Author Topic: In the New Yorker...  (Read 1921493 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #910 on: July 02, 2014, 05:19:17 pm »
Well, they do vary it. Later on in the article these appear:

Cathleen Sutherland, the film's production manager, looked around wistfully. "I used to go to summer camp--same girls for years," she said.

One of the film's admirers was Tina Harrison. She had grown up in the Bay Area and moved to Austin for graduate school in art history, but "found Austin rather dreary after San Francisco and Berkeley."

"It used to be just Linklater, Malick, and Rodriguez," Rebecca Campbell, the film society's executive director, says.

Hawke: "He wasn't just looking for two actors, in a way--he was looking for two partners."

Lorelei bounced down the stairs in a velvet cocktail dress. "This is one option," she said.

There are more examples if you need them. But the two examples you cited of Hawke and Tarantino follow each other so they seem rather prominent.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #911 on: July 02, 2014, 06:38:29 pm »
Well, they do vary it. Later on in the article these appear:

Cathleen Sutherland, the film's production manager, looked around wistfully. "I used to go to summer camp--same girls for years," she said.

One of the film's admirers was Tina Harrison. She had grown up in the Bay Area and moved to Austin for graduate school in art history, but "found Austin rather dreary after San Francisco and Berkeley."

"It used to be just Linklater, Malick, and Rodriguez," Rebecca Campbell, the film society's executive director, says.

Hawke: "He wasn't just looking for two actors, in a way--he was looking for two partners."

Lorelei bounced down the stairs in a velvet cocktail dress. "This is one option," she said.

There are more examples if you need them. But the two examples you cited of Hawke and Tarantino follow each other so they seem rather prominent.

I've seen this structure used so often in so many articles, not just the Linklater profile (which is otherwise very interesting) that I'm stickin' to my story. And that Rebecca Campbell sentence follows the pattern--it ends with the says all by itself after the modifying clause.

I don't care if it is The New Yorker. It's bad writing. I don't know who does the magazine's actual copy editing, but I'm beginning to suspect that whoever it is can't edit himself or herself out of a paper bag.
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Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #912 on: July 02, 2014, 08:48:53 pm »
I've noticed this for years. I've assumed they have a rule that the verb "said" always has to follow the subject, whereas in most writing, you would go

"... says Quentin Tarrantino, who calls 'Dazed and Confused' his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties."

"... says Ethan Hawke, who has appeared in eight of Linklater's films."

"... says Jack Black, who starred in it, says."


It's not just some rogue copy editor; I'm fairly certain this is the magazine's preferred style, like the diaeresis over words like cooperate. It's still stupid, though. I think those attributions read very awkwardly, and what's the point of hanging onto a rule that makes your writing awkward?

Here's a piece about the diaeresis, by the way, that shows how stodgy the NYer can be about style:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html





Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #913 on: July 02, 2014, 10:41:16 pm »
I've noticed this for years. I've assumed they have a rule that the verb "said" always has to follow the subject, whereas in most writing, you would go

"... says Quentin Tarrantino, who calls 'Dazed and Confused' his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties."

"... says Ethan Hawke, who has appeared in eight of Linklater's films."

"... says Jack Black, who starred in it, says."

Or else you start with the attribution and end with the direct quotation:

Quentin Tarrantino, who calls "Dazed and Confused" his favorite film of the nineteen-nineties, says, "With his first four or five films, you may have thought you had Rick pegged, and you would have been wrong."

Quote
It's not just some rogue copy editor; I'm fairly certain this is the magazine's preferred style.

"Actually, I agree," Jeff Wrangler, who reads the magazine faithfully, said.  ;D

Quote
It's still stupid, though. I think those attributions read very awkwardly, and what's the point of hanging onto a rule that makes your writing awkward?

I agree; it's stupid and awkward.

Quote
Here's a piece about the diaeresis, by the way, that shows how stodgy the NYer can be about style:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/04/the-curse-of-the-diaeresis.html

I find the diaeresis amusingly quaint, but the magazine also violates everything I was ever taught about the use of italics in titles.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #914 on: July 03, 2014, 08:59:43 am »
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #915 on: July 03, 2014, 10:09:24 am »
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

I agree. What's up with that? In fact, I was thinking exactly the same thing when I was typing nineteen-nineties in the Tarrantino quote in my last post--and that's nearly as bad as your example.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Offline serious crayons

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #916 on: July 03, 2014, 11:03:30 am »
A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

"I agree," serious crayons, who was born in one thousand nine hundred and fifty seven and is very coƶperative, says.

P.S., my spellcheck objects to coƶperate, though not to cooperate. Though what does it know? It also objects to spellcheck.



Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #917 on: July 03, 2014, 01:00:50 pm »
Thanks for the laugh serious!

A New Yorker convention that is maddening sometimes is their rule about writing out numbers, even big numbers like two thousand nine hundred and fifty two. It makes reading (or writing) an article about economics nearly impossible!

Shock! I violated one of my own rules, calling it "their convention" instead of "its convention". I don't want The New Yorker (or any business) to get the idea that it is a person!!
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #918 on: July 04, 2014, 11:40:47 am »
I feel the need to apologize personally to Al Franken!  ::) Moving on...

It's interesting to contrast the Linklater article to the book review of a Stephen Crane biography by Caleb Crain (relation? I think not) in the same issue. The book review is the better written, IMO, and skips along merrily, pulling the reader effortlessly with it. In contrast, one must plod through the Linklater profile. I think part of the problem is that the author, Nathan Heller, overreached, and tried to quote too many people in the piece. It results in an overlong article with too many quotes. Did he think he must include at least one quote from each person he interviewed? You can usually tell when someone had fun writing something and these two articles illustrate that.

The Crane review is quite an eye-opener! Never realized what a revolutionary person he was. Like America's Byron.
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Offline Jeff Wrangler

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Re: In the New Yorker...
« Reply #919 on: July 07, 2014, 01:39:03 pm »
Here's something that was interesting to me.

Early in Nathan Heller's article about San Francisco (July 7 & 14), he quotes an activist named Tommi Avicolli Mecca. Well, two decades ago, Tommi Avicolli Mecca lived here in Philadelphia, where he was also an activist (involved with Act-Up, if I remember correctly) and worked for the Philadelphia Gay News.
"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.