I think I’m just going to publish the first five chapters of my first novel, “Kamping On Asphalt.” It was 20 chapters long, but a mishap resulted in the destruction of most of it. I only ever got 8 chapters into a computer. I still have them. It was a deeply flawed book regardless. But each chapter worked as its own short story. In fact, the whole thing started with the following that was only meant to be a short story. But then things just sort of got out of hand. In the context of the novel, this chapter is kind of like a foreword. I wrote this 15 years ago, so forgive me if you think it totally sucks. I do think this first chapter is a tad cloying myself. —FM

Chapter 1: A Night at the Movies

It was summer, which was lucky for them because they were living in their 1965 Bel Air. The down side was that the sun came pouring through the windshield at 6:30 each morning, heating the car up like a greenhouse. Six-thirty—Christ! Rick didn’t wake up that early when he had a job. He turned and looked at Lucinda asleep beside him. She looked so peaceful with her black hair framing her light brown skin. In the right-brain fog of the morning, he could imagine almost anything: she was kind, intelligent, able to cook lasagna. He smiled weakly at the thought.

Turning his head toward his side window, he was greeted with two up-turned smiling facing. “What are you two up?” he dully quizzed his only progeny, the twins from hell: Danny and Becky.

“We want to go to a movie,” Becky chimed eagerly.

“It’s too early.”

“Not now,” Danny corrected. “Tonight. Sleeping Beauty is playing at the Last Chance Drive In. Can we go?!”

“Please! Please!” Becky began that familiar whine.

“Sh!” Rick whispered harshly. “You’ll wake your mom.”

“She can go too,” offered Danny helpfully.

“Nobody’s going to the movies. We hardly have enough food to last until my next unemployment check comes.”

This was true. Since being laid-off his job driving the garbage truck, they had been living hand to mouth out of the family car. The situation was particularly bad towards the end of the month. This was nothing new; Rick had never managed money well and Lucinda, well, she was a spend thrift. But it hadn’t been such a big deal. He liked driving that big truck and he had always had a strong fondness for sea gulls. He looked forward to seeing them each day. Now all he looked forward to was his monthly unemployment check and that was two days off. He had exactly $6.32 and a couple of cans of Pork and Beans. The near future was looking bleak, despite the miracles that Lucinda could perform with any canned food.

“We never get to do anything,” Becky began to pout. “It’s so boring living here.”

“It’s only four dollars each,” Danny added as he produced the previous day’s Press Herald from his back pocket.

“You got sixteen dollars?” Their dejection was evident so Rick softened. “Look, if you guys can get some money, maybe we can get ice cream later.”

Danny gently hit the side of the car several times with the folded newspaper. He turned to Becky, “Maybe we could collect cans or something.”

This thought cheered his sister immensely. “Yeah,” she smiled.

“Just stay out of trouble,” their father encouraged.

The twins ran off with the energy reserved only for the ignorant. Rick turned to Lucinda and kissed her on the cheek. “Honey,” he prodded her to consciousness. “Honey, the kids are gone. Wanna fool around?”

Lucinda’s eyes began to blink open to the intense sunlight. She turned toward her beloved incredulously. “You wanna fuck?”

Rick grinned and nodded eagerly.

“What is it makes you so horny: the car or the campground?” she quarried.

He just shrugged, grinning even more.

Lucinda yawned and pulled her skirt up.

By 10:00 most of the RVs had packed up and gone. Becky was holding the garbage can liner Danny had stolen from the men’s room. He was now standing inside a tin drum fishing for cans. “Here’s another,” he said throwing it up into the air. Becky ran toward her brother to catch the can in the bag.
“That’s it for this one, I think.” He climbed out with his white All Stars sopping wet and brown from probably a half liter of Pepsi poured inside.

“I think we’ve gone through all of the trash here. How many do we have now?”

“I don’t know; let’s count,” he said.

They sat down on the nearly empty parking lot and poured the cans out before them.

“Forty-three. How much will that get us?” Becky asked.

“That’s $2.15. We’re never going to make it this way.”

“At least we can get some candy or something.”

