Monday, May 25, 2009
A free book
Proceed with all deliberate speed to The Lexicographer’s Rules, the blog where Grant Barrett is making available an electronic version of his book, The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, at no cost.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen
Eat Drink Man Weblog, my son’s food blog, returns with a post on grilled vegetable salad. It’s summertime. Enjoy.
Things you know that are wrong
Two points from Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman that you ought to keep in mind if you are serious about writing and editing:
It is better to be understood than to be correct.
As the language changes, no one has more than one vote.
These are salutary cautions for anyone tempted to pedantry about language and usage. Not that Ms. O’Conner and Mr. Kellerman are of the anything-goes school, but they want you to know what is reliable about language and what is not. To that end, they present in Origin of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language (Random House, 267 pages, $22) a catalogue of shibboleths and superstitions.
Predictably, they include the nonsense that both linguists and sensible prescriptivists have been attacking for generations: the bogus rules against splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, using none with a plural verb, and the like.
But there is a lot of error to be cleared away. Rule of thumb comes from a workman’s using his thumb as a rough measuring tool, not from a legal right of a husband to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. No room to swing a cat has nothing to do with flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Xmas includes an abbreviation of Christ using the Greek letter from Christos; there is no atheistical war on Christmas involved.
They advise that it’s time to give up the struggle over gauntlet and gantlet, data as a singular, decimate as strictly meaning a tenth (though not as equivalent of destroyed), beg the question as solely a term of logic, hopefully as a sentence adverb, bemused as meaning only muddled or confused. I share their regret over the last count, but, you know, it is more important to be understood than to be correct.
There is a great deal of information in this book, and the tone is relaxed rather than formal. (I did occasionally think that the authors might have occasionally suppressed the impulse to end nearly every section with a piece of wordplay.) You may already be familiar with the work of Ms. O’Conner from her previous books, Woe Is I and Words Fail Me, as well as the popular language blog Grammarphobia. Her advice should be taken seriously.
It is better to be understood than to be correct.
As the language changes, no one has more than one vote.
These are salutary cautions for anyone tempted to pedantry about language and usage. Not that Ms. O’Conner and Mr. Kellerman are of the anything-goes school, but they want you to know what is reliable about language and what is not. To that end, they present in Origin of the Specious: Myths and Misconceptions of the English Language (Random House, 267 pages, $22) a catalogue of shibboleths and superstitions.
Predictably, they include the nonsense that both linguists and sensible prescriptivists have been attacking for generations: the bogus rules against splitting infinitives, ending sentences with prepositions, using none with a plural verb, and the like.
But there is a lot of error to be cleared away. Rule of thumb comes from a workman’s using his thumb as a rough measuring tool, not from a legal right of a husband to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. No room to swing a cat has nothing to do with flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Xmas includes an abbreviation of Christ using the Greek letter from Christos; there is no atheistical war on Christmas involved.
They advise that it’s time to give up the struggle over gauntlet and gantlet, data as a singular, decimate as strictly meaning a tenth (though not as equivalent of destroyed), beg the question as solely a term of logic, hopefully as a sentence adverb, bemused as meaning only muddled or confused. I share their regret over the last count, but, you know, it is more important to be understood than to be correct.
There is a great deal of information in this book, and the tone is relaxed rather than formal. (I did occasionally think that the authors might have occasionally suppressed the impulse to end nearly every section with a piece of wordplay.) You may already be familiar with the work of Ms. O’Conner from her previous books, Woe Is I and Words Fail Me, as well as the popular language blog Grammarphobia. Her advice should be taken seriously.
Friday, May 22, 2009
That thing I say about baseball
A very kind note arrived today from Andy Knobel, a veteran sports copy editor who wound up under my purported authority for the past two years. Andy is very generous about me as an editor and a manager, and he leaves me feeling guilty.
