TYPOS AND MISQUOTATIONS

I read on the Internet that Anthony Weiner’s (or Whiner’s) troubles stem from a typo he committed on Tweeter: @ instead of D, turning a private misdemeanor into a public offense. Typos are pesky things, and must have caused quite some trouble in the history of publishing—someday surely a bestseller on this subject will cash in handsomely.

Yet even if typos don’t ruin someone’s marriage and political career, they can give a fastidious writer a nasty headache. I have had my share of inflicted typos, although some are harmless enough and even a good source of laughter.

For example: I wrote in my review of High in my column in The Westchester Guardian that Kathleen Turner, as a nun in mufti, wore a pants suit, which came out in print as “ants suit.” This had me wondering what an ants suit might be: An outfit impregnated with an insect repellent to protect you in case you stepped on an ant hill? A technological wonder that could transmute ants into an inexpensive textile suitable for suits?

In another recent review—of War Horse—I compared the pleasure of catching the show to receiving my first major literary award. That became my “fist award.” Now this might make sense if I were a pugilist or could put my fists to an unusual type of intercourse, but since neither applied, this fist caused me quite a fit.

Still, typos, I repeat, are of two kinds. The innocent errors that could not have been committed by the writer, and the culpable ones, that could mistakenly be chalked up to the author. That kind truly hurts.

Moreover, it hurts not only the writer, but also the critic reviewing the book or article in which it occurs, unable to determine whether the guilty party was the author or the typesetter, assuming that such a creature still exists and hasn’t been supplanted by a robot.

It is interesting to note that some genuine mistakes can escape censure by not even looking like typos. For example, a “who” for a “whom” has become so firmly lodged in writing as well as parlance that even a strict traditionalist might forgo making an issue of it. But a “whom” for a “who”—an accusative where a simple nominative is called for—is gross and leaves one disgruntled. Yet even the venerable New York Times abounds in this indisputable authorial error, now that it has seen fit to dispense with the luxury of a resident grammarian along with some other niceties.

Similarly, when I read on the Internet the article entitled “The Twitter Typo That Exposed Anthony Weiner,” I feel justified in blaming its author for referring to a hacker “whom [sic] Weiner claimed had cracked his account.” This whom-for-who fallacy has become so popular that it threatens the supremacy of the misplaced nominative in things like “Thank you for inviting Jane and I to your wonderful party.” That one, impossible to gloss over as a typo and ubiquitous, may well become—disastrously—acceptable colloquial English.

I wish I could recall offhand an example of the rare but not unheard-of occurrence of a felicitous typo, which produces a merry verbal gaffe. Something like an elephant that held a midget in his trunk, or the famous student boner,  ‘The Templar asked Rebecca to become his mistress. The brave girl reclined to do so.”

Who knows? A lucky typo may even become accepted usage, say, “ants suit” for an ill-fitting garment that causes skin irritation. But enough about typos and on to their cousin, the misquotation. I am the victim of a particularly irritating one. In a 1971 review of a play called Abelard and Heloise, I wrote, “Diana Rigg, the Heloise, is built, alas, like a brick basilica with inadequate flying buttresses.” This in reference to a nude scene revealing her as somewhat deficient in the chest department.

To be sure, a basilica, unlike a cathedral, does not have flying buttresses; still, liking the alliteration of “brick basilica,” I took this architectural liberty.  Now it seems that someone unfamiliar with basilicas misquoted this as a “brick mausoleum,” in which faulty form it has become just about my only contribution to various anthologies of quotations, as well as to Miss Rigg’s own charming memoir, No Turn Unstoned.  This is unfortunate, because it would suggest some connection between the gifted actress and death, which I never intended, but which makes my sally worse than it was, and destined to haunt me unto my grave—no mausoleum either.

MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY?

I just read about the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the Serbian ethnic cleanser, and my thoughts went back to Yugoslavia, the lost country of my childhood. Of course, everyone’s childhood is a sort of lost country, but Yugoslavia literally is: it no longer exists. Serbia, however, exists, as does its and the former Yugoslavia’s capital, Belgrade, where I was growing up. But Serbia was never truly my country, because my father was a Hungarian who came to it to make his fortune (he did), and my mother, though technically Serbian, belonged to the Hungarian minority, and never even leaned to speak Serbo-Croat properly.

