George Orwell recalls an interesting anecdote in the “As I Please” column published on this date, December 1, in 1944:
“Say what you like, things do change. A few years ago I was walking across Hungerford Bridge with a lady aged about sixty or perhaps less. The tide was out, and as we looked down at the beds of filthy, almost liquid mud, she remarked: ‘When I was a little girl we used to throw pennies to the mudlarks down there.’”
Readers of Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1851) will be familiar with mudlarks: “The[y] collect whatever they happen to find, such as coals, bits of old-iron, rope, bones, and copper nails . . .” Orwell continues:
“I was intrigued and asked what mudlarks were. She explained that in those days professional beggars, known as mudlarks, used to sit under the bridge waiting for people to throw them pennies. The pennies would bury themselves deep in the mud, and the mudlarks would plunge in head first and recover them. It was considered a most amusing spectacle.”
I remembered the scene in Howard Hawks’ Rio Bravo (1959) when Joe Burdett (Claude Akins) throws a coin into a barroom spittoon and waits for Dude (Dean Martin) to fish it out. In the nineteenth century, tourists visited insane asylums to laugh at the inmates. There persists a human impulse to revel in the humiliation of others. Think of it as an exercise in applied Schadenfreude. Visit a playground or locker room and you’ll see it in action. Orwell sounds rather naïve in his conclusion:
“Is there anyone who would degrade himself in that way nowadays? And how many people are there who would get a kick out of watching it?”
Say what you like, things do change superficially, not essentially.
'But Be Severe, Severe—at the End'
Katie Louchheim (1903-1991) was a New Deal-style Democrat, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of State under Kennedy and Johnson. As a poet she published at least three collections, including With or Without Roses (1966). I can’t judge the quality of her work as I’ve read none of it and I know of her only because of a letter Louise Bogan wrote in 1948, collected in A Poet’s Prose: Selected Writings of Louise Bogan (ed. Mary Kinzie, 2005).
Louchheim had apparently asked Bogan for advice getting book reviews published. Bogan suggested she write some sample reviews for practice, telling her: “Make them crisp! Start with a short sentence, and keep your EAR on your nouns and verbs.” Good practical advice, but Bogan is just getting started:
“This ‘writing with the ear’ (as it were) is really the best technical practice you can give yourself. Remember that the reader’s attention span is usually v. short. I cut and cut my sentences, right up to the last version; always keeping the adjectives down to a minimum and the adverbs practically down to zero. The verb can do so much!”
There’s nothing novel here. Most seasoned writers have learned these lessons, but it’s nice to be reminded that such advice is applicable to any writer’s style. Write a sentence. Count the number of inert words that contribute nothing to its meaning and music. Cut them, to use Bogan’s verb. There's no good reason for anyone to write badly in public. What you do at home is your business. She goes on:
“I don’t mean to make you write completelywithout color or sound; but try writing as barely as possible, at first. Then put in your connectives, etc. (Although I think that writing ‘at full spurt,’ and then paring down , is the best all-around way. Don’t censor yourself in the beginning! Keep the feeling fresh, and be sure some tension is working at all times. But be severe, severe—at the end.)”
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