The thing is, I loathe sports. (This has not been my best-kept secret.) I was a nearsighted, bookish child, bullied by non-bookish types who were, invariably, enthusiastic about sports and dim in the classroom. I have remained determinedly ignorant into my sixth decade about the basic rules of baseball, basketball, and football, to say nothing of the multitude of teams and players. I skipped my graduation exercises at Michigan State, in part to keep my record clean of never having set foot inside Spartan Stadium, and in six years in Syracuse I steered clear of Archbold Stadium as well. Were I there now, I would be keeping my distance from the repulsive Carrier Dome, which squats above the city.
That thing I say about baseball (it’s a verb), I also say about basketball, football, hockey, soccer, tennis, yachting, and all other forms of sport, known and potential. I would sooner be waterboarded than watch the Olympics. (I tolerate croquet a little, because my son’s alma mater humiliates the Naval Academy in a match every spring.) I am immune to Orioles madness and Ravens fever. The main consolation of my having been sacked by The Baltimore Sun is that I no longer have to dutifully go through the sports pages each morning.
This, if course, is nothing against Andy Knobel, for whom I have the deepest respect. I respect him for his detailed knowledge of the subject, as I would respect a scholar of Sumerian or any other arcane subject of which I am ignorant. And I admire his passion for accuracy and his unflagging determination to make things right. If I had any gift as a manager, it was the sense to let Andy do what needed to be done without my uninformed meddling.
I’m proud that one of my former students, Peter Blair, is a sports copy editor at The New York Times. He, too, knows his onions.
I wish them well. I wish all sports copy editors well in their struggle to provide fresh and accurate information to readers who crave it. I just don’t have that craving — never had it, never wanted it, and am delighted to be free of it.
The thing is, I loathe sports. (This has not been my best-kept secret.) I was a nearsighted, bookish child, bullied by non-bookish types who were, invariably, enthusiastic about sports and dim in the classroom. I have remained determinedly ignorant into my sixth decade about the basic rules of baseball, basketball, and football, to say nothing of the multitude of teams and players. I skipped my graduation exercises at Michigan State, in part to keep my record clean of never having set foot inside Spartan Stadium, and in six years in Syracuse I steered clear of Archbold Stadium as well. Were I there now, I would be keeping my distance from the repulsive Carrier Dome, which squats above the city.
That thing I say about baseball (it’s a verb), I also say about basketball, football, hockey, soccer, tennis, yachting, and all other forms of sport, known and potential. I would sooner be waterboarded than watch the Olympics. (I tolerate croquet a little, because my son’s alma mater humiliates the Naval Academy in a match every spring.) I am immune to Orioles madness and Ravens fever. The main consolation of my having been sacked by The Baltimore Sun is that I no longer have to dutifully go through the sports pages each morning.
This, if course, is nothing against Andy Knobel, for whom I have the deepest respect. I respect him for his detailed knowledge of the subject, as I would respect a scholar of Sumerian or any other arcane subject of which I am ignorant. And I admire his passion for accuracy and his unflagging determination to make things right. If I had any gift as a manager, it was the sense to let Andy do what needed to be done without my uninformed meddling.
I’m proud that one of my former students, Peter Blair, is a sports copy editor at The New York Times. He, too, knows his onions.
I wish them well. I wish all sports copy editors well in their struggle to provide fresh and accurate information to readers who crave it. I just don’t have that craving — never had it, never wanted it, and am delighted to be free of it.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Words for the times
Bought out: Having taken a buyout, an agreement to leave voluntarily in exchange for a substantial payment, often the equivalent of one or two weeks’ wages for each year of employment.
Fired: Dismissed for cause, such as incompetence or misconduct. It is a term of American origin, which the Online Etymology Dictionary attributes to the double meaning of discharge: to dismiss from work and to fire a gun.
Let go: Informal and noncommittal equivalent of laid off.
Laid off: Dismissed for economic reasons rather than employee performance or conduct. Layoffs used to be considered mainly in the context of union contracts, particularly those that provided for the employee’s return once business conditions improved. In the current climate, layoffs are frequently occurring when positions are being eliminated permanently.
Resigned: Left voluntarily. When coupled with a pious expression of desire to spend more time with one’s family, it is commonly supposed that the employee was given a good substantial nudge.