Emotionally, I felt intensely Yugoslav, and proud of my Serbo-Croat literacy. I had published, at fifteen, a poem in the country’s leading literary magazine, The Serbian Literary Courier, which no other boy my age could boast of. To be sure, it was only a rhymed rendering of “Trees,” by Joyce Kilmer, whom I took to be a woman—Joyce—but it was a pretty good translation, if I say so myself.

So now I would be a man without a country if it weren’t for the United States, to which my family emigrated to our everlasting gratitude, and in whose Air Force I served during World War Two. Never, though, near either front, European or Asian. Still, being in the service, expedited my American citizenship. I was 16 ½ when I came to this country and speak with a slight accent some people find charming, though I’d be happier without it.

Here is how I might have lost it. At age 13, I went to public school in England—the Leys School, Cambridge, to be exact—where I hoped to go on to the famed university. But war broke out, England was being bombed, and my father recalled me to Yugoslavia the following year, before I could shed my accent. I recall that in the military, a fellow soldier (from Brooklyn, I believe) asked me where I hailed from originally. When I told him, he opined that it accounted for my “broken lingo.”

It was nowhere near broken. By that time I had been a junior at Harvard, whence I was drafted, and to which I returned upon my discharge. But it was too late for me to acquire a Boston, Hahvad, or any other kind of American accent. It amused me, however, that I had landed in my second Cambridge, where I took my sweet time earning a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. I enjoyed being a Cantabrigian, and would have gladly settled in Cambridge, had not the gods wanted it otherwise.

Certainly I sounded foreign enough to Lorne Michaels when I appeared on Saturday Night Live. It was a skit about a good critic played by Jon Lovitz, and a dishonest critic played by me. Chatting backstage, Lorne asked whose army I was referring to when I spoke of my military service. “Ours, of course,” I replied, feeling at that moment very patriotic. “How else do you think we could have won the war?”

It had been a funny year as an English schoolboy, trying unsuccessfully to learn cricket from an odious little brat named Burtsall. He was the only one willing to give me cricket lessons in the Leys School basement, but he was such a pest that I had a powerful urge to slap him. Artful dodger that he was, though, it was only in the common room that he dropped his guard. There was a shilling’s fine for rowdiness there, which protected him. So I went up to the prefect, deposited my shilling in advance, and slapped the hell out of Burtsall. But because this was considered a sneaky, unsportsmanlike attack, the fine was redoubled. Thereafter, even without mastering a perfect English accent, I at least learned British fair play.

I have had my quarrels with both my beloved countries, the United States and Britain; with the English language, properly used, never. (See my book Paradigms Lost.) French, which I know well, may be more delicate, more elegant, more melodious, but English has the richest vocabulary, offers the writer wider horizons. At how many intersections of synonyms or near-synonyms have I pondered which to choose: heavenly or celestial, feverish or febrile, fury or rage? Even from the same etymon, did I want instinctive or instinctual? For the sake of rhythm or euphony, should I pick doctor or physician? And so on endlessly—or ad infinitum.

Language is, in a sense, my country. But Country (capital C) matters to me only during World Cup soccer or grand slam tennis. Even there, I find myself rooting more often for foreign teams and players. Country, otherwise, matters mostly abroad, where some nations are respected, others reprehended. Time was when being American, even by adoption, was hugely prestigious; today there are probably fewer envied Yankees than ugly Americans. I myself do not fancy the thought of being taken hostage or, indeed, getting killed as a mere naturalized American, whose ancestors were never slave owners or warmongers.

Well then, how much does Country matter? In the old days, an American consul could do wonders for you in a foreign country. Being American opened doors when you sought favors, closed them when you needed security. Nowadays I wonder whether an Albanian passport doesn’t provide more protection than an American one.

It might well be a better world in which nationality or ethnicity of any kind did not matter. In my younger days, when I was writing the language column in Esquire magazine that turned into the book Paradigms Lost, I was vastly amused when visiting Yugoslavs gloated about what they called one of theirs teaching the Americans English; next week, some visiting Hungarians relished what they called one of their own doing the same thing. There even exists a book about Hungarians who made it big in America, in which I am one of the chapters, although I never considered myself Hungarian for all the pleasure I derived from reading the very great poets of Hungary in their own language. Translations of lyric poetry always lose a good deal; the great exceptions—and even those of verse drama—are Richard Wilbur’s superb translations of Moliere and Racine.

