Perfect Punctuation
Another “Mildred Pierce”
Are you a Mildred Pierce fan? James M. Cain’s recently discovered manuscript will be released next year by Hard Case Crime.
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“Unhappy in Their Own Ways”
This week in book-related infographics: A look at the Russian novelists, “Unhappy in Their Own Ways,” from The New York Times.
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A Look Back at the Old Future of Books
At Print Magazine, Buzz Poole looks at The Electric Information Age Book, which chronicles the innovative heyday of book packaging, when the publishers “were the ones breaking down the walls and changing the rules as they went.”
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The Rest of the Story
In this week’s New York Times Magazine, a collaboration with ProPublica has produced a 13,000-word (!) article on what happened at New Orleans Memorial Medial Center where a number of patients died in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Who says long-form journalism is dead!
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Podcasts For Writers
Writers, are you looking for some great podcasts to play on your way to work? Jon Reiss is rounding up his favorites just for you, then. Here’s part one, which we especially endorse because our friend Brad Listi gets mentioned first.
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Once Upon a Time In Japan
You will not want to miss this possibly true ghost story from David Mitchell over at LitHub. This piece comes from the first installment of Freeman’s, which is out now, and which includes such fantastic writers as Mitchell, Haruki Murakami, and Louise Erdrich.
Cataloguing Twitter (Or Just the Very Best)
James Gleick, writing for the New York Review of Books, looks at how the Library of Congress has begun “stockpiling the entire Twitterverse, or Tweetosphere, or whatever we’ll end up calling it” in order to create a modern-day “library of Babel.” I’ll admit that it sounds insane to collect the tweets of ~500 million users, so instead I offer an alternative. Let’s just record everything RT’d by Pentametron2013 for posterity, eh?
Microscopic Tears
Photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher uses powerful scanning electron microscopes to provide “an unexpected view of [a] familiar subject: … human tears.”
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Punctuation marks have unique personalities, and if they formed a large dysfunctional family, forced to gather together for some sort of mandatory event would be:
a.) Parenthese: Passive aggressive, snipey aunt who throws cold water over everyone’s good news with stink bombs of insults surrounded by insincerely-voiced congratulations.
b.) Em-dash: Uncle returned from extended tour of English-teaching in Thailand. Furtive eyes, caught kicking the cat in the pantry when his brandy runs out and blizzard prevents run to “packie” for more.
c.) Ellipses: Cousin with light brown hair, light brown clothes, light brown eyes. No one can ever remember her name. Has never been able to complete a whole sentence at dinnertime without someone else interrupting her.
d.) Colon: Grandfather, 42 year employee of Government Printing Office, everything he says is an official-sounding pronouncement about weather. Is actually recalling the 1978 Blizzard and thinks it is still 1978. Found wearing several Red Sox baseball caps at the same time and tinkering with the furnace in an alarming manner.
e.) Period: Father, 26 year employee of Government Printing Office, all pronouncements are official-sounding. With add additional period and become a colon by 2035.
Punctuation Alert!
Today (12/4/2014) the Washington Post reviewed “Suspended Sentences – Three Novellas” by Patrick Modiano. The first, “Afterimages,” describes an odd, furtive character who disappears one day without a trace:
“As the narrator remarks, ‘Of all the punctuation marks, he told me, ellipses were his favorite.”
Moe Murph
Still Favors the Em-dash for Characterization
Whoa, Moe Murph — Packie? Red Sox caps? Blizzard of 1978? Furnace??? I hear the siren call of the Bay State. If you ah not from they-ah, I am wicked impressed with the authenticity of yaw voice. A tad dispirited that I still don’t know what an em-dash is (perhaps one should have been used above?) but loved your dysfunctional family, especially the ellipses . . .now get outta he-ah . . .
@priskill
Ha Ha… yes, I am from Boston. This is not quite “my” family, but a couple of the bits and pieces fit, including my poor grandfather and his furnace fiddling and multiple hat wearing at the end of his life. Also, our entire family does tend to all speak at the same time and we do have one cousin who never can get a word in edgewise. And she is quite “beige” in affect. :)
The uncle, dad, and the aunt are bits and pieces cobbled together from my fetid swamp of a brain…
If you want to read some wonderful examples of Em-dash, read the poetry of Emily Dickinson! The Em-dash creates a wonderful sense of motion and ease.
(I laughed out loud at the Modiano review today!)
Best Regards, Moe Murph
@Moe Murph Well, I loved it (that poor and beige cousin!) and thank you for clarifying things — I thought the Belle of Am’erstt just used plain old dashes — I’m a big dasher, myself, but mostly from indecision regarding commas and such — as always, you entertain and elucidat, MM!
@priskill
Just a bit more elucidatin’…..
My personal favorite for grammar guides is “The Deluxe Transitive Grammar: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed” – Karen Elizabeth Gordon (Pantheon; Revised Edition – 8/10/1993).
The title alone makes it awesome, but the contents are wonderful as well.
Moe Murph
Oh Bosh! Correct Title:
The Deluxe Transitive Vampire: The Ultimate Handbook of Grammar for the Innocent, the Eager, and the Doomed”
@Moe Murph — I am all of the above! I, E, & D — I will look for this — vampires and serial commas in the same title ! Thank you, MM!