Retired: Took retirement, more or less voluntarily.
Sacked: Colloquial. Dismissed for any reason. Originally 19 th-century British, to give the sack, later to get the sack. The term perhaps referred originally to a workman’s leaving with his tools in a bag.
Terminated: A favorite of corporate-speak. This is the bureaucratic version of sacked. It carries overtones of the employee, his or her pathetic personal belongings in a cardboard box, being escorted to the curb by a security guard.
Fired: Dismissed for cause, such as incompetence or misconduct. It is a term of American origin, which the Online Etymology Dictionary attributes to the double meaning of discharge: to dismiss from work and to fire a gun.
Let go: Informal and noncommittal equivalent of laid off.
Laid off: Dismissed for economic reasons rather than employee performance or conduct. Layoffs used to be considered mainly in the context of union contracts, particularly those that provided for the employee’s return once business conditions improved. In the current climate, layoffs are frequently occurring when positions are being eliminated permanently.
Resigned: Left voluntarily. When coupled with a pious expression of desire to spend more time with one’s family, it is commonly supposed that the employee was given a good substantial nudge.
Retired: Took retirement, more or less voluntarily.
Sacked: Colloquial. Dismissed for any reason. Originally 19 th-century British, to give the sack, later to get the sack. The term perhaps referred originally to a workman’s leaving with his tools in a bag.
Terminated: A favorite of corporate-speak. This is the bureaucratic version of sacked. It carries overtones of the employee, his or her pathetic personal belongings in a cardboard box, being escorted to the curb by a security guard.
More empty ritual
My wife, Kathleen, was once in a class with a fellow Episcopalian, a woman whose firm pronouncement on Anglican worship was “No empty ritual.” My impulse, as the title of this post suggests, is to get as much of it as I can. Incense, yes, of course, and Anglican chant and vestments and processions and organ music you can feel through the soles of your feet.
Human beings are prone to ritual, and it turns up everywhere, including low-church congregations that shrink from the flourishes I like as being suspiciously popish. In the Presbyterian church where I played the organ as a lad, I was expected to provide soft music during the pastoral prayer, a supposedly extemporaneous effort by the minister. The pastoral prayer was so formulaic that I seldom had any difficulty making the music come out even with the “Amen.”
I come to this topic out of my continuing irritation with the classics professor at Dickinson College who advocates doing away with Latin in college diplomas. The Latin in diplomas is of a piece with the rest of academic ceremony.
On my son’s first day at St. John’s College, the gowned faculty entered the auditorium for a convocation, led by the college marshal carrying the mace. The mace used in academic processions is a symbol of authority; it is a lineal descendant of the mace of medieval weaponry. The entering freshmen, also gowned, brought up the rear. Each freshman was called to the stage to formally sign the college register, shake hands with the president of the college, and receive a copy of the Liddell-Hart Greek-English Lexicon.
At the defense of his senior essay earlier this year, John Paul, himself in cap and gown, followed three gowned faculty members into the college’s King William room to sit at a table and respond to questions about his essay for an hour, a pattern set by the defenses of theses in the medieval universities.
Ritual is what gives dignity to these occasions, marking them as set off from ordinary occasions.
And despite our firm American democratic sneering at the trappings of aristocracy, we love the stuff. Why else did multitudes get up well before dawn to watch on television the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer? Why else do hordes of American tourists (I was once one of them) stand on the street in London to watch the sovereign ride by in a carriage to open Parliament?
Here at home, we fire an artillery salute at the inauguration of a president. And I will hear in my head to the end of my days those muffled drums from John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession.
No doubt you are aware of long-surviving ritual patterns from your workplace.
At newspapers it was long the custom in the composing room to “bang out” departing printers on their last day of work. To bang out, one takes a pica pole, the printer’s metal rule, and pounds it vigorously on the nearest metal surface until the printer has left the room. There is no longer a composing room at The Sun, and there are no longer printers, but in the newsroom the custom has survived and has been observed in successive rounds of buyouts. Last summer, as Andy Faith, my mentor, colleague, and friend for more than twenty years, turned to leave the newsroom for the last time, we banged him out.