When they approached the car, they could see their mother folding the enormous quilt they slept under—the one grandma had sent them from Mexico where she lived. Dad was sitting on the hood of the car in his boxers, want adds splayed before him, drinking a Miller High Life—the last one left.

“Where you kids been?” Lucinda yelled at the children.

“Collecting cans,” said Becky defiantly.

“You better not be climbing around in trash cans,” their mother added. “I don’t want my kids climbing around in trash cans.”

Rick looked up. “The kids are fine, honey.”

Lucinda noticed Danny’s wet feet. She put the quilt she had just finished folding down on the roof of the car and grabbed Danny by his closest ear. “What happened to your shoes? Your father works hard every day reading the newspaper and you just destroy all your cloths!”

Danny pulled away. “We’re just trying to make some money!” he said.

“Rick! Did you know about this?” she demanded.

“Honey, it’s just fine.”

“Sure. Sure. It’s just fine. Where’s the lighter fluid?” she said looking about the car. “Let’s just set the car on fire! It’s just so fine.”

“We’re going to the store to cash in these cans,” Danny stated.

“That’s fine,” Rick answered.

“Oh! Fine again,” Lucinda said.

The twins started off.

Lucinda called after them, “Make sure you be real careful crossing the freeway.”

Rachel leaned against the corner of the row of auto can return machines in front of the Cloudburst Grocery. She took a long drag off her Camel Filter. Every machine was busy churning and crunching, churning and crunching, but her eyes were glued to the kids. They couldn’t be more than eight—far too short to be using these machines—she wondered vaguely where their parents were. In her twenty-four years she hadn’t much experience with children.

Putting each can into the machine took great effort. Becky would grab a can from the bag before placing her dusty right sandal into her brother’s cradled hands. She’d then shoot up and launch the can into the blue circle labeled, “deposit.” Her brother and she then stood back and watched as the door to the hole closed and the machine began to grumble. They waited to see their monetary total, displayed in yellow LEDs, change from 90 to 95 cents. It didn’t. The can came falling into the reject bin at the bottom of the machine.

“Shit!” Becky said.

Danny gasped. “You’re gonna get in trouble!”

“I’ll tell about you drinking daddy’s beer.”

Jason came up behind Rachel sniffling. He bit her lightly on the neck. She turned her head toward him without losing her stare of Becky and Danny. She exhaled her last drag as Jason kissed her on the cheek.

“We could use them,” she said.

“They’re just kids,” answered Jason with a hint of interest.

“Exactly.”

Rachel and Jason approached the twins as another can was delivered into the reject bin.

“Shit!” Becky said.

“Would you like some help?” Rachel asked.

Danny and Becky swung around quickly at this abrupt suggestion.

“We’re doing okay,” Danny said lightly.

“Here, let me do it,” Jason offered and then wiped his nose on the sleeve of his sweater. “It’ll go faster.”

Jason began putting the cans in the machine one after another.

“I’m Rachel—that’s Jason. What’s your name?” They told her. “These machines can be a real pain. Getting some candy money?”

“No. We wanna go to the movies: Sleeping Beauty.”

“I don’t think you have enough cans for that,” Rachel observed.

“We just started,” said Becky in a bit of a huff.

“Oh, sure,” said Rachel apologetically. Jason was finished with the cans and pressed the receipt button. The machine spit out a tag stating, “Credit: $2.15.”

“You two want to earn more than that?” asked Rachel.

“Doing what?” asked Danny.

“Nothing hard. Let’s go get your money and I’ll tell you about it,” Jason said as he handed Danny the receipt. He looked at the two girls, “We’ll be right back.”

Rachel and Becky walked to the bicycle rack at the side of the machines. Rachel lit another Camel. “Where do you and your brother live?”

“At the KOA campground across the freeway.”

“Jason and I lived there for a while when we had a car.”

“Where do you live now?”

“Oh, here and there,” she said.

“I don’t like living in a car.”

“Yeah, it’s a bummer.”

Jason and Danny stood at the checkout counter behind a tan man wearing an undershirt that used to be white and dirty work pants. He was buying a 40 oz. Bottle of Miller High Life which he was having a hard time controlling—partly because he was drunk and partly because his right arm was cut off half-way up the forearm and he had a thumb as his sole remaining left-hand digit.