Then there are the people who, based on my accent, assume I was born in Austria. The truth of the matter is that my smart parents had the good idea of having me learn a foreign language as it were in the cradle by means of a trusted German nanny. So my first language was German. Hungarian I learned from my parents, who spoke it at home., and during a summer in a Budapest kindergarten. Serbian I could then pick up from everyone else, at school or in the streets. I even attended a German-Serbian elementary school. So, for a bit, Germany or Austria was my second country. French came quite a bit later in private lessons from a delightful Frenchwoman.

My country? On occasional visits to Stockholm and meetings with Ingmar Bergman and other Swedish film and literary people—not forgetting a theater date with Bibi Anderson—made me wish Sweden were my country. And when, as a 13-year-old English schoolboy I traveled back to Belgrade on vacation, the Swiss were wonderful to me. A wretched French hotel concierge directed me to the wrong train, and all kinds of trouble ensued.. In Basel, I chose to change trains, and a nice porter who carried my baggage absolutely refused to take money from a boy with an English public school cap.

At the little Swiss border town, where I had to wait to catch the next day the  train I should have taken in Paris that morning, the station personnel were perfectly charming. They turned me into some sort of mascot, and taught me all kinds of things about each train that was passing through. At night, they wouldn’t let me pay for a hotel, but made me as comfortable as possible on a waiting-room bench, and sent me rested and cheerful off on the proper train. That I spoke good German may have helped, but I truly felt that Switzerland was my country.

I have had pleasant experiences also with the Dutch and the Italians, including their police, the carabinieri. Only about the French do I have reservations. Not about the upper classes, which, though somewhat cold, are erudite and witty. And certainly not about the lower classes, which I found good-humored and warm-hearted. Only about the middle class, which, in my admittedly limited experience, struck me as penny-pinching, standoffish, and xenophobic, and aptly called petit—or petty—bourgeois.

Take, for example, the couple from whom I rented a room for most of my Fulbright year in Paris: an engineer and his wife. She would drop in on me repeatedly to admire the books I bought with my allowance—mostly Pleiade editions of the classics—praise me for my French, and boast of having gone to school with the great French actress Edwige Feulliere, whom I revered. But always she informed me that I was by no means to expect her to help me meet the star. Not once did this good woman invite me to have a cup of tea or glass of wine with her and her husband in their living room, or even let me set foot in the rest of their apartment.

On the other hand, the lower-class couple, from whom a fellow Fulbright scholar rented his room, could not have been more delightful even to me, and, because I frequently and lengthily phoned their tenant, proclaimed me jovially le roi du telephone. Just as friendly were the flics (cops) at the prefecture, where I had to report for my carte de sejour. Because they liked my French and my humor, they amiably offered to get me a joint French citizenship, which I equally amiably turned down. Only partly because I did not want to become canon fodder in the then raging Algerian War, and partly because, despite their insistence that it had to be otherwise, I could claim not a single French ancestor.

I remain an admirer of everything about France except the French bourgeoisie. And since that is the class I would have been born into were I French, I never imagined France to be my country. Actually, I would like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, if only the world would offer me joint citizenship with the United States. World-United, what a good thing that would be!

GRAFFITI

I have often wondered about graffiti, the spray-painted writs on walls I perceive from the windows of my commuter train. What person or persons can be responsible for them? How do their perpetrators remain unseen and unknown? Why do they all look so alike? What are these inscriptions saying? Is there a possible argument on behalf of them?

Norman Mailer published an article in the New York Times Magazine praising their beauty and defending them as art. He may not be their only champion, though I myself know nobody who endorses them. I consider them eyesores.

To be sure, they appear on the drab walls of dreary, often uninhabited, buildings. I don’t know that any reputable architect ever built an edifice along these train routes and begging for such bedizening. And if there were a Gropius or Le Corbusier, a Van der Rohe or Alto by the tracks, the scribbler’s hand, awe-struck, might spare it.  The question is whether even dilapidation is improved by graffiti.

