insomnia

I've been battling this beast for many years, mostly as the result of a longtime prescription given to me by a doctor who should have known better. Whatever beneficial effects it had for me also seemed to have turned off for a long time the switch in my brain to indicate sleep. At one point, it was five days without a wink: in New York City. We were staying with a friend in a 1.5-room fifth floor walkup on Madison and 82nd in mid-February. The apartment had no real walls so I couldn't really get any privacy even to read, and it was too cold to walk to Washington Square and back, and I'd have felt perfectly safe doing so. But dying of hypothermia is one of my few fears (death itself is not one of them), and I didn't really want to risk it. And I was kinda lazy. But it was the kind of wakefulness like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockword Orange with revulsion therapy. My eyes seemed propped open.

A good thing is that, over time, I've learned or trained myself not to ruminate. I don't lie awake thinking about the mess I've made of my life, or why I didn't ever allow myself to learn to waterski, or what bills remain unpaid, or the debts I owe to an alphabet soup of governmental agencies and financial institutions. I lay mostly in silence, although in the last year I've added Nichiren Buddhist chanting to the mix. Music, darkness, heavy food intake don't help. Nam Yoho Rengo Kyo has passed a lot of hours.

I just went to Sheetz for a footlong meatball sandwich, at 4am, hoping some gut loading would do the trick. Occasionally it does, but tonight I'm not so sure. Antihistamines, even industrial amounts of prescription medications don't often help much.

Side note: one of my readers once inquired where you get a meatball hero at 4 a.m. I explained that when you live within 2 miles of a decent interstate exchange anywhere in the South, you can get just about anything you please. Don't even get me started on Buc-ees, the closest of which is about 240 miles NW of here. As the billboard says, "If you know, you know."

The reports say that insomniacs underestimate the amount they sleep, and that's probably true. But most of my nights, to the extent I sleep at all, it's never a deep sleep, and the only reason I know I've been asleep is that I'll remember fragments of a dream. But still wake up tired. And if I feel like I've only gotten 1.5 hours of sleep and it's really 2.5, well, that ain't helping.

And once 6am hits, forget it, and it's getting perilously close to that now. My options are to take another pill, hope it helps, and maybe my mascot won't wake me too much to cater to her every need. They don't call it "hounding" for nothing.

Used to be, in my younger days, I'd just stay awake all night working. Don't even care to do that anymore, and unfortunately or not, I don't have the four-foot-high stacks of paper to plow through that I used to. They provided some sense of security, anxiety, and something to do all the same time. 

And everyone else whose name is Land, at least those I'll lay claim to, sleeps like a charm. Mi esposa can get her eight hours in, and then a few more during the day, maybe a few times a day. This isn't necessarily a good thing at all, given the overall picture, but it does make for some jealously on my part. And there's nothing like watching a basset sleep. Completely given in to pure bliss.

I used to tell a friend that sleep was the highest one could get, which perhaps explains my pursuit of it.  His question, a reasonable one: If you're asleep how would you know? But one fascinating experience with lucid dreaming a few weeks ago convinced me that, in the right moment, sleep could be quite damn exhilarating.

I also used to say that my lack of sleep make up for my excess of it between the ages of 16 and 25. But that karma's been paid back, in spades, many years ago.

I'd love to check into a sleep clinic and just stare at the monitoring people for eight hours.

And I've asked my doctor, whatever happened to sedatives or barbiturates? I guess those are just for the hospitalized these days. I've wished for such action before, with horrid results. But now that I need them, insurance do not allow for it (credit to S. Q. Liquor). 

Anyway, time to determine the next step. I do have a relatively quick book on crosses to get through, and if it wasn't accompanied by one of the most twisted style guides I've ever received, the job might even be easy.

A basic rule: Whenever clients say a project should be easy, most of the time they are lying, I hope unintentionally.

Signing off, if not exactly out.

Haven't Been Here in a While

In the words of Warren Zevon in his own version of "Poor, Poor Pitiful Me," "I don't wanna talk about it." I will say that things are a whole lot different now than they were just prior to my 59th birthday, the dateline of the prior post. Yow.

The hands-down best part of the changes is that I recently became a first-time grandfather, so wonderful things do happen. Our son and daughter-in-law have decided that once our granddaughter has a recognizable face, she will also have no social media presence. They won't be posting pictures for public viewing, and I'm sure it'll be a long time before their child does. And my kids are not Luddites by any means, DIL included. Nor do they particularly put themselves out there, at least via the only medium that I very, very occasionally access: the much-dreaded Rat's Nest; both sons have abandoned it, and our daughter-in-law might post twice or thrice a year. I think they do Instagram stuff, but I don't really know (or know what that is) nor do I care. All three can stare into their phones for hours with the best of them, although the new parents now have a better way to spend their time.

And no photo of my most brilliant and beautiful granddaughter will appear here, because it wouldn't last long anyway. Scroll down a little and you'll see that Blogger has scrubbed the picture of the mascot and me, for godsake. I'm not sure which of us triggered the facial recognition bots. Google years ago wiped out from this blog the photo of the czarina and me with John Cale . . . and also wiped out, at least on my side, the same photo as an attachment to an email to an author in Israel, for whom I was writing an index. Thankfully the author did receive the email and the photo deletion didn't until occur until sometime down the line. But it still makes you go hmmm, as some long-forgotten sort-of comic would say.