“We just need you two to sell a couple of books for us at Perry’s Bookstore,” Jason said.

“Why don’t you do it?” asked Danny.

“That’s kind of complicated,” Jason said. He grabbed a couple of Snickers Bars from the candy rack. “Do you like Snickers?”

“Sure,” Danny said as Jason let one of the bars slide down his sweater sleeve.

“What am I thinking! I left my wallet in the car,” he said, pretending to put the bars back and sliding the second one up his sleeve. “The guy at the store won’t buy books from us because he thinks that we steal them.”

“Do you?” asked Danny with awe.

“No. But he doesn’t believe us. If you’ll do it, we’ll give you ten percent of the money.”

“How much is that?”

“It should be about ten dollars.”

The drunk shuffled out and Danny handed the receipt up to the sales clerk. “Two dollars fifteen cents please,” he said.

The tan man came out the automatic doors of the supermarket and walked past Rachel and Becky who was swinging around in circles on the bar of the bike rack.

“They turned our apartment into a condom…” Becky stammered.

“Condominium,” Rachel corrected.

“Condominium. And daddy didn’t have his job so we had to move into the car.”

The tan man stopped in front of them with a concerned stare at Becky. He looked at Rachel. “You take care of that child. She could fall and hit her head and bam, she’d be gone. Freak accidents happen. I know,” he said significantly. He raised what was left of his arms up, bagged beer pressed tightly between his left arm and torso. “I got hit by a train when I was a kid.”

Becky stopped swinging and stared at the man.

“Yep,” said Rachel. “You gotta watch them every minute.”

“She’d just have to fall off there and that’d be it.” He held his mangled right hand in front of his nose. “Freak accidents happen. I know.” He slowly nodded.

“Yeah, well, we’re just waiting for Dad,” Rachel commented trying to extricate herself from the conversation. Becky continued to stare.

“Oh!” he said laughing. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he paused and laughed, scratching his cheek with his stub. “She’d just have to fall and that would be it. You take good care of that kid.” He smiled and waved goodbye with his stump and wandered off.

Jason and Danny followed close behind. “Making friends?” Jason asked.

Becky was still following the tan man with her eyes. Jason broke her concentration. “You like Snickers?” he asked.

“Ah, sure,” she said.

Jason reached behind her ear with his hand and pulled out a bar, handing it to her.

“Cool,” said Danny.

“You want one?” he asked and, before Danny could respond, pulled another Snickers out from behind his ear.

Rachel jabbed Jason in the side, “Perry’s only buys until noon.”

“Oh yeah,” Jason said. “We’d better get going.”

Jason handed two books to Danny. They were old and didn’t have pictures. He looked at them doubtfully.

“Why does the bookstore want crummy old books like this?” asked Becky.

“They just do. If he asks why you are selling them tell him that you’re living in a car and your dad is in a wheel chair, so he can’t come himself. You got all that?” Jason asked.

“I think so,” Danny said.

“Where do we put these?” Becky said holding out her empty Snickers wrapper.

“Just drop it on the ground,” stated Rachel matter-of-factly.

“You mean litter?” asked Becky with shock.

“Oh here,” Rachel said taking the wrappers from her and her brother.

The twins walked into Perry’s Used Bookstore. It was very crowded with books, many of which were piled one on top of another above the bookcases. Off to the right was a counter with a large sign overhead which said, “Sell Books Here.” They approached the man behind the counter—an older man with thin blond hair and a bushy mustache.

“Can I help you kids?” he asked kindly.

“Our dad sent us to sell you these books ’cause he’s a cripple,” said Danny as he dropped the books onto the counter.

“We don’t usually buy books from minors,” he said trailing off as he became lost in the books before him: Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer—both first editions. “But we could make an exception, I suppose. So your dad’s disabled?”

“Crippled,” Danny corrected.

“He was run over by a train,” Becky added helpful.

Danny turned toward her. She smiled at him.

“He was drunk. He knows all about freak accidents,” she continued.

