childhood home. The revered Louisiana author was 86.

As a child,  he worked in the fields among people a few generations removed from slavery. From his meager schooling, he'd learned to read and write, and composed letters for his co-workers and family members.

Along with many other blacks fleeing the South's racial violence, he moved to California as a young man. For the first time, he found himself free to read in a public library, and discovered Turgenev and other 19th century Russian novelists.

Loving the bohemian life of San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State, then received a prestigious Stegner fellowship to study writing at Stanford. The voices he knew in childhood remained with him.

Struggling in California to finish a book based on the strict, wheelchair-confined aunt who raised him, Gaines returned to Louisiana at the height of the civil rights movement. Back in Louisiana, he gained a clear vision of the plantation life he knew growing up and quickly finished "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman," his breakthrough novel.

Tracing how history echoed in a life of quiet dignity, the book gave the world one of its most enduring characters, a woman raised in slavery who lived to 101 and saw the changes of the 1960s. Cecily Tyson gave a memorable performance as Miss Jane Pittman in a TV movie that won nine Emmy Awards.

Gaines further drew upon his memories of the black community in "A Gathering of Old Men," "A Lesson Before Dying" and other lauded books. He received a MacArthur "genius grant," and traveled the world. He always returned to his childhood home close to a body of water known as False River that had once been part of the Mississippi.

A genial, warm-hearted man who spoke with Louisiana's French-inflected cadences, Gaines revealed how the love of family and community overcame bitterness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As reading declines, Philip Roth's $2 million bequest to Newark Library supports books

Philip Roth in his novels wrote about Jewish life of his youth in Newark. Honoring that heritage, Roth left $2 million to his hometown's public library, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The bequest from Roth's $10 million estate shows his faith in reading and literature. Roth stipulated that the money be used to purchase books, not for capital projects. The gift will be placed in an endowment, and $80,000 a year in interest will go to the library to add to its selection of new books.

Before his death, Roth left his extensive book collection to the library. The books, with Roth's annotations, are housed in a dedicated room open to the public.The library also sponsors special events to honor Roth.

Growing up in a prosperous, middle-class Newark, Roth was dismayed by the city's decline in the 1960s and 1970s. During his youth, he often visited the city's public library, which opened the literary world to him.

Fewer children are discovering that world, according to an alarming report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. National tests showed a 3 percent decline in reading ability among eighth graders and 1 percent falloff among fourth graders. Math tests showed a 1 percent gain for fourth graders and a 1 percent drop for eighth graders.

Struggling students keep falling further behind, while those at the top are regressing, the report found.

The declines reverse significant gains in test results from 1990 to 2015, according to reports. Now, as China and other countries tout educational achievements, American students fall behind

Some commentators blamed the reversals on students' dependence on mobile phones, television and computer screens. Others said more and more parents don't read to their children from an early age. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos predictably called for more "school choice" and tax breaks for private schools rather than spending more on public education.

Like Philip Roth, children deserve the gift of reading.

 

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Farewell, Harold Bloom

Harold Bloom cashed in on middle-class Americans' hunger for literary culture.

The Yale professor and prolific author of best-selling books on Shakespeare and other great Western writers died Monday at age 89 in a New Haven hospital, according to a New York Times front-page obituary.

Like Clifton Fadiman, Mortimer Adler and the Harvard "Great Books" collection, Bloom sought to impart literary knowledge to average readers. While previous workers in the trade published great-book editions for home libraries, Bloom attracted those who wanted literary wisdom without reading the books. Dwight MacDonald called the earnest desire for self-improvement "middle brow."

With his wild hair, hound-dog eyes and portly figure, Bloom was a living academic charicature. Reveling in his resemblance to the comic actor Zero Mostel, Bloom was known for his florid lectures, among Yale's most popular.

A few of Bloom's female students. including author Naomi Wolf, accused him of sexual impropriety, which he denied. Wolf said he placed a hand on her thigh.

From his perch at Yale, Bloom defended the white-male-dominated Western canon, mostly British and American. He issued thunderclaps against ethnic and women writers, whom he disparaged as the "school of resentment."

In one of his controversial books, he found that a woman at King Solomon's court had written the Jewish bible. He also claimed that Shakespeare had "invented the human," or formed the modern consciousness.

Bloom possessed a photographic memory and could recite all of Shakespeare, Romantic poetry, "Paradise Lost" and "The Fairie Queen,"according to the Times. That seems more insane than laudatory.

A literary factory, Bloom also edited a number of critical books on American and British authors, handy tools for English teachers and students.

As a critic, he ruined several writers' reputations, including Robert Lowell's. The poet's standing has rebounded in recent years.

Many who picked up Bloom's books seeking a guide to literature were left mystified. His Yale colleague, the poet John Hollander, criticized Bloom for his unclear writing, according to the Times. Bloom was notorious for using obscure literary terms.

Bloom made his mark with "The Anxiety of Influence," a ground-breaking book that asserted that young writers seek to overthrow their literary forebears through misreading their works. That was a blow against the prevailing New Criticism, which focused on texts without examining their historical and biographical contexts.