Just got through the leanest month in the modern history of LandonDemand. September's already looking better, which isn't saying much, unless folks bail on me. It's happened before. Or something is moved to next season. Or a well-known university press gets a job back three weeks early—a true sign of my lack of stuff to do—but the Holy Grail known as the Purchase Order Number has not yet been assigned. And I start what becomes a string of worldwide emails to get one. I mean, talk about no good deed goes unpunished.

On the other hand, with this same press, I once filed an invoice on Thursday morning and was paid late that afternoon, direct depozick [sic]. So I can't really complain.

I just realized that the insomnia I've been battling for much of this year could have been spent right here. Anyone out there reading this is very, very lucky that I've not happened upon that notion before now. I've been unleashing the word horde (thanks, Wm. S. Burroughs) upon any poor soul who'll stand still long enough. (See paragraph 1.)

And no more comments. Sorry. The spammers are getting past the meager defense that Blogger provides. I'm always available via landondemand@gmail.com, often too much so. Write me, especially if I don't know you.

Well, Thank God That's Over

Christmas.

While it does usually result in some pleasurable moments, overall it's a season to loathe.

I spent a very nice five days in Denver with what constitutes pretty much the entirety of my family: my wife, our two sons, one daughter-in-law, and one daughter-in-law-apparent. While having such a small group keeps things simple, there's a little melancholy from not having a larger gathering. But both sons are with people who have large families -- and they can have them.

Neither my wife nor I came from small families, nor over-the-top large ones. We had our healthy share of aunts and uncles and cousins, and even siblings, growing up, and I knew all my grandparents into my teens. But now, for a variety of reasons, really it's just the two (or four) or us. Our kids have never had the regular presence of any family members during their lives, except for their parents and their maternal grandparents, until they passed last decade. They have exactly one first cousin, who is two years younger than me.

We went dogsledding in Breckinridge, Colorado, and I nearly only screwed everything up once, which isn't a bad percentage. Lotsa fun, and being around more dogs than people is always a good scenario. And those dogs love what they are doing and certainly lead healthier lives than I do.

But Christmas. What it's come down to is that I just loathe retail—and really, Linus, in 2018, that's what it's all about. And it's a secular holiday. Just ask any non-Christian if Christmas affects their lives. Then go ask someone at the Freewill Pentecostal Holiness Church of God the last time they had their lives interrupted by Yom Kippur.

Well, then again, Yom Kippur only covers two days. Christmas starts the day after Labor Day.

Killing Time in the Twenty-First Century

The czarina and I watched Inside Llewyn Davis a few days ago. I think that's the right spelling. Coen Brothers movie about the New York City folk music scene in, well, really you can pin it down to a few days in 1960 or 1961 based on one of the closing shots of the movie.

Even though folk music right at the moment depicted in the film's days was way too earnest for my taste, the movie did take place in the neighborhood that kinda grounded my teenage years. As I remarked when watching the movie, "I was born in the right place, just about twenty years too late."

Anyway, I'm wasting time (see title) waiting for my goddamn phone to charge up so that I can get a VPN code to log into one of my work emails. When I was in Denver last month, I showed my younger issue how, considering different programs and phone codes and all that nonsense, I had to open up nine different computer screens and phone messages just to get started. And that's what I'm doing now. Waiting. For something to charge. That. I.

Never

Use.

Wrong century, folks.

And I hate to harp on it, but I'm still not up on the world since November 7. This—in a construction that baffled the Eurotrash we housed for a few months—is not unlike measuring sobriety. I actually clicked on one of my usual news sites today and managed to click away before it loaded. It was like sticking your head in a bar wondering if you could get back out. I am learning firsthand about the phrase "ignorance is bliss." I think there's stuff my wife wants to talk to me about or show me on TV. She said, "You can't keep this up forever." I replied, "I can keep it up as long as I want to."

So, rather than give people hell under an assumed name and enjoying and not enjoying the game, I'm here, typing to no one.

Thoughts of authors are colliding. In the resurrection, does your virtual life go with you?

How to Explain Capitalization Choices to Your Family

The notion expressed in the title might seem silly, except for the fact that my son and daughter-in-law are high school English teachers. Well, and consider the fact that my sons, certainly the one who has become a teacher, never came to me for a writing or editing question. My god, the only thing in life I can actually help them with . . .

The only pieces of writing I've seen of my younger son's were a paper or two my wife liberated from his apartment one time while staying there when he and our future D-I-L were out of town. The reports that always came from his teachers were that they wished he wrote more. He presented his ideas with such economy of language that, while answering the questions, his assignments rarely approached the word limit. Could be worse problems.

So, while walking down the streets of Denver, my daughter-in-law mentioned that she and a student were having trouble deciding on capitalization of a certain term or category of terms. I tried to explain not only the proper approach (AP and Chicago agree) but that they really didn't have to puzzle this crap out for themselves. While Grammar Girl is pretty neat, so's your old man, so to speak.

As are these resources. The list is cribbed from the AP Stylebook. Thanks in advance to AP, which has not granted permission to reprint, but which has also of late realized the value of the serial comma. Mirabile dictu.

+++

AP Stylebook editors refer to the following resources to help guide style decisions. If you do not find your answer in the Stylebook, try checking one of these other sources. You can buy them for yourself using the links below.