The clerk stopped flipping through pages and looked up dully. “A train?”

“Yeah,” said Danny going with the flow. “His legs were cut off right at the knees. Now they’re all like a prune at the bottom. It’s really gross.”

“And he doesn’t have a right arm either,” said Becky.

“And he has a black eye!” Danny added almost overcome with the excitement of the story. The clerked looked quizzically at him. Danny added, “Mom hit his eye on the car door putting him in last night.”

“Does your father have a lot of books?” the clerk asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Becky. “But he has to use his mouth to turn the pages because his other arm doesn’t work very well. He didn’t think you’d want those.”

“He used to have all kinds of books but now he’s selling them because he’s read them all.”

“Oh. Well, I can give you $70 for them.”

Becky smiled at the thought of that much money but Danny had been instructed on this matter. “My dad said they were worth at least $100.”

The clerk looked at Danny for a moment and smiled. “Wait here for a minute,” he said and disappeared into the back of the store with the books.
“Do you think he’s going to have us arrested?” asked Becky of her brother.

“No,” he said. “Why would he?”

“For lying.”

“Do they arrest people for that?”

“I don’t know.”

After a couple of minutes the clerk returned. “Does your father know that you are selling these books?”

“Yeah,” said Becky. “He sent us here.”

“Okay,” he said. “I can give you $120 for the books.” He looked at Danny, “Is that acceptable?”

Rachel and Jason waited outside the grocery store. They both smiled as Danny and Becky approached without the books. Danny noticed Rachel sweating. “It’s too hot for long sleeves,” he told her. She nodded her head in agreement.

“How much did we get?” asked Jason.

“$120!” said Becky.

“Yes!” yelled Jason clinching his fist. He took the money from Danny and gave him $15. Rachel hugged both the kids quickly and the two couples went their separate ways.

By the time they returned to the car, it was lunch time. Rick had the hibachi lit and was heating a pot of pork and beans. Lucinda was constructing cheese sandwiches out her makeshift kitchen in the trunk of the car.

“What have you kids been doing?” asked their father.

“We made $17.15,” Danny said proudly.

Rick was shocked. “Hey Lucinda! The kids made seventeen bucks.” He ladled the beans into four plastic bowls. Lucinda brought cheese sandwiches wrapped in paper towels to everyone and they had lunch inside the 65 Bel Air.

“So can we go see Sleeping Beauty tonight?” Rebecca asked.

“Don’t see why not,” smiled her dad and bit into his cheese sandwich.

The sun had begun its rapid decent behind the coastal hills as Rick backed the car out of its KOA parking space. “Oh shit!” he said. “We need gas.”

“Do we have money?” Lucinda asked.

“Not for gas.” Then a thought occurred to him. “Danny, we’ll need to use some of that money for gas.”

“We only have $1.15 extra,” Danny sounded worried.

“We need more than that for this boat.”

“But we need $16 to get into the movies!”

“We’ll figure something out. Give me five bucks.”

Danny reluctantly obliged and they drove to the nearby Shell gas station where Rick bought $5 worth of gas.

They drove down 205 until they reached Farmington. Rick stopped the car. He got out and opened the back passenger door, “Okay you two, out.”

“What are you doing?” asked Lucinda.

“Saving money.”

Rick walked to the back of the car and opened the cavernous trunk. “You two hide in here until we get inside the drive-in. Then I’ll get you out.”

Danny looked at his sister. They grinned at each other and Danny said, “Cool.”

They got in and Rick carefully closed the lid over them. “Make sure you be real quiet.”

The movie theater was about the only thing in Farmington, so it wasn’t hard to find. It was now dark and the marquee outside was glowing, featuring tonight’s attractions: Sleeping Beauty along with Magic Tricks. They paid their eight dollars and drove inside. The drive-in was fairly vacant. There were twenty cars at most. Rick parked the car and adjusted the speaker while Lucinda got the kids out of the trunk.

Once they were all settled, Rick stretched and leaned his head against Lucinda’s shoulder. She absently ran her fingers through his hair before they both dozed off to sleep.

“Dad.”

Rick felt something jabbing into his back.

