Newspaper Page Text
22
November, 1979
InPrint
Introduction —seemed to hold: follow
these rules, avoid these missteps, and voii
too can learn how to w rite. I he debate on
student and general illiteracy was already
strong m the Kilties, and this ancient text
v\ ith its brief prescriptions could possibly
come to the rescue.
Alas, it didn't work out that way. It was
naive, and still is. to think that this book, or
att\ other, could do much to improve
w riting in an increasingly non-writing,
non-reading culture Moreover, it
isn't icalh a very good lxx»k. It's a hodge
podge of "rules of usage" (e.g.. "Korin the
possessive singular of nouns by adding
s"..." I he number of the subjec t deter
mines the number of the verb”) and
"principles of composition” (“Use the
ac tive voice".. ."Avoid a succession of
loose sentences**). This is all good advice
but no better than that given by thou
sands of textbooks.
Another Haw is a certain affectation, an
archness, an occasional metaphorical turn
that is meant to lie crisp but calls attention
to itself in a wav the book warns against
doing: ‘There are occasions when obsc ur
ity serves a literary yearning, if not a liter
al \ purpose*, and there are writers whose
mien is more overcast than dear." Or. in a
passage c ritic izing such business words as
ufnlate and finalize: "Its portentous nouns
and verbs invest ordinary events w ith high
adventure; the executive walks among ink
erasers, caparisoned like a knight. We
should tolerate him —every man of spirit
wants to ride a white horse. The only
question is whether his vocabulary is help
ful to ordinary prose."’The only question I
• have is whether this kind of prose is help
ful to ordinary students. Each example
suffers from a certain cuteness and inci
Amperfi
dentally violates two of the book's rules:
“Use figures of speech sparingly” and
“Avoid fancy words.**
This takes me to “Words and Expres
sions Commonly Misused." a chapter
White has revised for this edition. I hough
he gives much good advice for avoiding j
vague or confusing words, he is cranky I
much of the time. White's prejudice is
against newer words and shif ts of mean
ing. Nauseous should not Im* used for nause
ated', it means "sic kening to contemplate.**
Most people would disagree. Transpire
means to “become know n," not to "hap
pen" or “come to pass." "Many writers so
use it...** he says, "but their usage finds lit
tle support in the l«itin ‘breathe across or
through!" This is proof?
Then there's cope. While says it’s an
“intransitive verb used with with." Hut
that ignores the new use of the term:
"How's he doing after the divorce?"
"Oh. he's coping." To be sure, this
comes close to the dread psychobabble,
but it still expresses something unic|uc
and valuable — as do many of the new
jargon words, however irritating or over
used. such as closure, space, validation.
Finally, there's the* matter of hopefully.
White: “lb say. ‘Hopefully I'll leave on the
noon plane’ is to talk nonsense. l)o you
mean you'll leave on the noon plane in a
hopef ul frame of mind? Or do you mean
you hope* you’ll leave on the noon plane?"
Sorry, but I think White is willfully uncom
prehending. We know perfectly well
that this means he hopes he’ll leave on the
noon plane.
For all its lightness and wit, The Elements
of Style, in w hatever edition, is often sour
and wrongheaded. I don't deny that we
can learn from it. but the bonk does not
have enough todo with the language as it is
ac tually used, and it has an offensive way of
celebrating its own stuffiness.
Manfred Wolf
f all the components you buv for
your lii/fi system, the only ones that
absolutely require reliance on the
manufacturer's performance and capa
bility promises are the speakers. A listen
ing test in a dealer's demo room may give
you a feeling of accomplishment, may act
as a psyc hologic al c run h. but .is a valid test
its value is zilch.
What you think you heat f rom a pair of
speakers depends not only on the speak
ers, but also where they are positioned,
your age and your sex. Even more impor
tant are the acoustic properties of your
listening room. If you want to know w hat
sort of sound your fi system is delivering, a
pair of top cpiality headphones w ill give
you an approximate idea, but even such a
test has its limitations since the head-
pohones plus your ear cavity form a sort of
resonating chamber, a room in miniature.
Your lii/fi listening room always inter
faces with your speakers, forming an in
dissoluble partnership. What you actually
hear is what is left over after your room
gets through with the sound. As far as fi
sound is concerned, you are the last person
in the hi/fi chain of events, low man on the
sonic totem pole.
Several things take place in your listen
ing room, and for openers we can consider
sound as existing in two categories. The
first is dry sound, the sound that comes di
rectly from your speakers. Dry sound or
direct sound is what a musician hears from
OUT THE OTHER
(Continued from /#jgr 6)
tour this November to talk about — black
holes. Dr. Kaufmann, astrophysicist and
black hole expert, will arrive with films,
slides, diagtams and ‘‘spec tacular as
tronomical photographs." and it's all part
cd the Big Hush lor Disney's most expen
sive movie ever. The Hlaik Hole, opening in
Dec cmhci.
Yawn
Saturday Nic;ht Not Live: NB< is
moving reruns of then late night silliness
to pi ime time — Wednesday 10-11, therein
ousting Tiom Here to Etermts from tlu* fall
sc hediile. It will lx* optimistically titled The
He\t of Sntunlas \i^ht l.n<e.
The Marshall Tucket Band. Spar-
t.msburg. South Carolina's contrilmtion to
the deep-South Ixxigic hngades, was re
cently named Official Ambassadors to tbe
Winter Obmpics. In exchange for theii
high faintin' title, the lads are obliged to I
thiow a fund-raising show for the L’.S.
team and a free cone ei t for the whole gang ‘
cd competitors when thev assemble next
winter at l.ake Placid, New York.