First reference for spelling, style, usage and foreign geographic names:

Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fifth Edition

Other references for spelling, style, usage and foreign geographic names:

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition

Concise Oxford English Dictionary: Main edition 12th edition by Oxford Dictionaries (2011) Hardcover

Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language

National Geographic Atlas of the World, Tenth Edition

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition

For aircraft names:

IHS Jane's All the World's Aircraft 2014-2015: Development & Production

For military ships:

Jane's Fighting Ships 2016/2017: Yearbook

For nonmilitary ships:

LLOYDS REGISTER OF SHIPS 1989-90 (3 VOLS A-G/H-O/P-Z)

For railroads:

The Official Railway Guide: Freight Service Edition,The Bulk Connection March/April 1990

For federal government questions:

Congress At Your Fingertips 115th Congress 1st Session 2017

For non-U.S. government questions:

Political Handbook of the World

The CIA World Factbook 2017

For religion questions:

Handbook of Denominations in the United States 13th Edition

Other references and writing guides consulted in the preparation of the AP Stylebook:

The Careful Writer

More Language That Needs Watching

Watch Your Language: a Lively, Informal Guide to Better Writing Emanating from the News Room of the New York Times

THE WORD: An Associated Press Guide To Good News Writing

Modern American Usage: A Guide

A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, Second Edition

Fowler's Dictionary of Modern English Usage

Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage

Newton's Telecom Dictionary

Dictionary of Problem Words and Expressions

Words into Type

Proud Papa

Yes, that would be my son on the left, in the role of The Mute.

Equity show at a very well-regarded theatre.

Pinch me.

Florida Repertory Theatre: "The Fantasticks"

Author Contact, Codes, Thanksgiving

Some presses put me directly in touch with authors. I speak of dreading that experience, but the exchanges are often pleasant and rewarding.

Most of the time, a press's managing editor sends me a job, and I edit and return it to the managing editor. No mess, no fuss. I also can say certain things to the managing editor about a book that would be more difficult to say to an author.

[Sometimes, though, I wonder if presses don't always know when there's such a problem with the manuscript, and they want the anonymous copyeditor to blame when they bring the hammer down on the author.]

When I'm put in touch with the author, I can't hide behind the anonymity that copyediting usually provides. Thankfully I've never had the paths cross of Author Contact and Rancid Book. I recently had one back to back with the other, and I started thinking how fortunate that the author I was dealing with had written a very nice book and wasn't trying to pass off a bunch of financial and demographic research done in 2004 in the present tense as if it were still relevant.

But I digress. Imagine that.

In a recent project I copyedited, the press had coded the book before it came to me. Thus, the material below in angle brackets appeared before most blocks of copy. The material following the second bracket is what the code stands for:

<2HT>Second half title

<A>A-head

<ACK>Acknowledgments

<B>B-head

<BIB>Bibliography

<BMH>Back matter head

<BML>Back matter list

<BMT>Back matter text

<BQ>Block quote

<CN>Chapter number

<COT>Chapter opening text

<CPT>Chapter part title

<CT>Chapter title

<DED>Dedication

<DIA>Dialogue

<ESIGN>End of <SIGN>

<FMH>Front matter head

<HT>Half title

<L>List, unnumbered

<LH>List head

<LTR>Letter opening

<LTRT>Letter text

<N>Notes

<NH>Notes head

<NL>Numbered list

<NLH>Numbered list head

<P>Poem

<PN>Part number

<PST>Part subtitle

<PT>Part title

<SB>Strong break

<SIGN>Used for newspaper article titles, etc.

<T>Regular text

<T1>First paragraph of text

<TFL>Text flush left

<TOCBM>Table of contents back matter

<TOCCN>Table of contents chapter number

<TOCCT>Table of contents chapter title

<TOCFM>Table of contents front matter

<TOCPN>Table of contents part number

<TOCPST>Table of contents part subtitle

<TOCPT>Table of contents part title

<TP>Title page

NOTE: Ethnographic sections, which should be typographically distinct from regular text, are indicated by an “E” preceding individual code elements (e.g., <ETFL> for ethnographic text flush left, etc.).

This manuscript has more elements than most, but a list half this size isn't uncommon for most books. Part of what I do -- when the press doesn't do it first -- is put similar codes in the manuscript myself, thus telling the designer how to lay out the book. Put as simply as my brain can understand it, the designer can set up a certain style for chapter heads, search all text coded <CH>, apply style to code, and voila. Of course, there's a whole lot that goes on after that and before that, and nothing is quite that simple, but that's what the codes are for.

For this reason, authors, the look of a manuscript ultimately doesn't matter. 

Theoretically you could send a manuscript to a typesetter in 4-point Ridiculous, superscripted, and as long as these codes are in place, the designer should be able to work jes' fine.

The obverse (?) is also true. No matter how much you try to fancy up your manuscript, there's a point of diminishing returns for everyone down the line -- and you, too. A properly coded manuscript needs no formatting other than bold and italics and a few other things that import into design software. Boxes and shading and all that goes away, and a designer needs to re-create it. 

That's why an author should never put boxes and shading and auto-lists and all that other unnecessary noise in a manuscript in the first place.

Not that this author did. Well, actually I don't know, because the press obviously intervened on the manuscript before I saw it. But when I compiled my answers to some of the author's concerns, I noted that many of them dealt with how the manuscript looked, and the codes -- which, after all, are significant to me (duh, like knowing proofreading marks and reading subway maps -- aren't these universal survival skills?) -- weren't much help to the author.

My email to the very nice author follows, and please note that this was not my initial correspondence with the author. We'd already established a rapport and worked some things out between us, with some give and take on both sides. This email was sent essentially after my work was complete.

Hi. Just responding to some of your queries, so you don’t worry about this stuff.