The train goes by too fast for me to decipher these inscriptions. The proud names of the scribes may be displayed. As my father used to say about names cut into the bark of trees, “Nomina stultorum . . .” (the names of fools), but he always ended in aposiopesis, and I was never able to track down the rest of that Latin adage. However, injuring a living thing like a tree is far worse than spraying a wall. Still, these amoral muralists probably prefer anonymity to avoid apprehension.

But are graffiti truly eyesores? Those large, loping, motley letters, usually in wavy lines, have a conceivable claim to be abstract art, or, at the very least, conceptual art, where whatever the perpetrator proclaims to be art, ipso facto becomes it. To me, saying so doesn’t make it so; indeed, I have trouble even with some established abstract artists, whose work is arbitrary, pleasing some, but boring others. Yet few people have the gumption to call a daub a daub. Obsolete or philistine, I prefer representation, however academic or unoriginal.

The curious thing, though, is the mysterious invisibility of the graffitists. Why is the script always more or less the same, and not just in size, which, granted, the spray gun could not make smaller. Why such uniformity? Is there a school that turns out regimented graffitists, or is this the evenhanded hand of God, which, you’ll recall, did write out a warning on the wall of an Assyrian king. Neither seems likely. Then how do the graffitists remain unobserved, even if they work in the wee hours? It is clearly a mystery, but it shouldn’t become a mystique.

To be sure, there is a human yearning for testimony: I lived, I was there, I deserve my bit of immortality. But is every bequest to posterity of equal, indeed any, value? Especially when it can readily be erased or painted over. Still, it may no be a plea for afterlife; it may be there simply for the delectation of the living culprit, who may keep anonymously revisiting the site of his crime and relishing his achievement.

It is not as if writing on walls were ipso fact unsightly. Egyptian hieroglyphs are very easy on the eye even if meaningless to those who can’t read them. They are decorative in their delicacy, something that the modern graffitist cannot claim for his sprawling, heavy, gross and monotonous doodling. To be sure, repetitiousness is earning millions for Warhol, or his heirs; but then, I wouldn’t want a Warhol on my wall either.

Perhaps one of these days my train will break down (it is known to happen) alongside one of these graffiti-bedecked walls, and I’ll be able to decipher its message. Could it be as momentous as the texts in Chinese fortune cookies, which, by the way, have become less pertinent than they used to be.

By a curious coincidence, the day after I wrote this the Times came out (5/19/11) with an article about another kind of “cozy, feminine” graffiti known as yarn bombing, and popping up internationally. We read: “It takes that most matronly craft (knitting) and that most maternal of gestures (wrapping something cold in a warm blanket) and transfers it to the concrete and steel wilds of the urban streetscape. Hydrants, lampposts, mailboxes, bicycles, cars—even objects as big as buses and bridges—have all been bombed in recent years, ever so softly and usually at night.” A yarn bomber, Jessie Hemmons, age 24, is quoted as saying, “Street art and graffiti are usually so male dominated. Yarn bombing is more feminine. It’s like graffiti with grandma sweaters.”

There are evidently no lengths to which would-be artists won’t go to invent arts that can be practiced by the talentless. But you have to hand it to these women that their undertakings are more difficult and gutsy than the spray-painted male version. To see the Hemmons fuchsia-colored, hooded, woolly vest on the bronze Rocky statue near the Philadelphia Museum of Art is at the very least amusing. Which is more than you can say for those charmless male graffiti that are no laughing matter.

MEANINGLESS MAGNIFICENCE

Almost as old as the debate about which comes first, the words or the music, is the question of what music means. Otherwise put, is the music saying something specific that the listener can apprehend?

Obviously, a sonata or a string quartet is pure, nonspeaking form. But can’t a tone poem that calls itself Death and Transfiguration say something verbal about death and whatever transfiguration means to the composer, Richard Strauss? Or can another of his tone poems, Thus Spake Zarathustra, convey in music, word for word, what Nietzsche wrote?

The evident answer is No. I recall reading long ago about an experiment conducted with a tone poem played to an audience unacquainted with it, then being asked to write down what it said to them. No two listeners heard the same thing, and no one got from it what the composer thought he had said with it.

We may, of course, ask why a piece of music should “say” anything. Why it should do the work of another art, poetry or drama. But are there perhaps things felt and meant to be expressed in words, which prove, however, ineffable? Can you, for instance, put an orgasm into spoken words? But then again, can you say it in notes?