The purpose of the Latin in the diploma, the mace in the procession, the artillery fire, the incense, and the pica pole striking the cubicle divider may have no meaning in themselves, or may have lost much of their original meaning (Incense was carried through the streets of Rome before senators and other public officials).
But they do carry this meaning: We were not born yesterday. Whatever prodigies and novelties we may accomplish, we live in continuity with those who have gone before us. We use those ceremonies and rituals from the past to mark who we are and where we come from, to set off times and occasions as not being of common stuff.
Human beings are prone to ritual, and it turns up everywhere, including low-church congregations that shrink from the flourishes I like as being suspiciously popish. In the Presbyterian church where I played the organ as a lad, I was expected to provide soft music during the pastoral prayer, a supposedly extemporaneous effort by the minister. The pastoral prayer was so formulaic that I seldom had any difficulty making the music come out even with the “Amen.”
I come to this topic out of my continuing irritation with the classics professor at Dickinson College who advocates doing away with Latin in college diplomas. The Latin in diplomas is of a piece with the rest of academic ceremony.
On my son’s first day at St. John’s College, the gowned faculty entered the auditorium for a convocation, led by the college marshal carrying the mace. The mace used in academic processions is a symbol of authority; it is a lineal descendant of the mace of medieval weaponry. The entering freshmen, also gowned, brought up the rear. Each freshman was called to the stage to formally sign the college register, shake hands with the president of the college, and receive a copy of the Liddell-Hart Greek-English Lexicon.
At the defense of his senior essay earlier this year, John Paul, himself in cap and gown, followed three gowned faculty members into the college’s King William room to sit at a table and respond to questions about his essay for an hour, a pattern set by the defenses of theses in the medieval universities.
Ritual is what gives dignity to these occasions, marking them as set off from ordinary occasions.
And despite our firm American democratic sneering at the trappings of aristocracy, we love the stuff. Why else did multitudes get up well before dawn to watch on television the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer? Why else do hordes of American tourists (I was once one of them) stand on the street in London to watch the sovereign ride by in a carriage to open Parliament?
Here at home, we fire an artillery salute at the inauguration of a president. And I will hear in my head to the end of my days those muffled drums from John F. Kennedy’s funeral procession.
No doubt you are aware of long-surviving ritual patterns from your workplace.
At newspapers it was long the custom in the composing room to “bang out” departing printers on their last day of work. To bang out, one takes a pica pole, the printer’s metal rule, and pounds it vigorously on the nearest metal surface until the printer has left the room. There is no longer a composing room at The Sun, and there are no longer printers, but in the newsroom the custom has survived and has been observed in successive rounds of buyouts. Last summer, as Andy Faith, my mentor, colleague, and friend for more than twenty years, turned to leave the newsroom for the last time, we banged him out.
The purpose of the Latin in the diploma, the mace in the procession, the artillery fire, the incense, and the pica pole striking the cubicle divider may have no meaning in themselves, or may have lost much of their original meaning (Incense was carried through the streets of Rome before senators and other public officials).
But they do carry this meaning: We were not born yesterday. Whatever prodigies and novelties we may accomplish, we live in continuity with those who have gone before us. We use those ceremonies and rituals from the past to mark who we are and where we come from, to set off times and occasions as not being of common stuff.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Mr. Sullivan's challenge
David Sullivan, following the lead of Craig Lancaster, raises the issue of what copy editors’ duties should be at our remaining newspapers. He points out, rightly, that those duties have long been defined as (a) things that no one else at the paper wants to do, (b) things that no one else knows how to do, and (c) things that no one else wants to know how to do. And he thinks it’s time copy editors asked for a job description.
You civilians out there for whom copy editing is a mystery, you should know that the high command at most newspapers shares your mystification. Nearly all of them used to be reporters — getting into top management from the copy desk is like winning the Mega Millions lottery: It happens to a few people, but don’t count on its happening to you — and virtually none of them have any practical knowledge of how to produce a printed page. Or, for that matter, a Web page.