Some considered Bloom a charlatan. His unmistakable Bloomian style of bombast and encyclopedic knowledge intimidated many readers who bought his missives. Many undoubtedly were inspired to go on and read the books, using him as a guide. He began a mini-boom in Shakespeare studies issued by other academics, which continues unabated.

He championed the traditional Western book culture as elite schools like Yale instituted programs in gender studies, film, TV and even cartoons. His pronouncements were the dying cries of a a long-established literary hegemony. That his literary elitism produced so many best-sellers is amazing. In the age of Twitter-short attention spans, such success is unlikely to be duplicated.

 

 

 

 

 

Thinking about climate change at a luxury beach resort

I tried to enjoy our visit to a resort on the Atlantic Ocean last weekend.

Before our trip through Georgia to north Florida, a U.N. report said that the world's oceans are endangered by climate change. The oceans have exhausted their capacity to absorb carbon. As the oceans warm, acidity rises, threatening sealife. Melting ice will raise sea levels, eventually flooding the luxury condos and hotels at places like Amelia Island, where we stayed.

Witnessing the Atlantic's majesty gives the illusion that the ocean is invulnerable to human activity. But Islands of plastic foul the Pacific. The Atlantic is warming. Coral reefs and fish are dying.. Already, cities like Miami experience regular flooding. Unable to break my habit of reading a newspaper, I saw something about right whales dying after hurling themselves onto dry land.

Like the other guests, we enjoyed the ocean, the swimming pools, the restaurants, the luxury shops. We walked along the golf course, which requires gallons of water to stay green.

On a cruise to Cumberland Island, we saw dolphins, a shark, ospreys and other birds, and Cumberland's feral horses. The tour guide said wild shrimp flourish. Long polluted, the Amelia River is now clean, and oyster beds have returned.  Nature seemed fine.

Looking at the waves crash against the beach, I couldn't stop thinking about that U.N. report.  The ocean, from where human life emerged, is in serious trouble.

We kept seeing small children, newborn babies and pregnant women. Congratulating a mother with a 4-week-old infant, I realized that the child likely wil live until 2100. If the world doesn't act soon to stop climate change, the baby during her life will experience a far more desolate world than ours.

I did well enjoying the luxury surroundings until I saw sprinklers spraying an abandoned tennis court, which received more water than the surrounding shrubbery. Gallons of water wasted.

Before heading home, we filled up with gasoline. As we reached Atlanta, the gas tank was almost empty. Along with the others hurtling down the highway, we had sent emissions into the atmosphere. A radio talk show said that a country plans zero carbon emissions by 2050. I said to myself, "2050? We don't have that much time."

The 90-degree days march into October.

 

 

Nashville's literary scene more vibrant than Atlanta's

Nashville boasts a better literary scene than Atlanta's.

The recent death of popular novelist Anne Rivers Siddons highlighted that writers often leave Atlanta after launching their careers here. A writer for Atlanta magazine early in her career, Siddons examined Atlanta in her best-selling "Peachtree Road." But she left Atlanta behind and called Charleston home.

The late Pat Conroy returned to Atlanta for a while, but soon left for South Carolina. A couple of years ago, Tayari Jones, author of the acclaimed "An American Marriage," came back to her hometown. But the novelist recently accepted a professor's post at Cornell, according to the university's web site.

Georgia State professor David Bottoms and Emory's Jericho Brown are nationally known poets. But Atlanta was hurt by the departures of poets Natasha Trethewey and Kevin Young.

Nashville receives mega national attention from the presence of acclaimed novelist Ann Patchett, co-owner of the overrated independent bookstore Parnassus. Publication of Patchett's newest novel, "The Dutch House," brought a new burst of features about Patchett and Parnassus, including the obligatory mention of the dog who roams the store.

Accomplished short story writer and novelist Lorrie Moore is the star of Vanderbilt's creative writing faculty. Poet and critic Mark Jarman is a longtime pillar of the school's program.

Though her "our old silver" and Southern mists pieces make me shudder, Nashville-based Margaret Renkl frequently writes for The New York Times op-ed page.

A few miles south of Nashville, Sewanee boasts one of the nation's top summer writers' conferences, directed from the start by nationally regarded poet and critic Wyatt Prunty.

Noted novelist and short story writer Jamie Quarto stands out among the University of the South's faculty. Biographer, presidential historian and TV pundit Jon Meacham, a University of the South alum, lives in Sewanee.

The university also publishes the venerable Sewanee Review, which recently received a long overdue facelift and jolt of new energy from Editor Adam Ross, author of the novel "Mr. Peanut." Bottoms a few years ago established the literary journal Five Points, which publishes nationally known writers. But it lacks the stature of the Sewanee Rivew.

On a recent visit to Nashville, reading the weekly news magazine Nashville Scene, I wondered why Atlanta can no longer support such a publication that strongly covers politics, arts, books, food and music. Nashville's many local music venues give Nashville Scene a strong advertising base. Atlanta's once vibrant Creative Loafing is now a fading monthly, while Atlanta magazine's features show more desperation than creativity.

