Tom Glenn's Blog, page 5

Boring (2)

I interrupted the discussion of fiction craftsmanship to post my diatribe about guns. Let’s get back to it.

The differences between the sets of rules for journalistic writing and literary fiction are minuscule. I suspect that most readers don’t notice the dissimilarity. Examples: literary editing requires no space before and after an em dash (—) whereas journalism requires a single space; literary adds a comma after the last of a series (e.g., buttons, bows, ribbons, and shoelaces), but journalism does not (e.g., buttons, bows, ribbons and shoelaces).

My presentation goes through the following sections: (1) source materials (dictionaries, thesauruses, encyclopedias, atlases, The Chicago Manual of Style, and other recommended volumes); (2) levels of craftsmanship (formatting, copy editing, structure/wording, and dialogue); and (3) “finishing touches” (letting the manuscript cool before returning for revision, spell checking, reading the text aloud, etc.). It takes the better part of an hour to grind through all this trivia which serious writers must absorb.

The fiction craftsmanship presentation is not as popular as my other talks—I’ve given my fall of Saigon presentation with slides telling of my escape under fire over a hundred times since my story was declassified less than twenty years ago. I continue to do the fiction craftsmanship presentation as a service to beginning writers who let me know years later how valuable it was. That, it seems to me, is the least I can do.

Guns, Guns, Guns

As I write, the press is reporting yet another mass shooting. This time three adults and three children were murdered at the Covenant School in Nashville. Some 19,000 children are killed or harmed by gun violence every year in our country. As of several days ago, we have suffered more than 130 mass shootings across the U.S. so far this year. As of today, 10,209 people have died from gun violence in the U.S. this year. Each year, some 43,000 Americans are killed by guns.

One of the reasons why is that so many Americans own guns. As I reported earlier, the U.S. population has 393 million guns, more guns per 100 people, 120.5, than any other nation. We have twenty percent more guns than people.

There is some evidence that Americans are turning away from gun ownership. Since 2018, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has lost over a million members. Maybe we’re finally waking up to the fatal violence inherent in owning guns.

On the other hand, we are buying more and more of the weapon so often used in mass killings, the AR-15, a semi-automatic or self-loading rifle that has been called “America’s rifle” by the NRA with well over 15 million sold by 2019. “Semi-automatic,” as opposed to “automatic,” means that the weapon’s operator must pull the trigger to fire each shot. The rifle then automatically reloads. Today, the AR-15 is the best-selling rifle in the United States. About 1 in 20 U.S. adults, roughly 16 million people, own at least one AR-15, according to new polling data from The Washington Post and Ipsos. Ten of the 17 deadliest U.S. mass killings since 2012 have involved AR-15s. And Republican Representative Barry Moore of Alabama has even introduced a bill to declare the AR-15 the “National Gun of America.”

Throughout the world, the ratio between numbers of guns held by the population and the number of people killed by guns is relatively constant—the more guns, the more people killed by guns. The only way to reduce gun deaths is to reduce the number of guns in the hands of our citizens.

What will it take to get Americans to give up their guns? I’m at a loss to know the answer.

Boring

I’m preparing my presentation with slides that I like the least called “Forgotten Discipline: Fiction Craftsmanship.” Unlike my other presentation drawn from my battlefield experiences and my escape under fire when Saigon fell, fiction craftsmanship is a crashing bore. But it addresses practices which fiction writers must master if their work is to be accepted for publication.

I speak from experience. I have six books and 17 short stories in print, all published by reputable companies and periodicals. I worked hard to absorb fiction craftsmanship and make it automatic and unconscious. I tell my audience that’s what they must do if they want to write publishable fiction.

The irony is that proper fiction craftsmanship has no effect on the quality of the writing. Good editing technique merely assures that one’s work won’t be rejected out of hand. And the editing and formatting rules for literary fiction are only subtly different from those for nonfiction journalistic writing.

The guidelines for journalism are covered in The Associated Press Stylebook, some 460 pages of clear instructions on acceptable editing for newspaper and magazine writing. But the rules for fiction writers are contained in The Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and Publishers (University of Chicago Press). It spends over 950 pages on the subject.

More next time.

Vietnam Veterans Gathering

Last Saturday, at the invitation of the organizers, I attended Gilchrist’s annual Welcome Home Vietnam Veterans Day celebration at Martin’s West in Baltimore. It was a huge gathering that lasted from 8:30 a.m. until after 11:00 that started with a buffet breakfast and included a series of speakers, culminating with Rocky Bleier, a Vietnam veteran and four-time Superbowl champion.

To my surprise and embarrassment, references made by the speakers to events during the Vietnam war and the losses we suffered brought tears to my eyes. Perhaps most moving was the series of salutes and a moment of silence that honored, first, all Vietnam veterans who served during the war, then those who died in the war, those struggling with their own silent battles (e.g., those like me with Post-Traumatic Stress Injury), and finally “the MIA and POWs who never returned home.”