So follow Mr. Suullivan’s advice. The top brass is uttering all that cant about reinventing the newspaper, to disguise that many of them haven’t a clue how to accomplish that and are so terrified as to be on the verge of losing sphincter control. If they are reinventing the paper, they should face what that reinvention means for the copy desk. Otherwise, they’ll redefine beat structures for reporters and talk about reporters as bloggers and photographers and videographers, and they’ll ignore the copy desk except to assume that it will take on anything that is left over.
Approach them. Ask what exactly they want. How much fact-checking are you expected to do? What level of errors is acceptable? (Everyone knows that reducing the editing means more errors, and readers have already twigged to that.) How much time for formatting for print and how much for formatting for the Web? What skills are you expected to master, and what training for them is being offered? Just what, with a reduced staff, are they willing to sacrifice? What cooperation can be expected from the other departments? You ought not to be rude, but you have to be persistent.
Cheap advice from me, you may say; I’m out of the fray. But if I still held responsibility for copy editing at The Sun, I would be in the editor’s office trying to clarify the expectations and nail down the details.
If you don’t stand up for yourselves, it’s unlikely that anyone else will stand up for you.
You civilians out there for whom copy editing is a mystery, you should know that the high command at most newspapers shares your mystification. Nearly all of them used to be reporters — getting into top management from the copy desk is like winning the Mega Millions lottery: It happens to a few people, but don’t count on its happening to you — and virtually none of them have any practical knowledge of how to produce a printed page. Or, for that matter, a Web page.
So follow Mr. Suullivan’s advice. The top brass is uttering all that cant about reinventing the newspaper, to disguise that many of them haven’t a clue how to accomplish that and are so terrified as to be on the verge of losing sphincter control. If they are reinventing the paper, they should face what that reinvention means for the copy desk. Otherwise, they’ll redefine beat structures for reporters and talk about reporters as bloggers and photographers and videographers, and they’ll ignore the copy desk except to assume that it will take on anything that is left over.
Approach them. Ask what exactly they want. How much fact-checking are you expected to do? What level of errors is acceptable? (Everyone knows that reducing the editing means more errors, and readers have already twigged to that.) How much time for formatting for print and how much for formatting for the Web? What skills are you expected to master, and what training for them is being offered? Just what, with a reduced staff, are they willing to sacrifice? What cooperation can be expected from the other departments? You ought not to be rude, but you have to be persistent.
Cheap advice from me, you may say; I’m out of the fray. But if I still held responsibility for copy editing at The Sun, I would be in the editor’s office trying to clarify the expectations and nail down the details.
If you don’t stand up for yourselves, it’s unlikely that anyone else will stand up for you.
Some catching up to do
The past week has been a little hectic, what with my son’s graduation from college, my wife’s family in town for the great event, and a one-day stay in St. Joseph’s Hospital.* So there’s a little catching up to do.
Item: At Fritinancy, Nancy Friedman devoted a series of posts last week to seriously ill-judged brand names: Blellow, ngmoco:) [yes, with a damn emoticon], Infegy, and Shiva [shoes, if you can believe it]. The Recent Posts menu on the right side of her main page has the links.
Item: I saw in this morning’s Sun that the venerable David Herbert Donald has died. His biography of Abraham Lincoln is one of the books that you ought to have read. Gore Vidal consulted him in writing the novel Lincoln.
Item: Language Log has offered up a series of great posts over the past week: Geoffrey Pullum’s noticing an apparatus labeled INERT REACTANT on the Enterprise in the latest Star Trek movie, Mark Liberman and Benjamin Zimmer commenting on words that people find appealing and words that people find disgusting, the peculiarities of British tabloid headlines. See for yourself.
Item: If you have the time, the comments on Elizabeth Large’s post, “The top 10 most controversial restaurants in Baltimore,” are a hoot and a half.