I'm sure Atlanta has a flourishing literary scene of which I'm unaware. The annual Decatur Book Festival brings out a huge population of readers, and a couple of independent bookstores seek to maintain the legacy of Oxford Books.

But the smaller Nashville outshines Atlanta.
 

 

 

 

The 200th anniversary of Keats' "To Autumn"

Refreshed by a pleasant breeze as I walked in my neighborhood last evening, I thought about John Keats' "To Autumn."

After observing freshly cut cornfields during a walk, Keats wrote the poem on this date 200 years ago. Each year, I reread the poem on one of those mild autumnal days like the one that inspired Keats.

I never realized until reading Garrison Keillor's now emailed "Writers' Almanac" this morning that Sept. 19 was the day Keats wrote "To Autumn," his last major poem. It was a revelation that the ode to autumn was written in late summer.

Many of the poem's images are more like summer, adding to the sense of longing for a new season. The evocation of summer adds to the poem's foreshadowing of death. Keats died a little more than a year after writing the poem.

"To Autumn" was the last of the great odes he produced beginning in the spring of 1819. Despite that astonishing outpouring, Keats grew despondent  over financial worries, the belief that he'd failed as a poet and the realization that he was dying from tuberculosis.

I, like others, believe the poem the most perfect in the English language. What appears a simple celebration of the arrival of autumn has received many interpretations, the coming of death the most prevalent. Noted critic Helen Vendler sees it as a metaphor for artistic creation. Somehow, it's been linked to the Peterloo Massacre, which happened the same year. Difficult to see that connection.

What haunts me about the poem is its understanding of the impermanence of human experience. A young poet knew the reality of walking, the vision of the cornfield, the writing of the poem. He was there 200 years ago, giving us a gift that has spoken to generations.

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,

Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;

Or by a cider-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–

While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Harper Lee loved Bear Bryant's Alabama Crimson Tide

"To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee had catapulted to fame when the Saturday Evening Post in March 1963 published an article alleging that Georgia athletics director Wally Butts and Alabama football coach Bear Bryant had fixed a game.

A  friend of Bryant and a rabid Alabama football fan, the author of the 1960 best-selling novel was consumed by the charges, along with football followers around the Southeast.

Lee in a letter to her agent, Maurice Crain, wrote a detailed account of the scandal, according to reporter Ben Cohen's fascinating article in Friday's Wall Street Journal. "A wonderful letter from Nellie Harper Lee," Crain scribbled on the envelope. The letter is at Columbia University, Cohen said.

The Saturday Evening Post's article was based on Atlanta businessman George Burnett's claims that he had overheard a telephone conversation in which Butts disclosed Georgia Bulldog plays and formations to Bryant before a 1962 game won 35-0 by the Crimson Tide. Burnett said that while trying to make a long-distance call, he had somehow gotten connected to the former Georgia football coach and Bryant.

Butts won a $3.06 million judgment in a libel suit against the Post, while Bryant reached an eventual settlement of $460,000. The case, which advanced to the Supreme Court, reportedly played a role in the Saturday Evening Post's demise.

While the controversy transfixed the South, as reported in this 1963 article by famed Sports Illustrated writer Dan Jenkins, Lee's had received greater fame from a 1962 movie based on the now-classic novel. Gregory Peck won the Academy Award for his portrayal of lawyer Atticus Finch and his heroic defense of a black man accused of rape in a segregated small town in Alabama.

Cohen's article says that Lee followed college football all of her life, even listening to Paul Finebaum's Alabama-biased college football talk show. Along with her allegiance to Alabama, Lee rooted for Auburn when the Tigers weren't battling the Crimson Tide in the annual Iron Bowl.

Lee was also a close friend of former Auburn coach Pat Dye, to whom she wrote a number of letters. Dye, who once called her book "To Kill a Blackbird," refused to disclose the letters' contents to Cohen.

Other famous names of Alabama football lore rise in the article. Lee believed in Bryant's innocence because scrappy All-American linebacker Lee Roy Jordan supported his coach. Jordan came from a town near Lee's Monroeville, and Lee believed in Jordan's honesty.

Lee remained a prolific letter writer, while not publishing another novel during her lifetime. The posthumous "Go Set a Watchman" was an early version of "To Kill a Mockingbid." A recent book says that Lee never finished a planned nonfiction book about an Alabama minister accused of several murders.

The new revelations enhance Lee's renown as a writer of letters. Her gifts in the genre were revealed several years ago in retired Auburn professor Wayne Flynt's collection of letters between him and Lee. Giving an endearing portrait of the author, the collection presents her views on religion, politics, Hollywood, the South, writing and fame.

Perhaps Cohen's piece will lead to the publication of a collection of Lee's college football letters. The writer of a masterpiece that inspires new generations of readers, she's also worthy of a complete letters collection.

A woman who during her life counted as friends Truman Capote, Maurice Crain, Bear Bryant, Gregory Peck, Pat Dye and Lee Roy Jordan had an expansive, intellectually adventuresome personality that such a collection would honor.