European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - January 8, 1986, Darmstadt, Hesse Page 18 the stars and stripes wednesday. January 8,1986 it s not the sauce it s the dish itself by James k1lpatrick it sometimes is thought thai style in writing is a sort of sauce poured Over an Sta Holland Aist on asparagus Ketchup on the Burger la in t so. Style is the dish Jis a Good Cook Knos to to Combine elements to the right amount for the right Lime at the right tempera Ture so the gifted writer strive u match words and sentences to mood and me offer Enn Melcs. All of Ihm came from read ers of the sea Hie times in response to my request some weeks lie Tore Amples of Good reporter Don Duncan wrote about the death of d 55-year-old Man known us Trul Chie a familiar figure in the City s skid Row area prizefighter s face. A Gimpy leg and a bum Arm from when he fell from mint scaffold 10 years ago. Always a paper bag clutched in one of his huge paws. And inevitably a Bailie top pecking out the Yon saw him. Shoestrings dangling from oversized work Bools knit Cap pulled Down Over thick dark hair. Baggy Jean Riding perilously Low on nil hips. Ragtag Coal Over a faded and worn sough to evoke the rhythms of speech. This is How we talk when we Are describing someone. We talk in leniency fragments Blue eyes. Brown hair. Bushy eyebrows. Trouble walked with a stumbling gait jerking himself Long. Duncan matched Itie Pace of his sentences to he lurching of his subject and the piece came off. The times Art critic David Berger wrote a very different piece in september. He was in Pioneer Square watching a Small learn of japanese dancers whose Sci called for them to lower themselves on ropes from the top of a five Story building. The performers were shorn of body hair and nearly naked it Grain strings painted White As if hey had been rolled head to toe in flour. They moved like somnambulist and stood on the build ing s parapet stretching their hands und fingers in inhuman ways like Pale grub like larvae waking up in he came the acid engr the crowd fell silent a the strange performance began. Then As the four of the Hung there trussed a rope appeared to break. The Visi Tor from Japan fell straight and True and plumb to the sidewalk Back first As elegantly As a White Leaf in a incr. There was no flailing no sound Berger s purpose was to recreate a Nightmare a bad dream As vivid and As soundless As an old silent used slow words slow sentences. He worked from a simple palette he described while figures yellow pos ters a sky of j very he sought to mesmerize and he reporter Frederick Case interviewed a naturalist who makes and Sells cassette recordings of the sounds of nature. Case listened to them. One tape made fat 3 30 on a june morning captures the ecstatic moment when the air is filled with a River of Birdsong washing away the in another laps he heard an Ocean Breeze sighing through sea grass. These Are Quick Brush strokes the River of Bird Lens the sighing through sea grass but icy Are remarkably effective. One or i to such touches can make Sll the difference Between a routine interview and a readable me renew my in Ila Loii to readers to Send Alana examples of writing they like along with clippings oath mangles dangles blunders and boo Boos. To learn from the Good As Well As from the not so Good. At the Sialle times the writing Art finds Fine instructors. In recent weeks at least a dozen readers have written to this effect my pet Peeve is the use of and or but to begin a sentence. Picas fulminate against his abominable practice.". Then came a letter from Jim Mccarthy of Chicago one of my peeves is people who object to sentences beginning with and or but la seems to me Hal these objectors Don t understand that Good Miling whether it s fiction or non fiction should have a music to the use of and or but Al the beginning of a sentence helps to make that May have the sound of heresy bul i stand with my wtts/77. Brother Mccarthy on this one. Like other literary de vices the conjunction Al beginning is garlic in the recipe for Slyfer. Use it sparingly. Too Many rinds or butt can be irritating but employed judiciously the device can produce a Nice effect. Let me immodesty offer an example from a column l wrote recently about president Reagan � no Minnion so Many Conier Valius for the Federal Bench. I Point out that presidents Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy carte Rhad nominated liberals. I identified some of the democrats who Are complaining no bitterly about the Reagan nominees and i ended the column with this observation they should have elected Mondale. Bul they Hdldn i. Suppose we recast Hal concluding sentence w make it read. They should have elected monday but they did to the punch leaks of. Try another version they should have elected Mondale. However they did that j Flabbie. If i were drafting rules of prose composition one of my rules would ban the use of How Ever As a ought to be Ary in seems to me about this whole business of rules for Good writing. Once you gel Pas the ironclad Rule hut lube cd and predicate must agree in number and the equally ironclad Rule that prepositions must take objective pronouns you find a Little leeway. There s no Rule against split infinitives there no Rule against sentence fragments there s no Rule again ending a sentence with n preposition. On Tri contrary violation of those supposed rules often will contribute toward the music of. Mccarthy hears inthe Best of writing. Fine Points the a Iokton Salem journal provided Good Story about a Young woman who suffer from Lupus a rare disease of the body s self immunization system she started running a 104-Degrce fever and became nope the Young woman beam nauseated. If you will equate nauseous with disgust you won t confuse the two. 1 am aware that Webster s ninth new collegiate disagrees with me on this Point of we associated press in Raleigh . Reported that a Man had Hung himself with a Belt while in he the poor fellow had hanged himself. Pictures Are nuns humans Are hanged. In Tain a fla., the a reported that a police officer was so enthused when Reagan visited Tampa that he danced around on this one Webster s has it right. That dreadful verb to enthuse has been condemned since at least 1870. C in Wal priv coca co a is named mediocrity Winner Cascade Colo. A coca cola has won the Fillmore society 1985 Meda of mediocrity for classic indecisiveness in changing its product almost As often As Mallard filimore banged political parties. The society celebrates mediocrity in the name of the president deemed easiest to forget. Fillmore who served from i8jo 0 t53, was Al Var ious times in his political career a Republican a demo crat a whig an anti Mason and a know nothing previous winners of he Fillmore medal have included Brooke Shields Billy Carter Prince Charles and Princess Diana and boy George Coke s Campaign in bringing out a new formula of it popular beverage was t an advertising coup Phil Arkow vice president of the society said. Ii was the biggest manufacturing Flop since the Edsel. Actually it was a bigger Flap 30 years later people still remember the Edsel runner up far the mediocrity medal was Rock Singer Madonna who was described by a Tow As "19i5 s trash in the pan her Only redeeming Quality was that she kept boy George out of the limelight. With her photographs from Playboy and Penthouse she became the first woman in american history to loot equally bad with her clothes onor off he said. K4t, . Teu unit. Mew isms to Achi ottos .f.wfe,th5i9frtnen-j,a
