Quote of the Day (Frank Bruni, on the Importance of Writing Often)

“Show me someone who writes correctly and ably — and who knows that — and I'll show you someone who probably also writes more. Such people's awareness of their agility and their confidence pave the way. Show me someone who has never been pressed to write well or given the tutelage and tools to do so and I'll show you someone who more often than not avoids it and, in avoiding it, is deprived of not only its benefits but also its pleasures.”—Op-ed columnist Frank Bruni, “Our Semicolons, Ourselves,” The New York Times, Dec. 25, 2023

Movie Quote of the Day (‘The Affairs of Dobie Gillis,’ Showing How English Usage Has Changed in Academe)

[In the first class of his English course, freshman Dobie Gillis has said “Everyone has their,” only to be reprimanded by his professor that it should be “Everybody has his.”]

Dobie Gillis [played by Bobby Van, pictured with Debbie Reynolds]: “Gee, I don't know, sir. I think the way the people use a language is the right way and if the rule says no, then the rule ought to be changed.”

Professor Amos Pomfritt [played by Hans Conried]: “In the 25 years that I have devoted to this underpaid profession of teaching, I have heard many an asinine outburst but never one so asinine as yours. I can only assume that your recent passage through puberty has affected your mind, for you, sir, are a presumptuous driveler, a cretinous barbarian, a thick-tongued oaf, an ill-bred churl, and in the future, you will be good enough to keep your mindless opinions to yourself!”— The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), screenplay by Max Shulman, directed by Don Weis

Seven decades ago, when this musical was released, audiences would have looked at the accompanying picture of Bobby Van with Debbie Reynolds and smiled indulgently. No wonder poor Dobie couldn’t keep his mind on grammar! 

Professor Pomfritt was being hard indeed with that line about how “puberty has affected your mind.” A little remedial English—perhaps with an instructor whose looks wouldn’t distract Dobie—would be just what the young man needed to learn these rules.

Back in the Seventies, a debate opened up about the point of contention between Dobie and his prof. Edwin Newman, with his bestseller Strictly Speaking, could be counted on to take Pomfritt’s part, though there were others like linguist Geoffrey Nunberg who disagreed vehemently.

Nowadays, in many, many corners of academe—and a growing segment of the business world—it’s Professor Pomfritt and other grammar purists who would be in trouble. The prof could, in fact, trigger complaints by students who prefer gender-neutral pronouns.

The resulting academic board of inquiry might then charge him with being “an ill-bred churl” for showing insensitivity.

This is one of many examples of how films from the past might strike contemporary audiences in ways that its creators could never have remotely imagined.

If the movie is good enough—or, in the case of The Affairs of Dobie Gillis, a harmless waste of a couple of hours—a viewer will just chuckle, without needing a “trigger warning” from the well-meaning.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Batman,’ With Grammar Wedged Into Crimefighting)

[Catwoman's "getaway rocket" won't start]

Robin [played by Burt Ward]: “You can't get away from Batman that easy!”

Batman [played by Adam West]: “Easily.”

Robin: [nods] “Easily.”

Batman: “Good grammar is essential, Robin.”

Robin: “Thank you, Batman.”

Batman: “You're welcome. Now, let's get them!”— Batman, Season 2, Episode 4, “The Cat and the Fiddle,” Sept. 15, 1966, teleplay by Stanley Ralph Ross, directed by Don Weis

When I was a seven-year-old, watching Batman in its original run, lines like the above sailed straight over my head. (I was more interested in the periodic word-clouds of “POW!,” “ZOWIE!” and the other sounds of the Caped Crusader and Robin the Boy Wonder clashing with no-goodniks.) Now, lines such as these—really campy, delivered with a completely straight face—are what I look forward to the most any time I catch the episodes on a cable station that reruns vintage TV series.

I imagine that the teachers in my elementary school—especially the nuns—must have groaned at the mere idea that the youngsters they were trying to steer onto the straight and narrow could have been enthralled by Batman and its copycat ABC cousin that I also never missed, The Green Hornet. Little did they know the sneaky do-good lessons the show was imparting to us (albeit with tongue in cheek)!

They would certainly have smiled at the idea that Batman would have reinforced the grammar lessons they were teaching to his “young ward” (as the show put it) just before taking on a whole room of bad guys. 