1. The columns of contributions not lining up -- actually, they are, in theory. There’s a tab space between each number on each line, but just not a tab in the ruler, so the spacing is all different in appearance. Once the designer imports that text, the tabs will be there, and everything will line up pretty.

2. <LH>Oyster Dressing.

You’d wondered about this not being bold. The designer determines all those specs at typesetting time. The LH indicates it’s a head. I’m sure it’ll all make sense on the page.

3. You should be reborn a human being so that you will have a good life.” [Q: Shouldn’t there be end quote marks here (or somewhere) to close the instruction?]

No, because the text preceding it is set as a prose extract.

4. [Q: Can we put a blank line between the ends of all the poetry sections and the next paragraphs?  It bothers me that it all looks so crowded.]

Again, that’s a design thing that will be resolved at typesetting. There’s typically space around extracts and lists in most books. Don’t worry about how the manuscript looks. The designer goes by the codes, not the spacing on the page.

5. <CT>Silk Stories [Endnote 1 is here after “Silk Stories,” not at the end of COT]

No can do. Note markers after chapter titles, heads, etc., are verboten. Needs to go after the first next logical block of running text, usually the first sentence -- as done here.

6. Need to keep “nowhere” lowercase in “middle of nowhere”: From Merriam-Webster’s 11th Collegiate: middle of nowhere : an extremely remote and isolated place  *ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. 

If we wanted to uppercase the term, really it would be Middle of Nowhere, Montana, but we shouldn’t do that either.

Hope that helps.

===

Happy Thanksgiving, folks. Hope it was a good one. We forsook the home event, and three of us -- myself, my wife, our younger son -- drove to Weaverville, NC, to a nice little restaurant and had a delightful meal and walked around a little afterward. Back home, nothing but another night at home. Nice change of pace. No preparation, no clean-up, and 90 minutes or so of quiet conversation that might be better than we'd get at home, with all the jumping up and down around the table that would be going on. My younger son's the type whom sometimes you don't know what's going on until you ask, and some of the time you don't even know what to ask, so the occasional direct answers and questions we get out of him in such situations are always helpful. His older brother has gone through parts of his life when we seemed to hear most of the goings-on in his head. That has never, ever been the case with our younger issue. I guess there's benefits to both. And it comes and goes. Once our younger son gets on a roll, it's nice to find out what's happening in his life.

I'll probably fry a turkey at Christmas, but I think we just made it a family tradition to get the hell out of town and go eat somewhere else on Thanksgiving. I guess it's our Central Appalachian version of Thanksgiving in Chinatown, which we've also done. With Asheville and environs 75 minutes of a beautiful drive down the road, that's not a problem.

View from 19/23, Tennessee/North Carolina

Great Moments in Parenthood

I have two sons. One just sat in his last college class today; he graduates in a few weeks. He has something like 198 credit hours, having needed 128 or so to graduate. The extra credits came from AP courses and the requirements of his chosen areas of study; he had to stay in school for four years to complete all the courses for his majors (and minor). So, one about to graduate college. Very proud parents.

Second son is a college freshman. Financial aid deadlines are nigh, and I required access to his student/institutional account. His log-in information, which I can never remember and always neglect to write down somewhere sensible, is a random jumble of letters and punctuation.

Flashback to 1989 and 1992, respectively. Both my sons were delivered via Cesarean section: scooped out of the czarina’s swollen belly, cleaned up, and delivered to the czar’s expectant arms.

Both sons were hyperalert upon arrival. Heads up, eyes focused, looking around, taking it in. I can brag a little; both these kids were smart newborns. Nothing got past them. In the case of one of them, I think more than a little knowledge came from somewhere else.

Immediately in their father’s cradle, both boys began to hear the murmur of one of their dad’s favorite pieces of writing, T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Too many great lines to mention. But upon leaving the womb, the first words they heard other than from medical professionals were as follows:

Let us go then, you and I, 
When the evening is spread out against the sky 
Like a patient etherized upon a table; 
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets, 
The muttering retreats 
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels 
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells: 
Streets that follow like a tedious argument 
Of insidious intent 
To lead you to an overwhelming question . . .  
Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”  
Let us go and make our visit. 

I ask my son today for his login information so I can access the financial aid application. 

He writes, “An easy way to remember it: the first letters of Let us go then, you and I.” 

I suppose there’s something to be said for being in on the ground floor.

This, folks, is the fun of parenthood—not the inevitably negative and crazy-making buttons that all parents put on their children. Neuroses, personality quirks . . . all that stuff comes with the territory, even if they manifest in entirely different ways than in the parents’ generation.

But my son’s explanation retrospectively gave a day of thinking about financial aid and taxes a glow, and that happens—well—never.

I love my children. Very proud of both of them. I’m way behind in work and dealing with long-forestalled issues, but what fine moments and ultimately a red-letter day.

How often do you read that on this blog?

I Love You, Alice B. Toklas, and My Favorite Proofreading Quote

Nope. I never saw the movie I Love You, Alice B. Toklas. This story concerns your humble correspondent and a particular book, beginning back in the days before book reading made the shift in my life from entertainment to commerce.

As an undergraduate, or maybe just after, I liberated a hardback copy of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans from my college library. I don’t think the library or anyone there misses it.

[Blogger confession: I will admit to liberating more than a few books from this library, a couple of small volumes from an Ivy League library in middle New York state almost 36 years ago, and an unknown number of paperbacks and blank cassette tapes from Staten Island Mall back in 1974. That’s about as far as my teenage waywardness went.]

