For the Love of Sentences
Joyce Dopkeen/The New York Times
For just this week, as a gift to ourselves, let’s have a politics-free edition of this feature. And let’s begin on a musical note. In The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C., Josh Shaffer pondered the peculiarity of the bagpipe, “shaped like an octopus in plaid pants, sounding to some like a goose with its foot caught in an escalator and played during history’s most lopsided battles — by the losing side.” (Thanks to Mardy Grothe of Southern Pines, N.C., and Pam James of Durham, N.C., among others, for nominating this.)
On to matters demographic. In The Washington Post, Andrew Van Dam examined Michigan’s boom-and-bust cycles, noting: “In 1950 and 1960, it still ranked in the top 15 for growth, as its factories vacuumed up workers from around the country and spat out cornflakes and Chryslers.” Later, though, “fan-belt production gave way to rust-belt destruction.” (Ellen Herman, Berkeley Heights, N.J.)
Also in The Washington Post, Ron Charles looked back at Norman Mailer, who “belonged to a time when writers could be jerks — and worse. He was virile, vile and viral.” Charles added: “Perhaps it’s a mercy that Mailer died just a few months after Twitter captured the public’s attention. Were the Great American Novelist alive today, the furies would peck his bones bare.” (Marc Gunther, Bethesda, Md.)
In The New Yorker, Anthony Lane reviewed the documentary “Turn Every Page,” about the writer Robert Caro’s relationship with the editor Robert Gottlieb: “The movie is directed by Gottlieb’s daughter, Lizzie Gottlieb, who was forbidden, by her two subjects, to film them in scribente delicto, as they toil over a manuscript. ‘They said the work between a writer and an editor is too private,’ she tells us. (I sniff an opportunity here for an underground trade: basement peepshows, where you feed a nickel into a slot and watch one guy remove another guy’s dangling participles.)” (Trena Cleland, Eugene, Ore.)
In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols flashed back to “Match Game,” a television hit from the 1970s, “when people dressed like their home appliances in a riot of autumn rust, harvest gold, and avocado green.” (Tina Seibel, Upper Gwynedd, Penn., and Nancy Dolan, Oxnard, Calif., among others)
In The Herald-Mail, Tim Rowland analyzed Bed Bath & Beyond’s closing of scores of stores: “Even in the best of times, no one paid full price for anything at BBB due to its ubiquitous discount mailers. In fact, there are aboriginal tribes in Malaysia whose only contact with the outside world is a 20 percent off coupon for Bed Bath & Beyond.” Also: “On the very rare chance you didn’t have one, the person in front of you in line would invariably try to pass one (or six) off on you, whether you wanted them or not. For years, BBB coupons were the zucchini of retail.” (George Gale, Peru, N.Y.)
In the Connecticut Post, Keith Raffel urged a reappraisal of what law schools teach, so that students “see the practice of law fundamentally as a calling to do justice, not simply as a portal to power and plenty.” (Susan Samuelson, Boston)
In The Globe & Mail of Toronto, Cathal Kelly reflected on Novak Djokovic’s defeat of Stefanos Tsitsipas to win the Australian Open: “On paper, Tsitsipas is the future of the sport. He’s a bigger Federer, a sort of Greek Army Knife of tennis weapons. But every time he faces Djokovic, he looks like a guy with his arm extended in horror while a slow-moving steamroller comes at him.” (Barbara Love, Kingston, Ontario)
And in The Times, Margaret Renkl examined the nature of grief: “For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death.” (David Calfee, Lake Forest, Ill.)
To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please use this link to email me and include your name and place of residence.
