That is a Fault Indeed, but I Cannot Laugh At It

I don't know why I remember this out of all the hundreds of movies I've seen and books I've read, but 25 years ago, Chevy Chase starred in a movie about a sportswriter from New York City who moves to the country to fulfill his dream of writing a novel. Wacky hijinks ensue. I have no memory at all of the wacky hijinks. What I do remember is the scene where he has finally finished his novel, and he gives the manuscript to his wife. She sits down to start reading it, him watching expectantly, and as she reads her shoulders slump, her head bows low, and in a few minutes she is weeping, the manuscript drooping from her hands as she sobs, "It's teh-eh-eh-eh-errible."

I had a similar experience recently. At the Festival of Faith & Writing, I got chatting with a woman who had a booth in the exhibition area. We had a tremendous amount in common--she was even a Quaker for most of her life, which makes her the first other Quaker I've run into at the Festival who wasn't Parker Palmer or Brent Bill. We chatted away so comfortably that I might have met my new best friend.

She had written a novel, one of a handful of books recently published by a new small press. Of course I bought a copy. I am a sucker for the personal touch. I can't bond with someone like that, and not buy her book.

It's a beautiful book, with a lovely cover that fulfills all four of the principals of good design: Contrast, Alignment, Repetition, and Proximity. The illustration and coloring evoke a mood very appropriate to the book's story and setting.

The paper is high quality, and the typography avoids most (though not quite all) of the errors usually made by small presses and the self-published. The drop-caps are crisp and well done, never impinging on the neighboring text; the printer's ornaments are graceful; the font is well-chosen and laid out with appropriate leading; widows and orphans are rare.

Alas, the book itself--the 450-page book--is terrible. It is terrible from the first line; by the end of the first page my shoulders were slumping. Apparently the press spent all its money on designers and typographers and had nothing left for any kind of editor, either to correct the ubiquitous problems of comma usage or to suggest the many large and small cuts that cry out to be made in the text. The book is a perfect fractal; every part of it, every sentence on every page I have looked at, is just as bad as the whole thing. It reads like the essays my freshman composition students used to turn in, stretched to a thousand times their natural length.

I don't know what allows a bad writer to finish a book this ambitious. It can't be the love of language or the thrill of a well-turned phrase, because there are no well-turned phrases here, there is no language to love. It does not seem that she could motivated by a love of good books, because surely anyone who had read some sufficient number of them would have developed at least enough of a natural ear to avoid perhaps one, or even two, of this writer's many errors of style and usage.

The author of this book is a nice person, warm, personable, caring. This, of course, does not excuse bad writing. She cares very much about the story she has to tell; she is earnestly convinced that it is important that this story be told, and just as important that it be read. She expects that it will bring readers "healing, inspiration, and blessing." This is also not an excuse.

And yet I do not just excuse this writer. I admire her. I admire her book, which is her vision made manifest. Like that vocal ministry that can seem so excruciating, so terribly beside the point in worship but which speaks to someone in the room, I expect this book will find its readers. That is what a writer hopes for, and the terrible ones, perhaps, deserve it just as much as the good ones.

Let Me Spell That Out For You

So, when people talk to each other, there are at least two levels of communication going on. One is very direct: the words you're saying. But the other is implicit, and has to do with what the words imply, non-literal meanings that accrue because of cultural conventions or long usage. Linguists call this latter meaning "pragmatics," though I'm sure I've done a poor job of describing it.

So I'll give some examples. I have many to hand, because one of Raider's favorite things is to tease me by pretending he has no notion of pragmatics. So, for 17 years, I have almost-daily been subjected to little conversations like these:

Me: Raider, have you seen my shoes?

Raider: Many a time!

or

Me: Raider, I'd like a cup of tea.

Raider: And no wonder! Tea is both delicious and soothingly warm!

He likes to pretend he can only hear what I have literally said, so he doesn't know that "have you seen my shoes?" is a perfectly conventional construction meaning, "I cannot find my shoes. Do you know where they are right now?" Or that "I'd like a cup of tea" is more than a declarative statement about my appetite.

I'm thinking about this for a couple of reasons. One is that Eric is learning the difference between "statements" and "commands" in his Language Arts curriculum, and it's interesting to think about how often a statement can actually be a command ("I'm cold" can mean "turn the heat up," or "hand me that blanket"; "I'd like a cup of tea" can actually mean, "get me a cup of tea, please"; "I'm getting hungry" can mean, "please start cooking dinner.")

The other is that I've had several occasions recently to reflect on how very often people think they've said something, but they haven't. A couple of weeks ago I got an e-mail from an acquaintance about a conversation we'd had a few months ago. In the e-mail, she described herself as having been "very direct" in asking me to do something, and said that she felt I had just "blown her off." I apologized, because I am sorry I made her uncomfortable. But I remember the conversation, too, and at the time, I honestly did not realize she was asking me to take action. Why not? Because she phrased her request in the form of a factual statement. She didn't say, "Su, would you please?" or "Su, I'd like you to," or "Su, I wish you would..." Maybe I was a little too clueless ("Yes, I have seen your shoes many times! And admired their tasteful elegance!") but I was struck by her sense that she had been "very direct" with me when in fact she had not said a word about what she wanted me to do.

Another friend was telling me the other day about how hurt and offended she was by someone's failure to act in the face of her need. She had sent this person an e-mail saying that she was ill, and expected that the response would be an offer of help. But the offer of help did not come. Again, I noticed that she thought she had made a request, and that her request had been ignored, but she never said she needed help during her illness. Only that she was ill. And her friend took the information at face value: she was sorry to hear about the illness, but didn't realize she was being asked to help.

I wonder if that indirect form of making a request is partly cultural? Is it a form of Midwestern politeness and conflict-avoidance, or is it something that happens everywhere people talk to each other? Awhile ago, somebody on AskMetafilter described the difference between Ask vs. Guess Culture, and it resonated with a lot of people. I come from Guess Culture, for sure, but I think I've become an Ask Culture person because I like the clarity, and because, as the AskMetafilter comment said, Guess Culture behavior can seem passive-aggressive to me: you're mad at me because I didn't do something you didn't actually ask me to do? Really? It can feel like a set-up. (And realizing that you're disappointed because someone didn't do something they didn't know you wanted them to do can be both humbling and liberating.)

I wonder if another way to think about Ask vs. Guess is that people may have preferences about who they want to be mad: some people would rather be mad, and some people would rather somebody else be mad. If you'd rather be mad than have someone mad at you, you're going to make indirect statements instead of direct requests; you risk not getting what you want and need, but on the other hand, it's much less likely that the person will be upset with you. On the other hand, if you ask someone very directly, especially if your request might make them embarrassed or self-conscious or feel hurtful ("Can you please stop chewing with your mouth open?") they might be angry with you. I suppose there's a balance, a calculation people make, weighing how likely they are to end up in explicit conflict against how likely they are to get what they want.

That's all I've got. I've just been musing about this lately. I wonder if Raider found my shoes and made my tea yet?