Casting Calls
Monty Python's John Cleese will play
Count de Monet in the French Revolution
segment cd Mel Brooks' History of the World,
Port I. Cloris Leach man w ill play Madame
de Farge, Brooks himself will be a chamber
pot valet (ah, toilet humor through the
ages).
Bi.ondie WILL appear in the film Hoodie;
they’ll do a concert uumlN*r and Dclxirah
Harry w ill do even more ... a featured
role. Fhe star of this effort is Meat loaf,
director is Alan (Welcome to l„A.) Rudolph.
Mick Jaggct. latum O'Neal. Orson Welles
and Jackie Cleason reportedly turned
down roles, t his ac ting gig, by the way. w ill
further delay completion of Meal loaf's
long oveiduc* album; it was scheduled for
release earlv this year and is nowhere near
finished.
Robert Bedford's lust direr tot ial effort.
Ordinary People (from the lx*st seller cd a
few years back) stars Mary Islet Moore
and Donald Southerland. Cutter id Hone
will star John Heard as Clutter, Jett Budges
j as Bone. I.isa F.ichhmn as Mo.
Exploiting the Exploitive
Some enterprising types put together a
cute little flick called (•uyana, Crime of the
Century* and then even got Universal to
Will Michael Upham, designer cd
last month’s Ampersand of the
Month, please send us his address.
We'd like to pay him, but the post of
fice won't cooperate.
agree to distribute ... but Universal is sud
denly shy. I he movie is now called Guyana,
Mystery of the Century, and although the
original dialogue was in English, the entire
movie has been tc-dublx-d ( The stars, and
we use the term loosely, are Stuart Whit
man, Cienc* Barry, John Ireland, Joseph
Cotten, Yvonne de Carlo and Bi aclinic!
Dillman.) This sudden attac k of cold feet
may prove that there are limits to Hol
lywood's tasteless ness.
Bantam Books is re-releasing its papet-
back version cd the original Cruising novel
by (ierald Walker. Mere coincidence,
swears Bantam, that the uproar over the
f ilm version should so closely precede the
January publication dale dMink's been out
cd print since it first emerged in 1970).
A FILM titled Chmppaquiddick. using led
Kennedy's name, w ill allegedly lx* made hv
one (flenn Slensel, who claims it's all per
fectly OK. since, after all. Kennedy is a
public figure and fail game. Stensel was
once going to make a film alnmi Billy
Carter called Peanuts, but we were spaied
that one.
Ciixxl (iod: \\ hat Was lx*ast
Important?
Farraii Fawcett fired her longtime
manager and PR hotshot Jay Bernstein,
who said in a tiade interview after the axe
that his work building Farrah into a
worldw ide star attraction was "the most
important thing I've clone in my life."
his instrument. This sound travels out into
space, strikes walls, the floor, ceiling,
chairs, rugs, furniture and people. Some
of the sound bounces off, scattering in all
directions. This reflected or reverberant
sound is a sound source, just like your
speakers.
All the objects in your listening room
reflec t a certain amount of sound, but also
absorb some of it, converting it to heat,
while letting some of the sound pass
through. An u|x*n w indow, exc luding the
f rame and glass, dcx*s no sound absorbing,
permitting sound to travel on through,
unrestricted. Close the window and that
pane* of glass becomes a sound reflector.
Offhand, it would seem that reflected
sound, the reverberant sound, is the villain
of the piece, yet consider that sound in
doors is always more satisfying than the
same sound heard at an outdcx>r concert.
What our ears and our brains like to hear is
a combination of direct and reverberant
sound. Reverberant sound adds a certain
richness and body to music it does not
otherwise have. The amount and quality
of reverlx*rant sound depends on the si/e
of your listening icmhii. its shape* and the
sound absorption properties of everything
in that room.
You can have text much reverberation or
not enough but there is no such thing as a
proper amount and there are no rigid
rules to w hich you must adhere. I he kind
of sound, the combination of direct and
reverlx*rant sound your speakers and your
listening room produce and w hic h you
may enjoy is a subjec tive experience. If the
reverberation isn't cpiite right for you per
sonally, then your speakers will not sound
right no matter what. The same speakers
in a different listening environment may
sound like the lx*st you ever heard.
Ideally, when listening to a composition
you should get a mental image of the space
in which it was performed. A symphony
should give the impression of lx*ing played
in a large hall; an organ in a cathedral and
chamber music in an intimate room.
There is no way in which your listening
room, unaided, w ill do all these* things for
you.
Reverberant sound can pioducc ptob-
lems. Two sounds can augment or negate
each other. Where they assist those fre
quencies sound louder; where they oppose
they can lx*come inaudible These actions
occur at various places in the room, so
what you hear is determined by your
speakers, theii positioning, by the acous
tics and by where ycxi sit. The same is true
when you attend a concert: what you hear
depends on where you sit. If, at a live pei-
formance speec h sounds muf fled or some
of the instrumental music sounds muddy,
change your seat. Ditto at home.
You can modify reverberant sound to
some extent. Ychic.ui makeycxir rcxMiimore
lively, more reverberant, by removing
materials w hich are notorious sound
absorbers. You can put your speakers on
stands, either homemade or of the
storebought variety. This stops the reverb
eration of floorboards, which muddies up
Ikiss response, and gives treble tones better
direction. The result: cleaner sound at
both ends of the spectrum. An empty
rcxmi with hard walls, closed windows, no
curtains and with no one present but ycxir-
self w ill give maximum reverberant sound.
This decreases as you add furniture, car
peting, people and open all the windows.
Alternatively, you can add a time delay de
vice to your fi system to add artificial re
verb. If you do, use* additional speakeis al
the sides and rear to supply reverberant
sound only.
Martin Clifford