I cannot remember when or why or what I read about The Making of Americans that made me seek it out. The possibility exists that I found it while wandering around the stacks avoiding work . . . something that I am doing even as I type.

This posting isn’t about the book so much, except to say that I’m going to try to commit myself to read it. All 925 oversized pages of it. Here’s an entirely random excerpt from page 7:

Henry Dehning was a grown man and for his day a rich one when his father died away and left them. Truly he had made everything for himself very different; but it is not as a young man making himself rich that we are now to feel him, he is for us an old grown man telling it all over to his children.

And from page 907:

Very many who were being living are not being living have come to be a dead one. Not every one has come to be one being an old one. Not every one has come to be one being almost an old one. Not every one has come to be a dead one. Some have come to be an old one and have come to be a dead one. Some have come to be almost an old one and have come to be a dead one. Some have not come to be a dead one, they are being living. Some have come to be a dead one.

         Some are not believing that any other one can really be only doing the thing that the other one is doing. Some are not believing that some one can be coming to be doing every other thing than anything some other one would naturally be doing then. Some then come to be old ones. Some then come to be almost old ones. Any one then comes to be one who is going to be almost any old one. Any one is one not being a dead one. Any one is one coming to be an old one. Any one is one being a dead one. Any one is one being such a one. Any one is one coming to be almost an old one.

Much of the last few hundred pages reads like the second excerpt, and I could pluck out examples far denser than this. Whether it’s good or readable is almost beside the point. Consider the stamina and thought and attention to detail, however bizarre, that went into composing this piece. I’m thinking that if someone can write it, I can read it. If I received this from a publisher I would have to read it.

I was trying to figure how long I would give myself on the LandonDemand schedule to read this if it came in over the transom: I settled on five days. Then again, if it was done as in the old days — where this text would have been read against a typewritten copy of the original — I might have gone crazy. Cold read, yes. Against a typewritten copy, and one perhaps marked up at that? Gertrude, pass the hash pipe.

Anyway, for Christmas, our younger son wanted books. That’s all he said. So he received a wide range, mostly classics in one genre or another. I also found online — and while it’s his, I’m going to borrow it for a few years (like my college library, he won’t miss it) — a newer paperback edition of The Making of Americans. The hardback, I fear, is buried in the permafrost of the dungeon, and I hope it turns up whenever spring cleaning hits. Yes, Aunty, the dungeon is as it was last year.

This edition includes a wide mixture of reviews, none exactly positive. My favorite reads, “The first stunningly original disaster of modernism.” I live in a NASCAR town; I guess I’m just looking for a reliable wreck.

But the edition I purchased also includes a foreword and an introduction that give the book some context. I’m much more familiar with this type of academic discourse than I am with early-twentieth-century modernist American literature. I’ve read the foreword, which is mostly about the linguistics of the work, and read only the beginning and end of the introduction, because I don’t want to know too much about the book before endeavoring to tackle it. The end of the introduction is really what this posting is all about.

For all my stating that I never read new books for pleasure — and I don’t — why in the world would I want to read what has been referred to as “one of the great unread novels of all time”?

I give you the end of the introduction, which brought a tear to my eye.

The present text is a facsimile reprint of the original edition. Aside from the addition of a table of contents—combining the chapter titles of the 1925 edition with, in brackets, the 1934 abridged version’s headings for sections originally left untitled—the text is identical with the one that Stein and Toklas proofread during the summer of 1925; hence it is literally authoritative. Typographical errors that escaped their attention—and in a text of this complexity there were bound to be a good many—have not been corrected. (A typical typo is “stregnth,” which has been corrected in the quotation from page 165 cited on page xxiii of the introduction.) In addition, there are a number of passages that appear in the manuscript and typescript but not in the printed version. A fully corrected and edited text would be immensely desirable but is not feasible at present. . . . In the meantime, one must proofread while one reads, taking comfort in an observation Stein attributed to Alice Toklas in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: “I always say that you cannot tell what a picture really is or what an object really is until you dust it every day and you cannot tell what a book is until you type it or proof-read it. It then does something to you that only reading it can never do” (emphasis added).

My intent is not to proofread my way through this book, dear readers, nor to catch all those things that Stein and Toklas missed. My intent is to pay homage to an incredible effort on a writer's part. I now have the added motivation of giving thanks that someone out there — even a dead one — has enlivened an aspect of my life that has remained unchanged for almost forty years. 

I love you, Alice B. Toklas. And god knows, it ain't for your looks.

Too Much to Do

Christmas Eve day, and miles to go.

New Dorp Lane, Staten Island, NY;
except for the cars, 
the view hasn't changed in at least 50 years.

Shopping is basically done, although I have to brave the grocery store sometime this morning for tomorrow's feast. Per popular acclamation at chez czar, we're giving the czarina the day off from heavy cooking and doing a far simpler low country boil just for the family. It's the kind of thing we typically only make when there's twenty or so people around, so I'm going to halve the recipe. We'll throw some newspapers on the table and make believe it's summertime. And no dishes to wash.

***

Many interesting projects lately, and I wish I was wrapping up one of them this morning instead of what I'm working on: an index that seems not to want to go away. I've started placing the PDF and the Word doc side by side on the screen rather than looking at paper. Every second counts. Maybe I'll become the Frederick Taylor of the editorial world. Now if I could just keep my fingers out of my mouth while editing or proofreading and keep that red pen close to the paper.

