Read Online The Braindead Megaphone by George Saunders - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: George Saunders
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information in it than in the second. But is the increased information justified by the greater number of words? The second sentence credits our intelligence. Where else would the islands be, but in a bay? The plural “islands” implies that there are “a number” of them. If the rocks are “islands of a sort,” let’s call them “islands.” Gulls search for food every day, no need to point it out.
The second sentence has been loved by its creator. She has given it her full attention. That missing comma? She meant it. There was, to Forbes, I expect, a world of difference between, “On rocky islands, gulls woke,” and “On rocky islands gulls woke.”
Standing around the school yard, I tried out sentences meant to describe, with Forbes-like precision, whatever I happened to be seeing: “Sister Lynette was eating lunch in the doorway while watching the third-and fourth-grade kids running around in the parking lot at recess and as she watched them, she thought of her home in Kansas.” That wasn’t very Forbes-ish. Sister Lynette wasn’t actually standing in the doorway at all. She was…she was “standing on the sidewalk that ran between the school building itself and the parking lot on which the children played.” Or actually, she was “standing with one foot on that sidewalk and one foot in the parking lot.” Did we need all that? Was her exact position worth the resulting sentence-bulk? Why did we care where she was standing anyway? Did it affect what came next? Also, she wasn’t watching “the third-and fourth-grade kids.” She was watching some of them. Actually, on closer inspection, she wasn’t. She was looking across the street, at a run-down house. What did I mean by “run-down”? What were the specific characteristics of the house that might cause me to think of it as “run-down”?
I remember those times with great affection: the bitter Chicago cold, the vast parking lot, the world, suddenly and for the first time, transformed into something describable, with me, the Potential Describer, at its center.
The world, I started to see, was a different world, depending on what you said about it, and how you said it. By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions.
The difference between Esther Forbes and the authors of Polyglot 141 was that Forbes had fully invested herself in her sentences. She had made them her own, agreed to live or die by them, taken total responsibility for them. How had she done this? I didn’t know. But I do now: she’d revised them. She had abided long enough with each of them to push past the normal into what we might call the excessive-meaningful ; had held the prose up to sufficient scrutiny to turn it into something iconic, something that sounded like her and only like her.
What happens when this attention is not paid?
Well, Polyglot 141 happens.
But worse things can happen than Polyglot 141.
A petty bureaucrat writes to his superior: “The lighting must be better protected than now. Lights could be eliminated, since they apparently are never used. However, it has been observed that when the doors are shut, the load always presses hard against them as soon as darkness sets in. This is because the load naturally rushes toward the light when darkness sets in, which makes closing the door difficult. Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed. It would therefore be useful to light the lamp before and during the first moments of the operation.” The bureaucrat was the ironically named “Mr. Just,” his organization the SS, the year 1942.
What Mr. Just did not write—what he would have written, had he been taking full responsibility for his own prose—is: “To more easily kill the Jews, leave the lights on.” But writing this would have forced him to admit what he was up to. To avoid writing this, what did he have to do?
The second sentence has been loved by its creator. She has given it her full attention. That missing comma? She meant it. There was, to Forbes, I expect, a world of difference between, “On rocky islands, gulls woke,” and “On rocky islands gulls woke.”
Standing around the school yard, I tried out sentences meant to describe, with Forbes-like precision, whatever I happened to be seeing: “Sister Lynette was eating lunch in the doorway while watching the third-and fourth-grade kids running around in the parking lot at recess and as she watched them, she thought of her home in Kansas.” That wasn’t very Forbes-ish. Sister Lynette wasn’t actually standing in the doorway at all. She was…she was “standing on the sidewalk that ran between the school building itself and the parking lot on which the children played.” Or actually, she was “standing with one foot on that sidewalk and one foot in the parking lot.” Did we need all that? Was her exact position worth the resulting sentence-bulk? Why did we care where she was standing anyway? Did it affect what came next? Also, she wasn’t watching “the third-and fourth-grade kids.” She was watching some of them. Actually, on closer inspection, she wasn’t. She was looking across the street, at a run-down house. What did I mean by “run-down”? What were the specific characteristics of the house that might cause me to think of it as “run-down”?
I remember those times with great affection: the bitter Chicago cold, the vast parking lot, the world, suddenly and for the first time, transformed into something describable, with me, the Potential Describer, at its center.
The world, I started to see, was a different world, depending on what you said about it, and how you said it. By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions.
The difference between Esther Forbes and the authors of Polyglot 141 was that Forbes had fully invested herself in her sentences. She had made them her own, agreed to live or die by them, taken total responsibility for them. How had she done this? I didn’t know. But I do now: she’d revised them. She had abided long enough with each of them to push past the normal into what we might call the excessive-meaningful ; had held the prose up to sufficient scrutiny to turn it into something iconic, something that sounded like her and only like her.
What happens when this attention is not paid?
Well, Polyglot 141 happens.
But worse things can happen than Polyglot 141.
A petty bureaucrat writes to his superior: “The lighting must be better protected than now. Lights could be eliminated, since they apparently are never used. However, it has been observed that when the doors are shut, the load always presses hard against them as soon as darkness sets in. This is because the load naturally rushes toward the light when darkness sets in, which makes closing the door difficult. Also, because of the alarming nature of darkness, screaming always occurs when the doors are closed. It would therefore be useful to light the lamp before and during the first moments of the operation.” The bureaucrat was the ironically named “Mr. Just,” his organization the SS, the year 1942.
What Mr. Just did not write—what he would have written, had he been taking full responsibility for his own prose—is: “To more easily kill the Jews, leave the lights on.” But writing this would have forced him to admit what he was up to. To avoid writing this, what did he have to do?
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