Or consider “pride”? Can you put into precise words your pride in something your children have accomplished, or in a novel you have written? Can that pride be specifically conveyed to someone else by a certain number of tones in a specified order? You can suggest that it makes you feel good, but then how to convey the quiddity of a good feeling? It makes you happy, but what exactly is “happy”? And how does it differ between having a loved someone return your love and enjoying a rich serving of delicious ice cream?

A piece of music may, granted, be cheerful or mournful, induce a certain mood in you, captivate or repel you, even have you exclaim, “It speaks to me”; but what does it really mean, i.e., say?

It is largely opined that Wagner’s love music in Tristan is erotic. It is said, perhaps accurately, that it arouses erotic feelings, especially in young people, and even provokes masturbation. But surely it does not say, “Go masturbate!” Even that once celebrated pop song, “Gloomy Sunday,” supposedly inducing an international wave of suicides, did not say, “Go kill yourself!” At the utmost, it may have been adopted as a sort of anthem of farewell by those about to die by their own hand. Music may perhaps suggest something, but that is not tantamount to saying it in so many words. Eliciting is not the same as verbalizing.

Certainly music may, somehow, convey or corroborate something. If a character in an opera sings of his love in eloquent words, the music may well confirm his affirmation, make it incomparably more powerful. But would the music say the same thing without being attached to those particular words? Let us assume it could somehow convey the wonder of love. But love of what? A person? A sport? Broccoli?

Still, a stunning edifice by a major architect would seem to say, “Wouldn’t you like to live inside me?” An exquisite painting of a beautiful woman may seem to say, “Don’t you want to make love to me?” Those are meanings of sorts. Then why shouldn’t music have them too? Well, even if a piece of music is called “serenade,” does it necessarily say “I am being played at night by a lover under the beloved’s window”?  It doesn’t. It could just as easily be titled “impromptu” or “intermezzo” or ”meditation.” It is the word “serenade” that can convey the situation, not the same music without that name. A hymn in praise of Bacchus may sound just like the music for a saint’s feast; a dirge may just as easily evoke yearning for a dead lover as an exile’s longing for his homeland. Wedding-procession music may serve as well at halftime in a World Cup soccer match.

A string quartet, however, without a title, is about three or four contrasting movements; beyond that it says nothing in words. The march from The Love for Three Oranges could just as easily be for four oranges or two grapefruits. If we heard it at a time when we were happy, it can remind us of the occasion, wordlessly. That, however, is association, not assertion. You can compare the pleasure it gives to winning a game of tennis. Fun without meaning.

Music, to be sure, can imitate—thunder, a cannonade, funeral bells, or hammering in a smithy. But that is not saying anything about how hard work in a smithy is, or the danger of a hammer blow to your thumb. The music for Verdi’s “Anvil Chorus” affects your senses, but bypasses your mind and, by itself, says nothing. It merely simulates and stimulates the emotions. It is the words to it that speak.

We would like it to say things, though, because speech is a noble utterance when it is not inane babble, wherefore we would wish beloved music to have similarly specific, verbalizable effect. In other words, to mean inarguable things. Yet we have it on no lesser authority than Stravinsky’s declaration that his music, in and of itself, has no meaning whatsoever.

Then again, why should music really mean? It enormously collaborates, indeed stars, in song of every kind, from an operatic aria to a pop song, from a lied to a musical comedy number. That easily absolves it from speaking in any other kind of music. Wordless classical music does, however, speak after a fashion to music critics and scholars who write intricate analytical essays, even books, about it, some of them actually quite readable. As for us laymen, to quote the title of Alex Ross’s valuable book, the rest is noise. But music, to all of us is not mere noise, but wonderful communication without verbal meaning. Or, if you will, meaningless magnificence.

GREAT TEACHERS

The current issue of  Harvard Magazine contains the following quotations:

            “In any battle between the literati and the philistines,

            the philistines invariably win.” –- Harry T. Levin, professor

            of comparative literature, following the 1961 court

            ruling adverse to Grove Press, in the Boston censorship

            trial having published Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer.