“Dad,” the twins said in union.

Rick opened his eyes. Lucinda was beside him slowly waking. He was in the car. He was at the drive-in. Before him on the screen was a naked woman bouncing on top of a man—her large breasts flapping up and down.

“Beauty’s coming! Beauty’s coming!” the woman moaned from the speaker in the window.

“Dad,” came Danny’s voice alone.

Lucinda finally opened her eyes. “My God!” she said. “Oh, my God!”

“Dad, why is she called ‘Sleeping Beauty’ when she never sleeps?”

“This movie is so boring,” added Becky.

I got a message from my publisher (and nominally “editor”) today. After 28 chapters have been submitted and typeset, I am told, “Need to have 2-3 call outs in chapters that are all text.” It made me think that it would be a good idea to discuss what editors do and what writers do. But first I should explain to you what “call outs” are. In the publishing industry, a “call out” is nothing at all. There is no term. The phrase is idiosyncratic: the result of a tiny publisher cut off from the rest of the industry — and one that really doesn’t know anything other than what it does.

What I am being asking for now are what are called “pull quotes.” You have seen them a lot, because I use them a lot. A pull quote is “a brief, attention-catching quotation, typically in a distinctive typeface, taken from the main text of an article and used as a subheading or graphic feature.” They were first used in magazines and now are widely used on the internet. But they are rarely used in books. They make books look less serious. If a book wants to go with a magazine kind of layout, it will focus on pictures. So not only do pull quotes make books look silly, they make the publisher look cheap.

But this is all fine. There is just one problem that I have in all this: there are things that writers do and there are things that editors do. Asking a writer to provide the pull quotes is like asking the writer to provide the cover art and the ISBN. Look in any style guide: the editor, in the process of editing the work, selects passages that they consider effective. But I understand the problem with this particular editor: doing that would require actually reading the text!

Editor and Writer Together

There is a symbiotic relationship between a writer and an editor. A great editor can make a mediocre writer good and a good writer great. And a good writer can make the work of an editor a pleasurable experience. What I’ve found fascinating about editing is that it takes me as long to edit a good writer as it does a bad writer. But the process is different. And the results when working with a good writer are edifying, whereas working with a bad writer is exhausting. With a good writer, it’s like you are putting a great work of art in a fine frame and mounting it on the wall. With a bad writer, it is like you are putting out a fire.

There are times when there is some crossover between writer and editor. For one thing, writers often need particular illustrations for a piece and they will ask that they be placed in particular places. Writers will ask for other things, like not having a cover that totally sucks. But these are all requests and the editor has final say. But since most people have some notion of fairness, writers aren’t expected to do all the work and have no say in it. They provide the content and that’s about it. That’s the way things work in the publishing industry.

When I’ve worked with other small presses, this is the way it has worked. In fact, when I worked with this small press, this is how it worked. Of course, these small presses get away with murder. They don’t actually edit the works. They typeset. I was reading the original book (published with another publisher) and I found embarrassing errors. I compared them to my original manuscript: they were the same. No copy editing was done. It’s the same thing here.

Editors and writers should be best of friends. And in general, I’ve gotten along swimmingly with editors. But these pretenders are not editors. They don’t care about words and syntax and style. And some of them don’t even care enough to read the book so they can decide on their own pull quotes or “call outs.”

I know from experience that if I use an unusual word once, I will use it several other times. There is something about speaking and writing that is very mysterious. Indeed, as I’ve become a better writer, I’ve lost any sense that any of us know what we are doing. Control is something that only the very best poets exhibit, and in their cases, only because they write so very few words. Mostly, writing is a mess and the best we can hope for is clarity. But over the past few months, I’ve noticed the phrase “hoi polloi” used an excessive amount.

That in itself would not be worth commenting on. Words come and go. But in the past, when I heard people use the term, it was almost always used incorrectly. “Hoi polloi” means the common people. It comes from the Greek phrase “οἱ πολλοί,” which means quite literally “the many” although this is not that far from meaning “the mob” — if you want to go there. It’s been used in the English language for less than 200 years. I have my problems with it, and I don’t know of ever using the term — even in conversation. I mean that as no criticism of those who do use the term. On the plus side, it’s fun to say; on the minus side, its showy.