***

When our younger son came home from college last week, I asked him if he'd signed up for any shifts at a local drive-thru he'd been working at for some years. He said no, but I knew that he needed some holiday funds (and I had become used to the intern labor), so I asked him if he wanted to do some word processing for me. I had about nine hundred pages of manuscripts that needed editorial changes keyed in. He did an OK job, but his reactions to the work were interesting. On job one, he pondered, "There wouldn't be so much to do if authors just followed the right style to begin with." On job two, he asked, "How hard is it for them to get the reference style right?" Out of the mouths of nineteen-year-old babes . . .

***

When Colleen (former intern) returns for winter/spring semester, I'll be talking to her about paid work for keying in changes. In the right circumstances, it saves me enough time and is worth the money to have someone input corrections to a Word document. We were speaking about this as a family last week, and we chuckled that, unfortunately, the czarina is not the person to help me in this area -- for a number of reasons. As I put it quite simply to the czarina's laughter, "You won't do what I want you to do when I want you to do it." Working for me is probably only slightly worse than being married to me.

***

The two books that my younger son slaved through were both rather interesting. One was a first-person account of a South Vietnamese army/government official's experiences from the mid-1940s until his escape in the early 1980s after imprisonment by the new regime, although the author began in the Viet Minh. The author knew John Paul Vann and Daniel Ellsberg and people like that from the mid-1950s on. Having come to consciousness during the height of the Vietnam War, I found the information on French and US involvement in SE Asia, and especially the internal Vietnamese happenings, fascinating.

[Great note on this book. As the coauthor, who is my primary contact, told me, "The [Vietnamese] author is 88 and not in great health. We're hoping he holds on until the book is published." So sweet. The book has been in various stages of writing for 24 years. The coauthor, who is concerned about his colleague's age and health, is 85.]

The second book was about the Fed's operations during the credit crisis of 2008. The editor was almost apologetic when sending the book out. "It's about economics, and many copyeditors don't like books with a lot of numbers." After explaining that I used to be the lead editor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, he was relieved and I suspect a little surprised. I suspect, also, that I'll now have an inside track on copyediting any books dealing with banking or economics coming from this press. Fine by me. They pay fast.

What I didn't mention was that I'd probably still be at that job if my boss wasn't one of the most despicable human beings I've ever met in my life. Her name was . . . oh, it's Christmas. Never mind.

***

I've had a few other things going on, it seems, but I have to finish this index NOW. Then to the store(s), then wrapping presents, then back to work on an intense little proofing job that must go out on Monday. At least it's not indexing.

***

The photo above comes from my hometown. Staten Island is part of New York City yet a world of its own. When the czarina was first there in 1985 and we went down New Dorp Lane, she said, "This reminds me of small towns in the South," the point being, "I had no idea that the evil urban Northeast full of you Yankees and Jews was actually like the rest of the world." Staten Island, when it's not acting more like Alabama, can be a very nice place.

***

Happy holidays, folks. Glad you're out there.

Sometimes You Just Ask

Over on Moi's blog, one of her regular posters is, if I get it correctly, an artist who works in illustration and design. I forget if it was on Moi's blog or here that the topic turned to drumming up freelance work. I mentioned to K9 that sometimes it was just a matter of going back to clients you hadn't heard from in a while and mentioning, "Hey, I'm still here."

K9's response was, "I wish it was that simple."

Sometimes it is.

As I've written before, clients come and go. If you'd have named for me a few years back the clients I'm surviving without now, I'd have asked you if you wanted to sit next to me at the Salvation Army for dinner tonight. But publishers and authors go, and others seem to take up the empty places right at the right time. My dear wife ascribes this to the presence of a deity. Maybe yes, maybe no. A lot of folks out there aren't doing so well these days, not to say that any deity is responsible for every little turn of events. I don't think the ways of the universe are conducted on such a micro level anyway; nor does my wife think that way, I don't believe. And theodicy's certainly not the subject of this post or this blog.

But I guess I could phrase as it as "Knock and the door will be opened to you; seek and you shall find."

Or that every invention is 10 percent inspiration and 90 percent perspiration.

A few publishers that I hadn't worked with lately popped into my head this week. I tracked one down, and it's now under the management of a larger group that handles a number of smaller imprints, all publishing in kinda the same field. The only contact person I could find on the new webpage was the president and publisher of the larger group. I'd forgotten the name of my old contact.

I emailed the president/publisher, telling per that I wanted to contact the press that was now part of per's larger company. I was a freelancer who wanted to reestablish contact with this press.

This was yesterday. Within an hour, I heard back from my old contact, asking for my most recent resume and rate sheet. Half an hour later, per said there might be some work for me.

I received news of a project today. I'll have it next week. A nice copyediting job.

Sometimes you just ask.

Publisher 2: I wrote my contact, whose name I remembered this time, and said, "Hey, haven't heard from you in a while. If you're still using freelancers, I'm still here."

Response: "Great to hear from you. We're still using freelancers, but just putting out fewer books. Will definitely keep you in mind."

Sometimes . . .

Back to publisher 1. I was put in touch with the graphic designer for the book I'll be copyediting. I did my A-student freelancer thing and said, "By the way, if you know of any publishers or authors looking for someone who does what I do, feel free to pass my name along, and I'll do the same for you." Per immediately wrote back with a contact at a press that labors in the same academic fields as most of the rest of my clients, and said, "Tell per I recommended you." I did so. Contact, if the widget is correct, was checking out the blog earlier tonight. I cannot assume, of course, this will turn out to be a good development, but it's a press that I would be very proud to put on the client list.

Sometimes . . .