Item: Some readers have found themselves unable to post comments on this blog. One, Adrian Morgan, posted about the problem on his own blog. He has since discovered that he can post comments if he comes to this blog through Internet Explorer, but not through Firefox.
Though the comments here are moderated, apart from that, I’ve made the blog as open to comments as Blogspot software permits. Should you have trouble posting comments, send me you comment by e-mail, and I’ll post it myself.
*Mild chest pain Monday morning. Doctor could find no cause, recommended that a gentleman of my age should take no chances. Spent Monday night for observation at St. Joseph’s and underwent a stress test Tuesday morning. No problems found. Back to Plymouth Road at noontime, just as J.P. was completing work on a tangy rice salad.
Item: At Fritinancy, Nancy Friedman devoted a series of posts last week to seriously ill-judged brand names: Blellow, ngmoco:) [yes, with a damn emoticon], Infegy, and Shiva [shoes, if you can believe it]. The Recent Posts menu on the right side of her main page has the links.
Item: I saw in this morning’s Sun that the venerable David Herbert Donald has died. His biography of Abraham Lincoln is one of the books that you ought to have read. Gore Vidal consulted him in writing the novel Lincoln.
Item: Language Log has offered up a series of great posts over the past week: Geoffrey Pullum’s noticing an apparatus labeled INERT REACTANT on the Enterprise in the latest Star Trek movie, Mark Liberman and Benjamin Zimmer commenting on words that people find appealing and words that people find disgusting, the peculiarities of British tabloid headlines. See for yourself.
Item: If you have the time, the comments on Elizabeth Large’s post, “The top 10 most controversial restaurants in Baltimore,” are a hoot and a half.
Item: Some readers have found themselves unable to post comments on this blog. One, Adrian Morgan, posted about the problem on his own blog. He has since discovered that he can post comments if he comes to this blog through Internet Explorer, but not through Firefox.
Though the comments here are moderated, apart from that, I’ve made the blog as open to comments as Blogspot software permits. Should you have trouble posting comments, send me you comment by e-mail, and I’ll post it myself.
*Mild chest pain Monday morning. Doctor could find no cause, recommended that a gentleman of my age should take no chances. Spent Monday night for observation at St. Joseph’s and underwent a stress test Tuesday morning. No problems found. Back to Plymouth Road at noontime, just as J.P. was completing work on a tangy rice salad.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Hire someone to look things up
On The Mentalist tonight, they’re looking for someone going by the name of Taliferro.
They are pronouncing it Tal-i-a-fer-r0. The name is conventionally pronounced as Tolliver.
They are pronouncing it Tal-i-a-fer-r0. The name is conventionally pronounced as Tolliver.
Go, Annie, go
I recall enjoying Michael Malone’s First Lady very much and was pleased to have the chance to read his latest novel, The Four Corners of the Sky (Sourcebooks Landmark, 544 pages, $24.99). It did not disappoint.
Annie Peregrine Goode, a pilot in the U.S. Navy, returns to Emerald, N.C., for her twenty-sixth birthday and hears from her father, a con man who abandoned her in Emerald on her seventh birthday. He has a dying wish to see her again. He wants her to fly to him in the Piper Warrior airplane he left for her as a child, the King of the Sky.
Well, Annie hates her father for abandoning her and for being a lifelong liar. She has her own problems, including her pending divorce from a dim but handsome Navy pilot, and her confidants in Emerald, the people who raised her, her lesbian aunt Sam (Samantha) and Sam’s lifelong friend, Dr. Clark Goode, are skeptical of her taking to the air in an old plane during tornado weather.
But Annie is a risk-taker and a fast-mover, and soon she’s off into a web of intrigue involving her father and his multitudinous lies; a religious statue, La Reina Coronado del Mar, of incalculable value; a stubborn Miami police officer; a Cuban exile who makes a living by faking being hit by old ladies’ automobiles; and other characters on both sides of the law.
There are intrigues within intrigues, mysteries and family secrets, and the whole improbable set of twists and turns is, as in so many novels, a voyage of self-discovery for the heroine.
