My Inner Editor’s Irritation (Over Admittedly Little Things)

In the early pages of The Midnight Library, a bestselling novel by Matt Haig, I screech to a frustrated halt on page 8. The character Neil “joined his hands together and made a steeple of his index fingers, which he placed under his chin, as if he was Confucius….” But he is clearly not the long-dead Chinese philosopher, so the subjunctive is called for in the sentence, which should read “as if he were Confucius,” and I’m mildly annoyed. 

 

A couple more flubbed opportunities to use the subjunctive correctly come along – and then, suddenly, on page 16, the author snaps into his grammar garb: “As Nora escaped the shop, she wished there were nothing but doors ahead of her…,” and I want to cheer! Too soon! We return to ragged error at the very next grammatical crossroads.

 

Then on page 25, a new demon rears its head. As Nora enters and begins to explore the magical Midnight Library, she is staggered by her surroundings. 

 

She turned down one of the aisles and stopped to gaze in bafflement at the seemingly endless amount of books. 

 

And once more my inner copyeditor screams out in pain. No, no, no! It is the number of books that astounds our Nora! Books can be counted, as can people. (A “large number of people” assembled for the event, not a “large amount of people.”) Sugar is measured in amounts (teaspoons, cups, pounds, etc.), as is sand and gravel -- also liquids, such as water or milk – and I have to say here that even the Word grammar-checker (not always my best friend) caught this blunder, double-underlining the word ‘amount’ in that sentence quoted.

 

And this is Viking, a Penguin Random House imprint, Viking, founded in 1925, that calls itself “a legendary imprint” on its own web page. I will continue reading the story but hope not to be amazed by the copyeditors’ oversights on page after page.

Of course, if I were seriously editing my own copy here for publication between hard covers, I'd eliminate this blizzard of italics. And that quote set in the middle of the page that's only two lines long, rather than three lines, is a boo-boo, too. A blog, however, is much more casual, more apt to let the author's voice go unedited.

Postscript: I finished the book and enjoyed it despite its flaws -- and despite having seen well in advance how it was going to end.

If This Offends You, Too Bad

I have completely had it with snark. 

 

A prime example of what I mean by snark is saying that so-and-so (someone with whom you disagree) “drank the Kool-Aid.” This is supposed to be clever, but what are you really saying? 

 

Just this (my translation): “You are so gullible! You’d fall for anything! How can anyone be so stupid?” In other words, it is neither a counter-argument nor a rebuttal. It’s nothing but an insult. 

 

And before you or I go any further on this road, let me say that I’ve heard it from opposing sides of almost every current argument in our country, and I detest the expression and its message regardless of any position taken by the speaker. Masks, medicine, religion, patriotism, politics, science – in all these arenas and more, snark rears its ugly smarter-than-thou head. What does a speaker hope to accomplish with snark? Hope to change someone’s mind? Not gonna happen. Just want to vent your feelings? Yeah, you’re doing that, I guess, but aren’t you still stuck with those same feelings after you’ve put someone else down? Desire to show you’ve “taken a stand”? You could take a stand and still express it -- if not with empathy for those who disagree – in an open, welcoming manner. 

 

Just my thoughts. If being snarky makes you feel smarter, you’ll keep doing it. Just know that if you’re already on my side of an argument, I’m embarrassed by having you next to me, and if you’re part of my opposition -- on any topic -- you’re not winning my heart.

If I Were Really, Really Paranoid

 

Ah, yes, paranoia. For something as serious as genuine paranoia is, we toss the word around pretty casually. "Did that guy give me a really weird look?" "Oh, don't be so paranoid!" I'm going in a different direction today, though....

To continue: I am not saying that conspiracies absolutely do not exist, just that they are rarer than theories of conspiracies and therefore usually not the best explanation but one we should resist until evidence becomes overwhelming. Think Occam's razor. A conspiracy is never a simple explanation (but the world is not always simple, is it?), if only because (1) it involves many people, and (2) it depends on their keeping their mouths shut. A ring of bank robbers may conspire to commit a crime, but if one is caught and offered a deal for informing on the others, chances are good he'll take the deal. A group of Wall Street crooks may conspire to game the system for their own advantage, but if even one of them discovers a conscience, they can all go tumbling down. And, of course, discovery after the fact is pretty common. 

So just to be clear, I'm not launching any conspiracy theories here. I'm only saying that if I were really, really paranoid I would think, for example, that all these protests and lawsuits against masks in schools to prevent the spread of COVID-19 were really a conspiracy to drive school teachers out of the profession, scare parents into pulling their kids out of school, and destroy public education. 

For another example, if I were really, really paranoid I would think that all these election recounts and recalls (like the one in California) are not expressions of doubt in the process at all but merely an underground campaign -- a conspiracy -- to bankrupt state coffers and destroy government by the people. 

But here's the thing: we don't need organized groups of conspirators to bring about these consequences. There doesn't have to be any kind of conspiracy at all. It only takes enough people taking action without thinking about likely unintended consequences. Sometimes (and this is scary) the very action people take to prevent a certain outcome increases the odds that it will happen. 

Is there a right-wing conspiracy to destroy public education and government by the people (or only the U.S. postal service)? Or is it just that those very real dangers would be "side effects" rather than the "cure" they hope to achieve?