All Memes Necessary
By Mitch Berg
List some of your favorite words:
- Dulcid
- Numbnuts (gotta go with Red on that one)
- Strumpet
- Hoedown
What’s your favorite maxim or proverb?
I’ll do two:
- “Who Dares Wins”. I know, it’s more of a motto (the British SAS), but I love it.
- “The best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”. It’s a Hungarian saying (I learned it in a bio of photographer Robert Capa), and it doesn’t just apply to wealth; change it to happiness, or love, or so many other desirable but elusive things.
What’s your favorite quotation?
Just one?
As if.
- “Madam, tomorrow I will be sober, and you will still be ugly” (attributed to Winston Churchill)
- “Tear Down This Wall”. Reagan, of course. Yes, a favorite. You had to be there (and by “there”, I mean “growing up 20 miles from a missile silo”). Still chokes me up.
What’s your favorite first line of a novel?
I don’t remember first lines!.
Give an example of a piece of description that’s really pleased you in your reading lately:
I don’t have the book handy, so I can’t transcribe the quote, but many of Rybakov’s descriptions in Children of the Arbat – an evening in a remote Siberian village, a night out in Moscow in the ’30s, and especially the mundane inner workings of Stalin’s mind – were riveting.
Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language?
- Tolstoy. Wrong language, but big whoop.
- Hemingway. Don’t care what anyone says.
- PJ O’Rourke. Yes. I mean it.
- Dickens.
- James Joyce. Joyce is like Steve Vai to me; I don’t always “get” (or care for) either, but I’m amazed at what they do with their “instrument”.
And are there writers whose style you really dislike?
I used to work in a Waldenbooks. I have forgotten more horrible writing than most people will ever read.
What’s the key to really fine writing, in your opinion?
- Say it, don’t write it. I don’t like reading someone who is trying to show you what an artiste he or she is at wordcraft. Good writing should be unobtrusive.
- Great writing, on the other hand, should sneak up on you; you shouldn’t realize it’s great until you’ve gotten past it – and then it should smack you over the head.
- Great writing doesn’t condescend. Which leaves out a lot of modern fiction writers.
- Basically, any writing that makes you forget you’re reading. That can be all over the place, as Red notes; Oliver Twist qualifies, and so does The Hunt for Red October.
Wow. It’s been a while!
August 24th, 2007 at 9:01 am
For Tolstoy, it’s actually an overuse of language, especially in it’s native form. There is no other man in universe, IMO (okay, fine, Dostoyevsky is a close second), that can take a page-long paragraph to describe a dress… put me to sleep. But, if you like that kind of prose, there is none better…
August 24th, 2007 at 9:26 am
Sometimes I’m in the mood.
Other times I’m not.
August 24th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Howabout best last lines in a story?
Goodbye, My Brother, John Cheever
August 24th, 2007 at 9:39 am
>>any writing that makes you forget you’re reading.
Grimms Fairy Tales
Uncle Remus
King Lear
Hemingway( not just The Old Man…, but Kilimanjaro, Death in the afternoon)
Dickens Bleak House
Emily Dickinson (the heart asks pleasure first…)
Foroogh Farrokhzaad (A Rebirth)
just to start
August 24th, 2007 at 9:50 am
The modern way to write history books. It seems like many of the older ones, while well researched and written, were more facts just told in a narrative. Just yesterday my brother loaned me a book of his on Lincoln. Not word-for-word, but if I recall what I read last night:
Old method: Lincoln meet with xxx in the White House on xxxxx to discuss the situation…….they decided…
New method: Lincoln clapsed his hands behind his back and paced in front of the window, watching the rain fall for a few moments before speaking. As xxx wiped persperation off of his forehead, he slowly asked the President “………
It was written better then that, but you get the idea. Historical books are written to read more like a fiction novel.
August 24th, 2007 at 9:56 am
I’ve noticed that, Chuck.
I read a book on the manhunt for Lincoln’s killers. All “facts” (very well-known stuff, pretty much), but the author added a lot of that kind of narrative you’re talking about; conversations, characterization, movement, that kind of thing.
a little disconcerting, but interesting.
My upcoming book on the 1984 Federal Reserve meetings should be a lot more interesting now.
August 24th, 2007 at 10:59 am
What’s your favorite first line of a novel?
The only first line of any novel I remember or even know, is “Who is John Galt?” And I haven’t even read that novel. Someday.
Which five writers do you particularly admire for their use of language?
James Lileks.
“Great writing, on the other hand, should sneak up on you; you shouldn’t realize it’s great until you’ve gotten past it – and then it should smack you over the head. ”
PRECISELY. THAT is James Lileks. He is not a writer. He is, as was listed on a list of the NARN bloggers in the past, a wordsmith.
August 24th, 2007 at 11:17 am
Yes, although the writing is more entertaining to read, you have to wonder how much of that is fiction when they get so detailed in an histoircal book.
I’ve heard that Carl Sandberg was a little loose with facts on his Lincoln books as he was more of a poet then an historian.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:02 pm
JPA remarked “There is no other man in universe, IMO…” but there was a woman. Her name was Ayn.
I am looking forward to that book on the 1984 Federal Reserve meetings. You’d better be pretty damn thorough on your fact checking, though. I can imagine Doug already doing his own research.
August 25th, 2007 at 10:33 am
Everyone talks about the 84 meetings, but 1987……..now those were meetings!
August 27th, 2007 at 12:27 pm
“Marley was dead, to begin with.”