I said this before also: if I had the nerve and the confidence in some regards at ages 14, 18, 22 that I do now, aspects of my life would have been totally different. Then again, there's no telling what bad roads such nerve and confidence might have taken me down then until now.

Agnosticism is a funny thing. I think everything is tied together. I think things move toward some conclusion that might not be revealed without the benefit of decades of hindsight. It just is so immaterial to me if someOne or someThing is tying that knot or moving things toward any conclusion. That's for the bigger brains to deal with.

It's too late at night for this. I belong in a dorm room at age 18, having serious discussions, although I don't really remember many serious dorm room discussions. A lot more laughing than pondering.

Bonnaroo lineup is out for 2010. It's tempting. Younger son and wife certainly want to go. Older son hasn't mentioned anything. Of course, being there represents heaven on earth to him, but hopefully he'll be busily and gainfully employed somewhere this summer in a pursuit that renders him unable to go . . . and that pursuit would likely not be in shouting distance to Manchester, TN. But knowing him, he'll try to figure out some way to game the whole deal so he can still do Bonnaroo. I like doing the tent thing. Mi esposa says she's over that and wants to do an RV. I just don't see it, but hell, I don't see a lot of things.

Side note, this from my Internet gig: Part of that gig, in addition to reviewing the work of about 100 other copyeditors, is answering the random questions that come in to a Help Desk from a cast of a few thousand writers of various levels of quality. I was dealing with one of the writers earlier this week and received this nice note:

---------

Bob,

You're awesome as always. I'd be lying if I said I'm thrilled when I'm told to take a different approach, but your advice is always specific and right on the mark so I am glad to have it.

Thanks again,

---------

Every so often, that craziness is worthwhile. As is this:

hello again

I knew it had been awhile since the last post. Almost two months is unconscionable. From mid-August to about now is always busy with chilluns going back to school out of town. Our younger son has a parents weekend at his school that turns into a week, and we just returned from that. All of this contributes to compressed work schedules. Nothing like trying to do four weeks of work in three weeks, not to mention that I really have to do five weeks of work in three weeks to make up not only for lost work time, but money spent traveling. It's a double hit, and usually by now I'm both out of money and behind on monthly work quotas. This year is no different.

Workwise it's been up and down the last few months. The schedule always manages to fill in somehow or another, but it's not always with the premium jobs, or maybe -- as happened this summer -- I get a lot of good-paying work from a slow-paying client. Not that my many creditors seem to care; their bills are due regardless of the status of my receivables.

One outfit that I do some work for flew me out to Santa Monica, CA, for a few days last month--plane fare, food, hotel room all covered. Hotel was a very nice property essentially on the Pacific Ocean. I can go on and on about that trip, but suffice it to say that it's rare that a freelancer like me is ever given this type of ride. And I can absolutely say that the trip never would have taken place were it not for this blog. Met some wonderful people, saw a part of the world I'd never seen. As I say, I could go on.

As part of the aforementioned long weekend at our son's school, we spent a few days in the Berkshires earlier this week. It already seems like weeks ago. And our older son is home for the weekend. We've seen him about four days since mid-June. He turned 20 years old in the interim. How did that happen?

I've got emails to answer from weeks ago, a bunch of work to do, and it's 1:20am. I was planning on working tonight (why is this night different from all other nights?), but ended up going to see a play at the theatre where my wife works. A wonderful production. While we were up at the theatre's offices, I was helping her with some of her work, and a friend dropped in and said that I hadn't posted to my blog in a while. Peter, this one's for you. I had no idea you were out there.

I'll try to post a little more than I have been. But work seems like it's ticking up, and my managing editor gig is about to start up (I hope) with the book series I work for, so time will get even tighter. Beats the alternative.

hyphenation, compound words, building freelance clientele, strange times

It's the easy words that'll trip me up. You'd think that after 34 years of marking up galleys (give or take), some things would stick . . . or at least I could proofread without a decent dictionary an arm's length away.

But that's not the case, and it's not because with my impending cognitive descent I am forgetting how to spell. But compound words and the (non)hyphenation thereof always send me scurrying to the Merriam-Webster's 11th, which must be followed.

Consider the following examples:

redheaded or red-headed
piggybacked or piggy-backed
bathwater or bath water or bath-water
good-bye or goodbye
grown-up or grownup
wood-burning or woodburning

It's this kind of stuff that I have to look up time after time. It's an offhand (off-hand?) application of the Pareto rule or the 80/20 rule, or however you know it: I spend most of my time looking up the same few words over and over again.

(By the way, MW11 says that the first instance of each of the above groupings is the correct spelling.)

American vs. British variants of English words I manage to remember. Class, if you're living in the United States, it's gray, not grey; leaped, not leapt; worshiping, not worshipping -- and if you are spelling "towards," "upwards," and "downwards" with the 's' at the end, you'd better be on the east side of the pond.

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Intern news: a local college is sending an intern my way beginning in January for her to complete her requirements as a technical communications minor (she is an English major). The last time I worked with an intern, I think it worked out well for her. I ended up referring some work to her and thus gave her a client (or part of one) to start a budding freelance career of her own.

And that's what I tell college-age groups when I speak to them. Don't plan on being a full-time freelancer right out of school. Go and get a real job (boy, would I love to put some scare quotes there), and start trying to freelance on the side. Set a goal of having two freelance clients by the time you're 25 years old, and then let it snowball with references and marketing and staying in place while all the full-time workers switch jobs and take your name with them. Aside from the age, that's how it worked with me -- although it was hardly that methodical. Many lucky breaks and connections, and in one case, the benefit of a writer/editor friend who never stayed at one job more than nine months. At one time I had eight different clients that resulted from places where he'd darken the doors for a little while and then leave. But he'd bring my name with him and leave it behind when the door hit his butt on the way out. Thanks, Tim.