            “I am a professor of comparative literature, not of com-

            parative lust.”— Harry T. Levin, testifying in the same

            trial, responding to the prosecutor’s question: “Profes-

            sor Levin, which do you think would more excite lewd

            and libidinous desires in the mind of a young girl—

            Shakespeare’s ‘Rape of Lucrece’ or Henry Miller’s

            Tropic of Cancer?’”

This perfectly illustrates the wit and wisdom of Harry Levin, chairman of Harvard’s Comp. Lit. department, in which I was a student and, later, assistant in his course “Proust, Mann and Joyce.”  Harry Levin, author of several important books, was also a great scholar and teacher without ever acquiring an advanced degree. He had, however, been one of Harvard’s prestigious Junior Fellows.

Levin was a subtle ironist, a consummate stylist and lecturer, a strict grader, and somebody with whose approval it was unsafe to gamble. I say this as one who had both enjoyed his favor and, on one occasion, incurred his hostility. He and Renato Poggioli were two of my Ph.D. thesis directors, and though alike in brilliance, they couldn’t have been more unlike in temperament. On Levin’s precision and sharpness you could cut yourself; Poggioli was a practitioner of laissez-faire toward both his students and himself. Harry never made the slightest factual error; Renato cheerfully admitted to vagueness concerning such things as exact dates.

About Levin, a famous colleague said, “A dangerous man—you cannot even count on his enmity.” So I experienced in the Lillian Hellman affair, as I dubbed it, in which I incurred his wrath. A fellow graduate student, Richard Defendini, had contracted to supply Hellman with ample specimen passages from Jean Anouilh’s The Lark, which she was adapting for Broadway. The task was to submit translations of chunks of each major character’s speech, so that Hellman (who claimed to know French!) would get a feel for each individual’s language. For a mere hundred dollars, Defendini agreed to a good many pages, but then enlisted my collaboration. We did it, clearly, not for profit, but for prestige.

When Hellman would pay only $50, because the typing was, as she put it, double-spaced, Dick was so disgusted that he left demurring to me. On the phone, I facetiously referred to Hellman’s Calvinism, to which she earnestly replied that she was Jewish. And she remained adamant.  Harry summoned me to his office and reduced me to tears, demanding, on the threat of expulsion, a letter of apology to be overseen by him. He let the letter pass, however, despite a certain irony in its tone.

I go into this to show that nobody is perfect; in this case Levin’s excessive awe as a mere academic vis-a-vis an artist. Still, Levin was a great teacher, though that was in a very different time and, I suspect, at a very different Harvard. I do firmly believe that beyond thorough knowledge of his field and a good deal of general culture, a teacher should be simultaneously instructive and entertaining. Students tend to be an unruly audience, and a bit of humor is an invaluable teaching tool. But there should be no jokes about the grading.

Today, things have come to a pretty pass. Students arrive in college equipped with a well-nourished ignorance, and propose to graduate without any serious tampering with it. I have heard a graduate of an Ivy League institution boast of earning his degree without cracking a single piece of assigned reading. This can be partly the fault of teachers, but as often of administrations, expecting for financial reasons the smallest number of flunkings. Which is where I feel defeated, having my employment at more than one institution of higher learning dropped , stated or unstated, for grading too stiffly.

Even more dispiriting is something else. I was reprimanded by a female department co-chairman for making too many corrections in student papers. I had spent roughly an hour-and-a-half on each, only to be told I should have corrected the major mistakes (whatever those might be), leaving the others alone. Too many corrections were depressing and counterproductive.

So it would seem that our teachers need as much educating as our students. A daunting situation, as is the passing of the buck from grade school to high school to college for such basic skills as grammar and spelling. And that does not even account for dealing with copying from Wikipedia or other, subtler forms of plagiarism.

Can there be a solution for all this? I am sorry to say I don’t know.

SUNDRY PRINCESSES

Why Bertrand Tavernier is not considered up there with the world’s greatest filmmakers is a mystery to me. It must have something to do with the vagaries of distribution, the absence of hype, the obtuseness of reviewers and audiences, perhaps even of festival directors and museum curators.

His oeuvre is varied and extensive, his scope prodigious and vision acute. Google him and you’ll get at least some sense of his achievement, which began spectacularly with The Clockmaker and has continued through his most recent offering, The Princess of Montpensier, for which, as usual, Tavernier collaborated on the screenplay.