But the big problem with the phrase is that it is traditionally used wrong to mean the rich or the “beautiful people.” And you can see why: it sounds like it. It’s easy enough for people to rationalize “hoi” as high and “polloi” to be anything you want. “High populace” perhaps? According to the Oxford Dictionary, this use of “hoi polloi” may have come about because of a confusion with the term “hoity-toity.” Regardless, what I find fascinating is that people are using it correctly, as though someone with a much bigger audience than I wrote an article pointing out that the phrase is commonly misused.

The Real Misuse of Hoi Polloi

Of course, the phrase is misused by pretty much everyone. In History of the Peloponnesian War, a fifth century BCE manuscript by Athenian historian Thucydides, the phrase is used positively. In ancient Greece, it would seem that the ordinary people were not something to be sneered at. But in English, “hoi polloi” is almost always used as a pejorative. Certainly my notion of the hoi polloi is people who watch Dancing With the Stars, or to be perfectly frank, just about every other “reality” television show I come upon, most definitely including the Academy Awards.

So “hoi polloi” is primarily a phrase that we use to look down on some group of people. If it weren’t for the phrase being so nailed down in Greek, I suspect that dictionaries would include “upper class” as a secondary definition — dictionaries being descriptive and not prescriptive. But in general, they don’t. Not that I care. I’d prefer to be done with the phrase except for its use in something like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Otherwise, bourgeois, middle class, workers, masses — they all work better. Imagine this great line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, “Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the hoi polloi, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” Doesn’t really work, does it?

There is a specific term in rhetoric for what Rubio was doing in his extemp remarks tonight. It's called "Anaphora." Look it up.

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) February 9, 2016

There was a big dust-up following last weekends debate and then subsequently when Rubio was shown to repeat his own talking points again and again. Jonathan Chait had written at the time, Rubio Glitch Truthers Insist He’s a Poet, Not a Robot. That was following off John Podhoretz’s tweet above which introduced us all to the word “anaphora.” It is a fascinating word in that it means more or less the opposite thing depending upon whether you are using it in grammar or rhetoric.

Anaphora in Rhetoric

In rhetoric, Merriam-Webster defines it is “repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect.” People have referenced Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speak and the opening of A Tale of Two Cities. I’m more fond of this little bit from Richard III, because when spoken, it is virtually impossible not to come down really hard on each of those Is:

Of course, as Chait noted, this is not the kind of thing that Rubio did. The defenses of him sounded to me very much like the defenses of Sarah Palin’s claim that Paul Revere was ringing bells during his midnight ride. It is a sad fact of life that politicians generally can’t just be allowed to admit to a mistake and move on. I’ve noted before that it would be nice if Sanders could just say, “We need to work on our healthcare plan.” Or simply that everyone would understand that is a workable starting point. But no, he is supposed to just pretend that there is no problem.

But Rubio’s mindless repetition is not anaphora in a rhetorical sense. It’s rather the opposite in that it doesn’t focus the theme in a structured way. It just repeats the same talking point. Anaphora is the use of repetition to layer. You aren’t using anaphora if you say, “I’m the best man for the job. I’m the best man for the job. I’m the best man for the job.” But you are if you say, “I’m the best man for the job because the modern world needs a modern leader. I’m the best man for the job because I bring new thinking. I’m the best man for the job because I’m not stuck in the past!” That would be anaphora.

Anaphora in Grammar

In grammer, anaphora is quite different, “use of a grammatical substitute (as a pronoun or a pro-verb) to refer to the denotation of a preceding word or group of words.” To give you an idea of this, consider the sentence, “I like it, and they like it.” That’s a repetitive and boring sentence. It would normally be written as, “I like it, as do they.” So in rhetoric, anaphora is the explicit use of repetition and in grammar it is the avoidance of it. Quite interesting, I think.

At this point, I would think that the Rubio campaign would prefer he use the grammar version of anaphora. If he’s been trying for rhetorical anaphora (and I don’t think he has), he’s been failing miserably.

