Reading from Englishinny.com

            “Poetry is either something that lives like fire inside you…or it is nothing, an empty, formalized bore around which pedants can endlessly drone their notes and explanations.”

            F. Scott Fitzgerald said that about poetry, but I had the same feeling about  language as I forced my way through Edwin Newman’s book, Strictly Speaking . The NBC Network’s House Grammarian drones endlessly through his accumulated notes warning us of an imminent doomsday: America will be the death of English.

            I thought as I read of a parent who disapproved generally of student poetry in a school publication. She presumed to rewrite several of the pieces to indicate how the teacher should have encouraged the students to write. In doing so, she denuded each piece of any vestige of poetic language or image.

Pedantry is not easy to define, but laboring the language "beyond the last flutter of actual significance" has something to do with it.  Mr. Newman assures us that The New York Times "will bear a large part of the blame" for the deterioration of the language.  He provides a whole chapter of documentation. Pedantry!  "Both men had worked together at CBS" is redundant, he tells us.  Had it read "...side by side by each together in a group…" as my father-in-law was fond of saying, he might have a point.

            Almost every page invites rebuttal, but insights into the man provide a base for understanding his message.  Mr. Newman does not "fully accept" nor "unreservedly deplore" the generation gap.  It may be time, he says, when "some groups would do better to ignore each other than try to communicate."  It saves energy, worry, and useless talk.  In reaction to a put-down from a governor, he saves face: "A good line from a governor, better than we expect."  "Much written and spoken expression these days," he observes, "is equivalent to the background music that incessantly encroaches on us."  When was it otherwise?  Much of daily language has always provided nothing more than social background music. That's a function of language.

            Mr. Newman is the stereotyped schoolmarm standing over our shoulders rendering us mute lest we utter a mistake.  He is the red-pencil-armed teacher robbing us of any flights of imagination.  Intimidated by his steely gaze, we could never, as Annie Sullivan did, "go to bed with writer's cramp for talking so much."

            He treats language as though it were something "out there."  Robert Persig, in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” assures us that "the machine that appears to be 'out there' and the person that appears to be 'in here' are not two separate things.  They grow toward Quality of fall away from Quality together."  He also suggests that  "You're bound to be very discouraged very soon if you've derived your gumption from ego rather than Quality."  Both statements, is seems, are appropriate to "Strictly Speaking."

            As a "scholar, wit, raconteur, and stylist," Mr. Newman should appreciate an analogy to music.  Language should be played upon like a musical instrument.  Though the impeccable performance of the technician is admirable, it is the musician who cannot separate his music from himself who provides the evening's entertainment.

            Mr. Newman is a well traveled man, and from his book I get the impression that it is as much fun to travel as to arrive.  He seems, however, to want us to arrive somewhere with language, never having traveled.

            Needless to say, I was very impatient with "Strictly Speaking."  And I smiled as I read on the book jacket the testimonial of artist David Levine: "This delightful book points up all of my weaknesses.  It is precisely why I draw pictures.” Mr Levine spoke with tongue-in-cheek, I’m sure.