The film is based on the first novel by Madame de La Fayette (1662), whose later La Princesse de Cleves (1678) is the first authentic French novel, a psychological masterpiece filmed more than once. Her initial fiction, La Princesse de Montpensier, though not quite so remarkable, provided Tavernier with a more than serviceable story for a major film.

In the history-film genre, Tavernier accomplishes something few if any directors have managed so well: shooting not just a plot, but also a sense of what ordinary life in a given period—in this case 17^th-century France—was like. As in W. H. Auden’s famous poem about the Dutch painting of the fall of Icarus (which shows everyday life going on in other parts of the canvas), Tavernier gives us humdrum and humble activities behind or alongside of the main action, making that very action more embedded in reality, more believable.

Nor is Tavernier loath to repeat things that bear repetition, such as horses ridden by various riders at breakneck speed on diverse occasions that punctuate the film, having the same validity as reckless car rides running through movies about today’s life. It immerses us more thoroughly in the era in question.

Though this is not meant to be a movie review—and isn’t—some Tavernier strengths must be stressed. So the fine performances in even minor parts, though I will mention only one of the major ones: Lambert Wilson, splendid as the Comte de Chabannes, the Princess’s tutor in the remote castle to which her husband confined her, ostensibly as protection from the raging religious wars. Although noble and wise, circumspect in handling with philosophical detachment the Princess’s various involvements (or avoidance thereof) with aristocrats and royalty, Chabannes himself eventually succumbs to his pupil’s charms in heartbreakingly moving scenes.

Again, although this is a story of romantic passions, we get no gratuitous dabbling in sex. There is, remarkably, only one rather discreet bedroom scene, yet all that needs to be shown about the sundry amours is magisterially conveyed. And, as usual in Tavernier’s films, cinematography, editing, music, camera placement and movement are exemplarily managed. Best of all, though the director is clearly in constant charge, his control is not ostentatiously foisted on the viewer, but chastely subsumed by the action.

Tavernier has turned seventy, but The Princess of Montpensier  is informed as much by youthful zest as by mature judgment. And though it is a work of fiction, we feel that no documentary could have conjured up historic reality with greater accuracy and suasion.

Speaking of princesses, here comes the wedding of Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton, his commoner bride. Of course a royal wedding is of some interest, especially when the bride is not of royal or even blue blood—a pure case of romantic love rather than political expediency, more like a fairy tale in fact.

Even so, isn’t all this frantic American media coverage indicative of something beyond the obvious? Does it not mean that a democratic republic leaves its beneficiaries famished for something more regal? Does it not play out almost as soul-satisfyingly as the legend of King Copetua and the Beggar Maid? Is it not as if a Hollywood happy ending were turning real, the very thing that encourages hopefulness in the drabbest of lives? Not that we can all turn into Prince William or Kate Middleton, but that we live in a world in which, amid economic crises and fighting all over the map, romance of this kind is still possible?

I myself am fascinated by reading that Kate becomes empowered by marriage to choose whether to become princess or duchess. Princess is manifestly grander, but duchess allows for more freedom. This is the kind of dilemma dreams are made of—isn’t a current movie (which I haven’t seen) entitled Win Win?

Be it mentioned here that Englishwomen are not, by and large, noted for their comeliness. It took a great deal of questionable taste or stubborn make believe to consider Princess Di, let alone Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, pretty, to say nothing of beautiful. Conversely, Kate does look undeniably good.

So this is the new TV reality show, with American networks fiercely outbidding one another to engage photogenic Englishwomen capable of reporting on the royal wedding. If there is this much hullabaloo about their mere nuptials, just think what it will be like when the couple get lost somewhere in the jungle with no one around  to rescue them except the television crew.

False Analogy

This week’s sermon is chiefly about false analogy, one of the major ills that plague (not plagues—the subject is plural, ills) our once reasonably healthy English.

Is anything more parlous than the state of our beloved mother tongue? Well, not mine actually, but at any rate stepmother tongue. It may be a kind of haughtiness, but I wince whenever I encounter an offense against grammar, spelling or pronunciation. If only it weren’t considered bad manners to correct someone else’s speech or writing, things would still be bearable; but nowadays, instead of thanks, you might get a punch in the nose.