Mr. Malone has a gift for comic writing. Annie tells her childhood friend Georgette about a man who “could be your type,” and Georgette responds, “He’s my type if he’s got a combined total of at least three arms and legs and he weighs less than four times his IQ. Can he spell his last name? Has he been convicted of any capital crimes—I don’t mean just charged, but actually convicted?”
And the chapter on the funeral of Coach Ronny Buchstabe — a triumph of American make-it-up-as-you-go-along commemorations in which, among other things, “three young fat girls clambered up the steps and sang harmonies in a medley of ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech’” — must not be missed.
Along the way there are a few maxims about life that are worth considering: that people who have style just might not have brains and that “you can’t stop enjoying things just because you’re bad at them.”
And this: “It was true that despite their blessings, the Peregrines had always been a sad family. Most of them were American enough to believe they had a right not to be sad, an inalienable right not only to the pursuit of happiness, but to its capture. So, while a few had skidded down the shale of life without digging in their heels, most Peregrines had died scrabbling at every outcropping they passed along the way—a new job, a new marriage, a drink or a sport or a church or a chance—determined to grab the American dream before they landed at the bottom. Wasn’t it the national story that failure was the fault of those who failed?”
I confess that there were some longueurs in those five hundred pages as Mr. Malone wound up his plot, but he proceeded to spring it in a highly satisfactory series of comic climaxes.
Annie Peregrine Goode, a pilot in the U.S. Navy, returns to Emerald, N.C., for her twenty-sixth birthday and hears from her father, a con man who abandoned her in Emerald on her seventh birthday. He has a dying wish to see her again. He wants her to fly to him in the Piper Warrior airplane he left for her as a child, the King of the Sky.
Well, Annie hates her father for abandoning her and for being a lifelong liar. She has her own problems, including her pending divorce from a dim but handsome Navy pilot, and her confidants in Emerald, the people who raised her, her lesbian aunt Sam (Samantha) and Sam’s lifelong friend, Dr. Clark Goode, are skeptical of her taking to the air in an old plane during tornado weather.
But Annie is a risk-taker and a fast-mover, and soon she’s off into a web of intrigue involving her father and his multitudinous lies; a religious statue, La Reina Coronado del Mar, of incalculable value; a stubborn Miami police officer; a Cuban exile who makes a living by faking being hit by old ladies’ automobiles; and other characters on both sides of the law.
There are intrigues within intrigues, mysteries and family secrets, and the whole improbable set of twists and turns is, as in so many novels, a voyage of self-discovery for the heroine.
Mr. Malone has a gift for comic writing. Annie tells her childhood friend Georgette about a man who “could be your type,” and Georgette responds, “He’s my type if he’s got a combined total of at least three arms and legs and he weighs less than four times his IQ. Can he spell his last name? Has he been convicted of any capital crimes—I don’t mean just charged, but actually convicted?”
And the chapter on the funeral of Coach Ronny Buchstabe — a triumph of American make-it-up-as-you-go-along commemorations in which, among other things, “three young fat girls clambered up the steps and sang harmonies in a medley of ‘Amazing Grace’ and ‘Rambling Wreck from Georgia Tech’” — must not be missed.
Along the way there are a few maxims about life that are worth considering: that people who have style just might not have brains and that “you can’t stop enjoying things just because you’re bad at them.”
And this: “It was true that despite their blessings, the Peregrines had always been a sad family. Most of them were American enough to believe they had a right not to be sad, an inalienable right not only to the pursuit of happiness, but to its capture. So, while a few had skidded down the shale of life without digging in their heels, most Peregrines had died scrabbling at every outcropping they passed along the way—a new job, a new marriage, a drink or a sport or a church or a chance—determined to grab the American dream before they landed at the bottom. Wasn’t it the national story that failure was the fault of those who failed?”
I confess that there were some longueurs in those five hundred pages as Mr. Malone wound up his plot, but he proceeded to spring it in a highly satisfactory series of comic climaxes.
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