To my surprise, I found among the floor-to-ceiling banners saluting veterans one honoring me. Its presence may explain why so many people there recognized me and addressed me by name. The greeting I heard over and over was “Welcome Home.”

I believe this was the fourth or fifth annual gathering of Vietnam veterans sponsored by Gilchrist. I have attended all of them. I look forward to next year’s meeting.

Yet Again: Words (2)

More intriguing words:

Rig: According to Oxford Languages, rig as a verb means to make a sailing ship or boat ready for sailing by providing it with sails and rigging. As a noun, it means the particular way in which a sailboat’s masts, sails, and rigging are arranged. It also means an apparatus, device, or piece of equipment designed for a particular purpose, e.g., a lighting rig. Its derivation is obscure. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, it’s probably from a Scandinavian source like the Danish-Norwegian rigge “to equip” or the Swedish rigga “to rig, harness.” Perhaps it’s ultimately from Proto-Indo-European reig- “to bind.”

Mettle: a person’s ability to cope well with difficulties or to face a demanding situation in a spirited and resilient way, according to Oxford Languages, usually used with “true,” as in “the team showed their true mettle in the second half.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the word first showed up in the 1580s as a variant spelling of metal. Both forms of the word were used interchangeably (by Shakespeare and others) in the literal sense and in the figurative one of “stuff of which a person is made, (a person’s) physical or moral constitution” (1550s), hence “natural temperament,” specifically “ardent masculine temperament, spirit, courage” (1590s). The spellings diverged in the early eighteenth century, and “mettle” took the figurative meaning.

Nerd: Oxford Languages defines “nerd” as a person who is extremely enthusiastic and knowledgeable about a particular subject, especially one of specialist or niche interest, as in “an unabashed film nerd.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says the term originated in 1951 as a U.S. student slang term, probably an alteration of 1940’s slang “nert”—stupid or crazy person, which was itself an alteration of “nut.” The word turns up in Dr. Seuss’s 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo, which may have contributed to its rise.

Portfolio: Oxford Languages says the word means a large, thin, flat case for loose sheets of paper such as drawings or maps, or by extension, a range of investments held by a person or organization. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that the origin is the Italian porta, imperative of portare, to carry, and foglio—sheet, leaf, from Latin folium.

Klatch: Merriam-Webster says the word means a gathering characterized by informal conversation, as in “coffee klatch.” The Online Etymology Dictionary says the word was first used in 1953. It derives from the seventeenth century German Klatsch meaning gossip, which in turn is said in German sources to be imitative of klatschen, to clap hands.

More when the spirit moves me.

Yet Again: Words

Once more with feeling: words that fascinate me. As a linguist (seven languages), I am constantly engulfed in words. I love them. And English is apparently the richest of languages when it comes to words. So let’s get to it.

Berserk: According to the Merriam-Webster website, “berserk” means (1) an ancient Scandinavian warrior frenzied in battle and held to be invulnerable; or (2) one whose actions are recklessly defiant. The Online Etymology Dictionary describes the word as follows: “1844, from berserk (n.) ‘Norse warrior’ (by 1835), an alternative form of berserker, a word which was introduced (as berserkar) by Sir Walter Scott in ‘The Pirate’ (1822), from Old Norse berserkr (n.) ‘raging warrior of superhuman strength.’ It is probably from *ber- ‘bear’ + serkr ‘shirt,’ thus literally ‘a warrior clothed in bearskin’ (see bear (n.) + sark). Thus not, as Scott evidently believed, from Old Norse berr ‘bare, naked’ and meaning “warrior who fights without armor.”

Doozy: Oxford Languages defines the word (sometimes rendered as “doozie”) as “something outstanding or unique of its kind, e.g., ‘it’s gonna be a doozy of a black eye.’” The Online Etymology Dictionary tells us that the word is perhaps an alteration of daisy, or from popular Italian actress Eleonora Duse (1859-1924)—in either case, reinforced by Duesenberg, the expensive, classy make of automobile from the 1920s-30s.

Bambozzle: The word is defined as meaning to cheat, trick, swindle. It originated in 1703, originally a slang or cant word, of unknown origin—perhaps Scottish from bombaze, bumbaze meaning to confound, perplex, or related to bombast; or related to French embabouiner meaning to make a fool (literally baboon) of; or from the Italian bambolo, bamboccio, bambocciolo meaning a young babe, extended by metonymy to mean an old dotard or babish gull. Related: Bamboozled; bamboozler; bamboozling.

Wacko: mad or insane. It’s an extended form of wack, a word originating in by 1971 meaning a crazy person. Or it is a 1938 back-formation from wacky. Used as an adjective in slang sense of “worthless, stupid,” it appeared in the late 1990s. It may be a variant of whacky—fool—which originated in the late 1800s as British slang, probably ultimately from whack—a blow, stroke, from the notion of being whacked on the head one too many times.

