Why can't I do that?

These days I spend about half of my working hours writing and editing. Every now and then I turn out a phrase or even a sentence that I'm proud of. But I had cause last week to pull down from the bookshelf Barbara Tuchman's justly famous 1962 history of WWI The Guns of August. This was one of JFK's favourite books, and it's possible to see a keen sense of wanting to avoid the sort of stupidity that Europe fell into in 1914 in his dealings with the Soviets in 1962-3.

But it's the writing that just kills me in this book. Here's the first paragraph:

So gorgeous was the spectacle on the May morning of 1910 when nine kings rode in the funeral of Edward VII of England that the crowd, waiting in hushed and black-clad awe, could not keep back gasps of admiration. In scarlet and green and blue and purple, three by three the sovereigns rode through the palace gates, with plumed helmets, gold braid, crimson sashes, and jeweled orders flashing in the sun. After them came five heirs apparent, forty more imperial or royal highnesses, seven queens – four dowager and three regnant – and a scattering of special ambassadors from uncrowned countries. Together they represented seventy nations in the greatest assemblage of royalty and rank ever gathered in one place and, of its kind, the last. The muffled tongue of Big Ben tolled nine by the clock as the cortege left the palace, but on history’s clock it was sunset, and the sun of the old world was setting in a dying blaze of splendor never to be seen again.

Tuchman said it took her eight hours to write that paragraph. I don't think I could do it in eight years. I hereby announce that I want to be Barbara Tuchman when I grow up.

It's summer!

To celebrate the arrival of summer, here's one of the best songs on the topic.



Gotta love these guys. There's a fine line between being clever and overly wordy in songwriting (Indigo Girls I'm looking at you here). These guys stay on just the right side of that line. I liked it so much I pinched the word 'panoply' for one of my professional publications.

The post that almost was

I recently bought a book of reprints of early super hero comics (we're talking late 30s early 40s). The sheer badness of some of them is breathtaking, but there was one that just begged for lampooning on this blog.

Unfortunately, I was beaten to it by the guys at Stupid Comics. They did such a good job I have nothing to add. I'll just give you a teaser - a panel that is just bizarre on its own (and in truth isn't really helped much by the context):

But I have to give Stupid Comics its due. I don't think I was going to come up with as good a caption for this panel as they did:

"The weed of injecting gorillas with secret serum bears bitter fruit of dismemberment!! A lesson for the ages."

I dips me lid.

A car sticker I'd like to see:

Am I the 'Bradman of bloggers' ?

Gideon Haigh is one of my favourite sports journalists. I took his compilation of cricket articles 'Inside Out' away with me on holiday recently. Here's a paragraph I really liked:

Today, 'Bradman' is the benchmark, the ultimate compliment. Nobody speaks of Tiger Woods being the 'Gary Sobers of golf', or Roger Federer as the 'Sunil Gavasksr of tennis'. Indeed, it was ever thus: Walter Lindrum became 'the Bradman of billiards', George Moore the 'Bradman of racing' and Peter Brock the 'Bradman of Bathurst', while Richie Benaud keeps on keeping on, having been dubbed the 'Bradman of the microphone' by English journalist Tim deLisle. It is not a title lightly bestowed. Some believe that John Howard's premiership was doomed from the moment Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey called him 'the Don Bradman of Australian politics' last September, inevitably destined for an Eric Hollies moment. Nor does it cut both ways: nobody will ever want to be known as 'the John Howard of cricket'.

A simple misunderstanding

My daughter showed me a picture from the equestrian event at the Paralympics. I didn't have my glasses on so had to guess a bit at what I was seeing. This led to another cartoon idea...

I think this could be even less tasteful if we named the horse Captain Oats.

LONDON 2012

I was trolling through free download books looking for things to read on a recent long haul flight, and I ended up with Jack London’s 'Call of the Wild' – a book I read for the first time probably forty years ago – and Teddy Roosevelt’s 'The Rough Riders', a first-hand but somewhat breathless memoir of the First Volunteer Cavalry Unit and the war in Cuba in the 1890s.

Now, anyone who is well-read in the classics will know that London and Roosevelt have more in common than being adventurous types at large in the United States in the late 1800s. For a start, both of them encountered a young Scrooge McDuck, another larger than life character on the loose in America at the time.

Here’s London as a young correspondent in the Yukon during the 1890s gold rush seeing Scrooge in action up close:
















  
All images (C) Walt Disney - used here for review purposes only.
 
TR met Scrooge, not once, but three times, and was reportedly much influenced by him:

 

Scrooge even encountered the Rough Riders—although they were no match for his sister...

(If you want to know how this finishes, you’ll have to read Don Rosa’s ‘Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion’.)

But none of that is the point of this post. It turns out the TR and Jack London had a showdown of their own. This one took place in the pages of The Atlantic, New York Times and Everybody’s Magazine, during the ‘Nature fakers’ literary controversy of the early 20th century. In a nutshell, the argument was between those writers who anthropomorphised animal characters and those who preferred a more realistic natural history. Roosevelt, as a man of action who had spent his fair share of time in the outdoors, was firmly in the latter camp. Although it must be said that his relationship with animals was complex—he was famed for his hunting expeditions but also did more for the National Park system than any other President, placing an average of 84,000 acres per day under national protection during his two terms in office. When Roosevelt weighed into the debate in 1907 in Everybody's Magazine, he singled out a few authors for criticism, including Jack London for his depiction of dog fights in 'Call of the Wild' and 'White Fang'.

Anyone who has read 'Call of the Wild' lately will realise that London’s depiction of dogs is pretty unsentimental and not exactly up the Beatrix Potter end of animal stories. London was much aggrieved by being put into the ‘fluffy bunnies’ category of writing, but said nothing at the time. He responded a year later in Collier’s Magazine:

I have been guilty of writing two books about dogs. The writing of these two stories, on my part, was in truth a protest against the 'humanizing' of animals, of which it seemed to me several 'animal writers' had been profoundly guilty. Time and again, and many times, in my narratives, I wrote, speaking of my dog-heroes: 'He did not think these things; he merely did them,' etc. And I did this repeatedly, to the clogging of my narrative and in violation of my artistic canons; and I did it in order to hammer into the average human understanding that these dog-heroes of mine were not directed by abstract reasoning, but by instinct, sensation, and emotion, and by simple reasoning. Also, I endeavored to make my stories in line with the facts of evolution; I hewed them to the mark set by scientific research, and awoke, one day, to find myself bundled neck and crop into the camp of the nature-fakers.

Reading that, I can imagine London choking on his cornflakes when he read the Roosevelt article.

This (finally) brings us to the point of this blog. American Presidents have been aloof from pointless literary squabbles for far too long. And being a presidential election year, it’s time for action. I’m not sure what the position of the two candidates on the nature faker’s controversy is—perhaps Mitt could ask his dog about it when he next he takes him down from the roof of the car? But in any case, that’s last century’s controversy and time has moved on.

Mr Obama and Mr Romney, it’s time for you to get outraged about the declining use of the semi-colon. If you don’t, this blog will; the semi-colon demands more respect. And while you are at it, it’s time for a Presidential pardon for Jack London. So I’m launching a campaign to get that done too. I’m going to call it 'LONDON 2012'.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, there seems to be an angry email from Boris Johnson in my inbox.