The word “literally” is most troubling to me. And I believe it may be time for us to bid it a fond farewell.

I am something of a connoisseur of grammar snobbery. I hate grammar snobs, but it is fun to keep note of what little things drive them crazy. A friend of mine recently used the word “principal” in an email where he meant “principle.” I saw no reason to alert him to the error, because I’m sure he does know the difference. I make these kind of mistakes all the time myself. I constantly find myself typing “their” when I mean “there.” And even more bizarre, “their are” when I mean “they’re.”

Such errors can indicate ignorance, but they almost never do. I went through a short period where I repeatedly spelled “throne” as “thrown.” A reader kindly alerted me. But it wasn’t that I didn’t know how to spell the word. It’s just that I use the word “thrown” all the time and “throne” almost never. And I literally didn’t even think about it. But had George RR Martin put out a book called A Game of Throwns, my mind would have gone on tilt.

Literally!

One of the greatest of the pedant’s concerns is the word “literally” when it is used to mean “not literally.” For example, “His suitcase literally weighed a ton.” Unless we are talking about some curious event out of a Discworld, that suitcase did not weight a literal ton. The speaker means to say that the suitcase was really heavy. More to the point, “His suitcase figuratively weighed a ton.” But that there is a sentence that no one could love.

The problem for the grammar pedant is that the dictionary definition of “literally” does, in fact, include the meaning, “not literally; figuratively.” Now I know what the pedants answer back with when this is pointed out, “Just because something has been done wrong a long time doesn’t make it right!” But they are wrong. Just look at our language! It is mostly a collection of things done wrong for a long time. That’s what languages are — unless they are Esperanto. Really! You think Latin is perfect. Ha!

I’ve written about this subject before, Why “Literally” Normally Means “Not Literally.” So it might seem strange that I’m bringing it up again. But I was reading an article by Brian Beutler Saturday morning, Will Marco Rubio Finally Be Tested? And in that article, he wrote the dastardly sentence, “Over the past several months, Rubio has: introduced a tax plan that literally zeroes out investment and inheritance taxes…”

Beutler is a good writer and what he means is that Rubio introduced a tax plan that in fact cuts these taxes to zero. In other words, he used “literally” to mean, well, “literally.” But I still had to take a moment and think, “Does he mean literally literally or figuratively literally?” This is not his fault! But the word has become poisoned to such an extent, that my assumption is that the writer means “figuratively.” And that’s bad news for the “correct” use of the word.

For a long time, as a writer, I’ve been very careful with the word. I try only to use it in its old sense. But now I think it is best to get rid of it. It’s just one more intensifier in a language that is quickly becoming nothing but. What are we to do? It’s just confusing at this point, and I doubt very seriously that the old definition will last the century.

There’s another problem with the word anyway: it isn’t necessary. Beutler could have written, “Over the past several months, Rubio has: introduced a tax plan that zeroes out investment and inheritance taxes…” No need for “literally.” Just the same, so much of writing is not strictly necessary. In that sentence, Beutler was using the word as an intensifier — to drive home the extreme nature of what Rubio is proposing. But there are other ways to do that. I think “amazingly” and “unbelievably” would work better.

So maybe we can all get by without our little friend “literally.” I’m going to try.

Oh, there was a time when my phone would have been ringing off the hook. But not on Super Bowl Sunday. People just grab their phones and say, “Google, what is a pillock?” In a sane world, Google would spit back, “Don’t ask me! Ask your friend Frank; it’s about the only thing he’s good for!”

During the Super Bowl, Budweiser ran a “don’t drink and drive” commercial starring Helen Mirren. Now, on the one hand, I hate these kind of commercials. They remind me of a heroin dealer saying, “Now remember: don’t share syringes!” But on the other hand: Helen Mirren. Also, I’m sure that Budweiser would prefer that people take Merle Haggard’s advice and just stay home and drink.

Toward the end of this one minute long spot, Mirren says, “Don’t be a pillock!” That’s the line that should have had all my friends reaching for the phone — to call me (not to ask Google).

