Here.
One of the many enjoyable things about Harper's magazine is their "Readings" section. Generally they include adapted essays, police reports, reprints of non-standard magazine material. In short, it's a treasure trove. Although don't be surprised if there are a few duds.
This latest issue was no different. Two readings in particular have stuck with me--and given me many moments of mirth--this last week. Unfortunately Harper's is behind a pay wall. I have a subscription, and, for those of you at Oberlin, the library has copies. For those of you who don't have a subscription/have easy access to free magazines, well, I really don't know what to say to you.
First up is a letter from the London Times's resturant critic to his editors after they removed one indefinite article--"a"--from his review. The letter got leaked to the Guardian, who published it. The critic, Giles Coren, writes:
I wrote: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh.”
It appeared as: “I can’t think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh.”
There is no length issue. This is someone thinking, “I’ll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and I know best.”
Well, you fucking don’t. ...
And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed “a” so that the stress that should have fallen on “nosh” is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you’re winding up a piece of prose, meter is crucial. Can’t you hear? Can’t you hear that it is wrong? It’s not fucking rocket science. It’s fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for the Times, and I have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Read the whole thing if you can, it's worth it. Also in Harper's, one of their unfailingly funny lists (not to be confused with "The Harper's Index," which is also often funny). Some choice excerpts:
memoir: From the Latin memoria, meaning “memory,” a popular form in which the writer remembers entire passages of dialogue from the past, with the ultimate goal of blaming the writer’s parents for his current psychological challenges.
novel: A quaint, longer form that fell out of fashion with the advent of the memoir.
clandestine science fiction novel: A work set in the future that receives a strong reception from the literary world as long as no one mentions that it is, in fact, science fiction; for example, The Road, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
academic essay: Alas, an unread form required for tenure.
experimental writing: The result of supreme artistic courage when a writer is willing to sacrifice structure, character, plot, insight, wisdom, social commentary, context, precedent, and punctuation.
deconstructionism: A moderately successful attempt by the French to avenge the loss of Paris as the global center of literature.
Many giggles all around. Happy Saturday, reader(s).
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