Offenses are sprouting all over, but one of the most flagrant is the matter of “lie” and “lay.” True, this is an instance where language seems intent on tripping you up. We have not only the infinitives, lay and lie, to contend with, but also the past tense, lay. Laid and lain likewise challenge the standard lack of discrimination. Lie is in bad odor, too, because of its homonym, meaning to tell untruths, which we don’t want to do. To speak incorrectly, however, we don’t seem to mind at all.

The problem is false analogy. It is assumed that if something horizontalized is laid down, something that is horizontal, therefore, lays. Not so! And then there is also the sexual meaning, as in getting laid.

You might feel encouraged by hearing our generally ignorant television newscasters talk of bodies laying in the streets, that, at least after a nasty bombing, some recreational copulation proved restorative and thrived. And why not? Now that countless folks are unappetizingly stuffing themselves from food cartons on buses and subways, should not public fornication be just as acceptable and widespread?

Another, scarcely less glaringly faulty analogy is common as dirt everywhere, notably on TV: “groceries” pronounced, as if it were spelled “grocieries,” as grosheries.  The poor misguided souls may even think they’re being refined, just as some deviants do when they say “with Bill and I” for “with Bill and me.” Genteelism, the great Fowler called it: saying something that sounds genteel (I) rather than common (me), but happening to be incorrect.

Still, where did the mispronunciation “grosheries” come from? False analogy with hosiery and glacier, which have an ie where groceries has a mere e. Similarly mistaken, based on misspelling, are the not uncommon “grievious” and “mischievious,” derived by false analogy from words like devious and previous, which have an i before the o.

Similarly false analogy obtains also in writing. Does a week go by in which you don’t read  about someone “wracking” his brains about something?  Now clearly the verb is meant to refer to self-torture, to being stretched on the rack. But because another bad thing, being shipwrecked or otherwise wrecked, has that w in front of the r, onto “racked” goes that initial w.

What it has to do with is parallelism, symmetry, yes, analogy. If being healthy is good, then the answer to “How are you?” may just as well (note: not just as good) be “I’m good.” But good is a moral value, or a matter of mood (a good feeling), or a practical matter (a flashlight is good for the household); it has nothing to do with wellness, i.e., health. You are well, in good health, and let someone else who respects you say that you are good. But, you may wonder, can’t “I am good” become accepted through popular parlance? Perhaps so, eventually, but not yet.

Much the same, by the way, applies to “great.” You are not “doing great,” however successful you are. You are only great if you are God, or if you are a leader of men and  boastful about it. Otherwise, you reserve great for other people and their achievements.

Yes, good usage is a tricky thing, like navigating in shallow waters or among coral reefs. Notice:  “among” rather than “between” when referring to more than two, the “tween” clearly coming from twain, which designates a pair. But because so much happens between two people or occurs between two latitudes or lies between two objects, between has become incorrectly preferred to among even where several or many are involved.

But let’s get back to more saliently false analogy. Because “consists of” is correct, it is assumed that “comprised of” must be too. Not so. Comprise, like comprehend or embrace, means for something bigger to include more than one smaller ones. So a standard tool box may comprise a hammer, tongs, a file, various screwdrivers etc. So,too, a string quartet comprises four instrumentalists; but eleven players do not comprise a soccer team, though it does comprise them. “Comprises” is often wrong; “comprised of” always. Would you say “included of”?

It would be nice if correct usage were always logical, as it sometimes is. Careful speakers will not say “Everyone must buy their tickets” but “buy his or her ticket,” or, risking fisheyes from feminists, simply “his ticket.” Yet this fine distinction between singular and plural has pretty much gone by the board. But then, grammar need not be, often isn’t, logical. If “other than” is correct, why isn’t “different than,” which seems to be derived from it? It simply is “different from,” only in England, sometimes, “different to,” albeit, I believe, frowned upon.

So rules require memorization. But what if you ignore them? Will you be punished or ostracized if you say grosheries or grievious

Good English is like good manners: not essential but estimable, and hence highly desirable. Wouldn’t you rather be polite and well thought of by properly brought up, educated people? A mere minority, you say? Certainly, but when all other minorities are respected and deferred to, why should one minority be an exception? In this matter, analogy is more than justified.