Now, it’s not that I have known what the word “pillock” means for a long time. In fact, although I’ve probably known it a long time, the only reason it stands out to me is because I just recently read The Truth, where William and Otto have the following conversation:

What Does Pillock Mean?

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “pillock” is British informal, “A stupid person.” It comes from the mid-16th century, and like most insults was originally a word for “penis.”

If Herman Melville’s short story “Bartleby” asks us to consider what we are to do with our mentally ill, I would like to raise a similar question, “What are we to do with the keepers of useless knowledge?” In other words: what are we to do with me.

Don’t get me wrong: I still get by. At work, my vast store of arcane knowledge often comes in useful to spice up otherwise boring subjects. And the writer of that commercial was probably an American who had read some Terry Pratchett or spent a summer in England or otherwise picked up the word. Although you are unlikely to come upon one of us in your everyday life we are everywhere. (We are especially congregated here at Frankly Curious where the odd bit of knowledge is still valued as an end in itself.)

But certainly the day is coming where there will be no need for someone who can respond to “I’m lactose intolerant” with, “That reminds me of Marlen Haushofer!” Soon, your phone will have a setting on it, “Know-it-all friend who sometimes amuses me.” And then we will be these sad figures who roam the streets in the early mornings muttering about Schopenhauer and how Finnegans Wake really calls into question the brilliance of Ulysses. And no one should read Portrait of the Artist past high school. And back to Schopenhauer and why I should even eat today when I’ll only have to do it again tomorrow.

So really, fine. Just use your little phones. But I still think it’ll take you a while to connect “Marlen Haushofer” and “lactose intolerant.” And no cheating by looking it up on Frankly Curious!

I’ve read a handful of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels. And The Truth is by far the best of them. Admittedly, I haven’t read a wide selection: The Colour of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Making Money, and Raising Steam. So the first two and and then the Moist von Lipwig ones. The Truth sits in what must be considered the central section of the series. It is book 25 out of a total of 41. And if it is indicative of this period, it’s a very good sign.

The Truth tells the story of the creation of the newspaper industry — and The Ankh-Morpork Times in particular. William de Worde is a young man from a rich family, who wants nothing to do with it. So he scrapes by as a writer of newsletters about the goings on in Ankh-Morpork for rich clients in other cities. But everything changes when the dwarfs bring movable type to the city. Once dependent upon engravers, who took a long time to produce his newsletter, he is now able to print on a daily basis and he finds that there is more than enough content to justify it — even if some of it has to do with vegetables that grow in obscene shapes.

The other major characters include Sacharissa Cripslock, the granddaughter of William’s old engraver. She comes to complain about William putter her grandfather out of a job, and William ends up giving her a job. They are soon joined by Otto Chriek — a temperate vampire photographer who is in love with light — and Gunilla Goodmountain — an entrepreneurial dwarf who brings movable type to the town. Together, they fight the engravers’ guild and eventually even hired assassins who have been brought to town to take Lord Vetinari out of power. The novel ends with William and Sacharissa trying to go on a date, but the news just never stops.

What sets The Truth apart from the other novels is that William de Worde actually grows as a character. For all of Pratchett’s cleverness, he is not usually that interested in the development of his characters. Moist von Lipwig is still very much the same man in Raising Steam as he was in Going Postal. But William, being the black sheep of his family very much comes to terms with that fact — taking what’s good and leaving what’s bad of the nature of his father, Lord de Worde. And it is very nice to watch the transition, because at the start of the book, he seems very much like he’s hiding from the world.

Maybe I liked it so much because I feel rather like William: hiding out. And, of course, I like the newspaper business. But especially in Raising Steam, there isn’t much happening at a human level. In fact, the Moist von Lipwig stories seem more like television shows where Moist is forced to do something he doesn’t want to do and ends up having some adventures. That’s true of the Rincewind novels as well. And certainly, William gets dragged through some adventures. But he’s self-actualized — and he becomes more so the further we get into the novel. I know many people around here are much bigger Discworld readers than I am. So if you have any recommendations, I’d be glad to hear them.

Afterword

It’s also true that there is a certain His Girl Friday aspect to The Truth. And that is one of my very favorite films.