Daniel Adler's View on Verb Subject Agreement

I take issue with writers who have trouble keeping their subjects parallel with their verbs. Granted I do it too sometimes when I'm sloppy, but there are more specific problems I'd like to address. For example, I know it’s common practice these days to say “that band are playing tonight.” How about when referring to people we keep it plural, but when referring to the singular nature of “the band,” we go singular?

Part of what helps keep my subject-verb agreements straight is proofreading. I’m not going to go on and on about the merits of re-reading what you’ve written, because as every writer knows, it’s almost more important to edit than to write, but I will suggest that some of you writers read the Times’ After Deadline column, which I find to be a nice take on good and bad journalism. It’s fascinating how bad some of the writing is, not to sound pretentious and say that I'm better than most of the journalists on the staff, but you’d think that as a writer for the New York Times, you’d know to say “a couple of hundred.”

-Humbly,
Daniel Adler

The Hipster's Diminishing Cultural Capital

A review of the new book “Whiter Shades of Pale” has me lamenting the continuous barrage of self definition and satirical placement white people love. The author of “Stuff White People Like” may have a point in mocking his fellow whitey, but in a way, isn’t he perpetuating the system? White people love to feel guilty about being white. An essay in the New York Times discussing “the hipster,” examines how this has occurred.

De gustibus non est disputandum, or, concerning matters of taste there is no dispute. The hipster and the modern white person show that there is. Elevation of one and suppression of another is what being human is about, but what if, instead of feeling a sense of superiority or political correctness, we could simply observe and appreciate the average lower-class and the aging middle class hipster, in the same non-disparaging way?
  
We know that there are levels of quality in everything, but to justify our knowledge of quality over others is the mark of Bourdieu’s “cultural capital.” We want to prove to ourselves that we deserve what we have because of what we know, and that those below us economically must know less. In fact, they know about different things, or perhaps have learned the same things in a different way. True artists  should be able to appreciate all kinds of people and ideas without condescending or pretending, or even feeling layers of guilt for political incorrectness. That should replace the ironical self-consciousness of postmodernism.

Tolstoy and Post Postmodernism

I am reading War and Peace. Halfway through, it feels like I am learning how to write. Granted, Tolstoy wrote it in Russian and I'm reading it in English, consequently losing much of the original poetry, but when I open it I am absorbed into early 19th century Moscow.

The best parts are when Tolstoy describes a lover’s quiver, or a transcendental moment inspired by the heavens, or a grain of social minutiae that has not changed in 150 years. The context has changed, but the song remains the same.

Reading Michael Cunningham’s editorial in the New York Times, I was reminded that I am reading a work in translation. And I began to think about the book that I am writing, and who I am writing for (side-note: I’m perfectly aware of the prepositional finish of that sentence, and in a Hemingwavian manner, I am choosing to advance written English in a colloquial sense to better suit my ends. Try saying it the right way and see which sounds better).  Sure I’m writing for myself, and I’m writing for you, and I’m writing for future generations and all that, but I’m also writing for writing.  I am writing so that anyone who reads what I write will recognize it as supremely sublime.

And so I work. And work. And will continue to work for years, until it is smooth and polished, like the oyster’s pearl, who without trying, simply lives and produces a jewel. And if the world is my oyster…