And, taking a wider view of the proceedings, they would have been pleased that, by having impetuous young Robin listen to his older, wiser guardian, the show was surreptitiously suggesting, in the generation-gap Sixties, the importance of heeding the counsel of one’s elders—even if, in this case, the “elder” was—oh,  let’s stop being politically correct about this!—a weirdo who ran around in a bat costume more than half the time, and then invariably got himself and poor Robin into a life-threatening cliffhanger at the end of every other episode.

 

Quote of the Day (George Bernard Shaw, on Lawrence of Arabia’s Defective Literary Style)

“You will see that your colons before buts and the like are contra-indicated in my scheme, and leave you without anything in reserve for the dramatic occasions mentioned above. You practically do not use semicolons at all. This is a symptom of mental defectiveness, probably induced in camp life.”—George Bernard Shaw, October 7, 1924 letter to T.E. Lawrence, quoted in Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (2003)

George Bernard Shaw could insult with such geniality and creativity that, I suspect, most of the recipients of his letters regarded it as a kind of badge of honor. That appears to be the case here in this letter to T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia (pictured here).

What accounts for the Anglo-Irish playwright’s asperity, at least in this instance, is that, after two years of trying to arrange publication of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by the leader of the Arab Revolt in the First World War, he had only now gotten his hands on the manuscript. Of course he knew that the former British Army intelligence officer was a brilliant linguist, but—knowing Shaw—I wouldn't have put it past him to be cheeky enough to urge the younger man to master English first before going on to anything else.

Lawrence had been dead seven years before Robert Graves and Alan Hodges took Shaw to task for his own affronts to the English language in The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1942). Still, it’s doubtful that this most enigmatic of men would have felt unfairly abused by Shaw. The playwright had, in the end, provided one of the most glowing tributes to Seven Pillars of Wisdom (“The work is a masterpiece, one of the few very best of its kind in the world”).

(Shaw and his contemporaries might have concerned themselves less with Lawrence’s knotted prose and more with his knotted memories of events. In an article in the Autumn 2014 issue of MHQ Magazine on how Lawrence and a co-founder of modern irregular warfare, Orde Wingate, contributed doctrines that proved fatal to the French at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, Douglas Porch called Seven Pillars of Wisdom “an exaggerated, semiautobiographical account of the desert war that appealed to interwar tastes for desert escapism.")

When Lawrence cast about for a (relative) cloak of anonymity to hide his participation in the Royal Air Force, he took the name T.E. Shaw, in tribute to his growing friendship with the playwright and his wife Charlotte. The playwright acknowledged the compliment and repaid it with Too True To Be Good, his 1932 satire in which “Private Meek”—who drives the top brass up the wall with his unconventional dress, before it is revealed that he is actually a colonel (and military genius) who prefers the rank-and-file where he will have a “freer hand”—is, unmistakably, Lawrence. (See my prior post on how the real-life Lawrence compares to the character depicted in David Lean’s classic film, Lawrence of Arabia.)

Quote of the Day (James Thurber, on Sex and Grammar)

“The importance of correct grammar in the home can not be over-estimated. Two young people should make sure that each is rhetorically sound before they get married, because grammatical precision, particularly in mood, is just as important as anything else. Rhetoric and sex, in fact, are so closely related that when one becomes confused they both become confused. Take the subjunctive. [Henry] Fowler, in his book on modern English usage, says the subjunctive is dying, but adds that there are still a few truly living uses, which he groups under ‘Alives, Revivals, Survivals, and Arrivals.’ Let us examine the all too common domestic situation where the husband arrives just after another gentleman has departed--or just after he thinks another gentleman has departed (Suppositional Departures lead to just as much bitterness, and even more subjunctives, than Actual Departures).”--James Thurber, “The Subjunctive Mood,” from The Owl in the Attic and Other Perplexities (1931)

Quote of the Day (Calvin Trillin, on That Awful Word, ‘Whom’)

“As far as I'm concerned, ‘whom’ is a word that was invented to make everyone sound like a butler.”—Calvin Trillin, Quite Enough of Calvin Trillin: Forty Years of Funny Stuff (2011)

(Photo of Calvin Trillin taken at a discussion at Dartmouth College, February 2011.)