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Interesting weekend, not all good. Went to a wedding party of a longtime (not long-time) friend whom I met while proofreading at a printing plant right out of college. We became very fast friends, the kind of thing that happens when you work with someone in cramped quarters under high pressure for little money for 70 hours a week -- and you have common interests to boot. At this party were people I'd not seen for anywhere from 10 to 15 to 25 years. While we've all grown older, whether or not we've grown up much is up for questioning. But a great time was had by all in reconnecting. A friend who hadn't seen me in years told Tere that she couldn't believe how talkative I've become -- like a different person. I think it's partially the effect of spending most of my waking hours these days in even more cramped quarters under higher pressure, alone. But I think what blew this friend away was seeing me even being chatty with strangers. Yes, I am a different person than I was in 1985/1990. I'm not sure I've grown up as much as figured out partially what it's like to act more like a human.

We spent the night in that town and then drove straight to the family visitation hours for a funeral of a 22-year-old we watched grow up, the son of our longtime next-door neighbors in Atlanta. Very, very sad. I won't go into details of the death, which apparently are a little sketchier than first believed, but suffice it to say that no 22-year-old oughta die, leaving behind parents and a younger brother. The late 22-year-old, his 19-year-old brother, my 19-year-old son, and my soon-to-be 16-year-old all grew up together, and we kept connections even after moving away from Atlanta, and we remain very good friends with the parents and surviving son, so it was a tough couple of days.

But speaking of reconnecting, we also at the funeral and visitation saw a bunch of people whom we hadn't seen nor spoken to since leaving ATL in 1997 -- and not all of whom we necessarily looked forward to seeing again, unlike the wedding. And we also saw a lot of the kids we knew back when they were 6 and 9 and 12 years old, now into late teenage and early adulthood years. Now, no one's kids are perfect -- certainly not my own -- but, well, if looking at most of them is any indication, I'm glad we moved away. I don't think any of them or their parents will happen upon this blog, and those who might get a resentment based on what I said will just be adding to the resentments they had 11 years ago. A few of the kids looked like they turned out all right (alright?), but, well. . . . 'Nuff said. Probably too much.

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Working on a book about the women of Opus Dei, as well as the memoirs of a Hungarian woman, mostly during WWII. Horrifying material thematically in the latter, the stuff of nightmares. But in comparison to most of the work I get, this reading is bordering on the pleasant. I know it won't last long.

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Found out over the weekend at the wedding party that most of my international readership is actually a globetrotting industrialist friend of mine checking in from foreign locales. So, instead of Moi and a cast of a score or two, I've got Moi and the industrialist, bless their souls, and someone who keeps checking in from NYC (could be my bro.) and a curious soul from Amherst MA. I think I'm the more curious one about that. Perhaps some things are better kept a secret.

======

Gone on too long. Opus Dei awaits, and thence to bed.

at it again

I've sent a few folks here recently, and it probably doesn't look good that the site's not been updated. So, I'm checking in.

To say that I've been too busy to post is not an exaggeration. I really have not had the time. Potential clients, take note: Don't use this admission as an indication I don't want to hear from you. I always want to develop new relationships, because the old ones can come and go. I came damn near to firing perhaps my best client today because I just can't continue to accept the invariably impossible jobs they routinely send me. Admittedly they don't put out many easy ones, but when I look at their catalog I think, Hell, they could have sent me that, for a change. I just finished indexing another book from them that was right over my head, and I'm embroiled now in reading a dictionary that's like the vegetables your parents gave you growing up -- the more you chewed, the bigger they grew in your mouth. It seems like the more I work on this book the more I have left to do on it. And it's not a particularly difficult one. Just . . . so . . . damn . . . long.

And I've had some contact lately with potential new clients for whom I'd like to make some room, and then there are those to whom I have emotional ties, and then there are actually some where I enjoy the reading. I shouldn't have reason to complain, as I'm busier than anyone has any right to be, but, well, I'd like to see my family once in a while. Both my boys are home, and I feel like an absentee father, while they're walking around on the floor above me. However, they are the occasional source of relatively inexpensive labor for tedious tasks. And they're not bad at it. I'm not trying to give them career advice at this point by any means. For all I care, they can become indie rock gods or CIA agents or both or neither. I did tell one of them the other day though, that if he remembers nothing else that I've told him over the last 18 years remember this: Don't ever get yourself into a position where working 24 hours a day is not enough. That's about where I am now.

But, hell, I'm not in a coal mine or being shot at. I did have a potential new client ask how I got to be doing what I'm doing, and I explained that it's this or working at the Amoco station down the street. I have no other marketable skills. Thankfully, I have a market. I know at least one designer who is out of work, and a good friend is hanging on by the skin of her teeth as a newspaper reporter. I've received 2 newspaper articles in the last 2 days about papers either getting rid of copyeditors or outsourcing the task to India. An author I know (the father of a friend of my son's) who writes law texbooks when he's not lawyering says that his company has recently begun outsourcing copyediting to India. When I asked him how it was going, he said that they queried or tried to change all the jokes or puns because they didn't understand them. He finally told them just to let it slide and to trust him. The readership will understand.

I could go on, but my 24 hours are slipping away. Thanks for reading.