Gadget: Oxford languages defines the word as meaning a small mechanical or electronic device or tool, especially an ingenious or novel one. The word originated in 1886 as gadjet, a sailors’ slang word for any small mechanical thing or part of a ship for which they lacked, or forgot, a name; perhaps from French gâchette meaning a catch-piece of a mechanism (fifteenth century), diminutive of gâche meaning staple of a lock.

More next time.

Paying Our Legislators

Most of the western democracies support their political parties by government subsidies. That prevents what amounts to bribery by private citizens and groups. We in the U.S., on the other hand, depend on contributions from citizens and organized groups such as corporations to finance our political parties. That means that whoever pays the most money gets the most political power.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a good example. It contributed roughly $149,000 to Senate recipients in the 2020 cycle, with nearly all the funds going to Republicans. Gun Owners of America (GOA), a rival gun-rights group, allocated $45,100 to Senate recipients in the 2020 cycle, with 100 percent of proceeds going to Republican figures.

The end result is, as long as Republicans retain power in the Congress, that gun control legislation is at best feeble, at worst non-existent. The only way to reduce gun violence is to reduce the number of guns in the hands of Americans. But as long at the NRA and GOA continue to buy the congressional votes, gun control will go nowhere.

That’s but one example of the vote buying that is routine in the U.S. Until we change the way we finance our politics, those with money will continue to buy legislation.

Why I Enjoy Words

The joy I take in words—their origin, meaning, history—comes from the man that I am. I spent my professional career as a linguist in seven languages. I worked as a spy using signals intelligence, the intercept and exploitation of the enemy’s radio communications, to inform friendly forces on the enemy’s whereabouts, his intent, and the size of his units. But all that came from my natural bent for languages. As a child I taught myself French and Italian, had four years of Latin in high school, studied German (among other things) in college, learned Vietnamese at the Army Languages School (now the Defense Language Institute), took classes in Chinese at Georgetown University, and studied Spanish at the Howard Community College, next door to me in Columbia, Maryland.

One end result of all that is my fascination with words, especially in English, the most polyglot language currently spoken. I take pleasure in discovering the origin of words and their etymology. For that, I use the classic Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English by Eric Partridge (Greenwich House, 1983) and the Online Etymological Dictionary to discover how words evolved. But I also trace the history of a given word and how it came to have its current meaning.

The most common and down-to-earth words in English come from the Anglo-Saxon roots of our language. But we have added to our vocabulary by borrowing from French (primarily because of the eleventh century Norman invasion of England led by the French-speaking William, the Conqueror). Later, as we delved into more complex issues, we appropriated words from Greek and Latin. And as Americans traveled the globe, we borrowed words from many different languages around the world.

We have, therefore, more words than we know what to do with. And I as a writer am blessed with endless choices as to what word to use to express precisely my intent.

How lucky can a writer be?

Wine

In my piano room, an honored place in my house, I have my wine chest, constructed to my specifications many years ago by a cabinet maker. Its approximate measurements are four-and-a-half feet wide, a foot-and-a-half deep, and three-and-a-half feet high. The right side of the chest consists of six drawers, each designed to hold two magnums of wine. The left side has seven drawers, each large enough to hold three standard-size bottles. The middle section of the chest holds eighteen chardonnay-size wine glasses hung upside down in racks.  It is made of a medium blond wood, maybe maple.

I only eat two meals a day and usually have wine with both. That means that I need to refill the chest when a half dozen drawers are empty—two or three times a year—requiring a trip to a huge wine store named Total Wine about a half an hour from where I live.

I have loved wine since I was a young man. My taste runs to the reds, and these days that means almost exclusively cabernet sauvignon—though I always keep a couple of bottles of champagne on hand to be ready for celebrations. I specialize in cheap cabernets which, as it turns out, come from all over the world: California, Australia, France, and various countries in South America.

I pity the majority of Americans who, unlike our European counterparts, have never learned to enjoy wine. It’s their loss.

Aid to Ukraine

The recent trend among Republicans to call for reductions in our aid to Ukraine is poisonous. It is in the vital interest of the U.S. and the whole western world to do everything it can to assist Ukraine and defeat the Russian invasion.

The war so far has revealed in dramatic detail Ukraine’s astonishing valor and Russia’s obvious incompetence. In the first 388 days of war in Ukraine, the Russian Army lost more than 163,320 soldiers. The Ukrainians, on the other hand, have suffered an estimated 13,000 soldiers killed in action.

Comparison of statistics on the two nations is revealing. Russia’s Gross National Product (GDP) is $1.48 trillion; Ukraine’s, at the end of 2020, was $155.5 billion. Russia’s population is 143,449,000; Ukraine’s is 43,793,000. So there was every reason to expect that Russia’s invasion would be a quick success. That it was not is stark evidence of Ukraine’s gallantry.

If Russia’s invasion is successful, we can be sure that others against neighboring nations will follow. It is in the U.S. vital interest to assure that the invasion is a failure. So we must do all we can to support Ukraine.

Like so many other things that Republicans led by Donald Trump support these days, reduction of our help to Ukraine would hurt the U.S. If anything, we must double down and increase out support.