I have become an AAJ contributor

[CJ Shearn]

thanks everybody. I will do my best there, they edited my stuff but thats ok. I edited things down to curb my run on habit which also comes with some unnecessary transition words, . I think my "Saudades" review is scheduled to go live first........ played that on the radio tonight. Though I am apprenticing right now, I practically did the whole thing tonight. The DJ I work with, Dana was kind enough to let me take a few choruses Some of my announcing still needs work, but you can hear it, dated Oct. 20th at www.whrwfm.org/archive at 19:00 hours. I extend a few minutes into the next hour thus the cut of. BTW, Dana found a CD copy of "Poly-Currents" at the campus booksale for $3 and we lead off with that I saw that and I wish I had known it was there. I told him how rare that was outside the Mosaic on CD, so he was happy

Edited October 21, 2006 by CJ Shearn

[chris]

The passive voice thing is just one of many rules that are designed for the lowest common denominator of writing skill. When one has no writing skill, then one is better off with blanket rules than none at all.

I dislike one (nearly canonical) type of passive voice: the kind that seeks to evade responsibility and which is often found in political speech, defensive press releases, and government writing. You know, the kind that goes something like "we had hoped our plans in Iraq would work out better, but it turns out some assumptions were in error."

The injunction about "to be" is similar. In one sense, if you need those kind of rules you are really in trouble. But it's amazing how many people need them.

Keeping the personal and emotional out of criticism, though-- well, that's just silly. Although it is an effective way to organizationally attempt to maintain an illusion of subjectivity. Why they would WANT to is a different story...

[Nate Dorward]

I dislike one (nearly canonical) type of passive voice: the kind that seeks to evade responsibility and which is often found in political speech, defensive press releases, and government writing. You know, the kind that goes something like "we had hoped our plans in Iraq would work out better, but it turns out some assumptions were in error."

Well, this example shows exactly why it's pointless teaching students non-rules about the passive voice: the sentence does not contain a passive construction at all. I don't think most students who aren't ESL students will know how to identify a passive construction accurately.

Anyway, sorry for the nitpickiness but I just can't fathom these kinds of bizarre quasi-rules that no-one ever follows anyway.

[JSngry]

Keeping the personal and emotional out of criticism, though-- well, that's just silly. Although it is an effective way to organizationally attempt to maintain an illusion of subjectivity. Why they would WANT to is a different story...

Haven't read it in a few years (or longer), but the reviews in Jazz Times seemed to be built around that principle. There was no such thing as a bad record, and we all know that's bullshit, especially when it's some middle-aged local songstress and/or lounge pianist trotting out another round of The Songs You've Come To Loathe, or A Man Who Has Practiced Other Peoples Music All His Life, of which there seems to be an endless supply of in these, the Last Days Of Jazz, when everybody who has nothing to say is finally getting a chance to say it.

Personally, I think it's built around not pissing off potential advertisers. If you review an album that's not so good but paint a picture of it being "pleasant enough", especially if you include one phrase or sentence that can be extracted for an advertising blurb, you become "advertiser-friendly". Not that there's anything wrong with that per se, but that means your reviews are going to be, like my old man used to say, god bless him, as useless as tits on a boar hog.

I believe I might have broken some rules with the above expression of personal perspective. Oh well, fuck it.

[chris]

Anyway, sorry for the nitpickiness but I just can't fathom these kinds of bizarre quasi-rules that no-one ever follows anyway.

Yeah, sorry-- I tend to avoid the passive voice and even did in my example. The proper example would be "we had hoped the plans would work out..."

I've seen more than enough student writing that is immediately improved by the passive voice to know how crucial such rules can be FOR THE RIGHT AUDIENCE.

[chris]

And, in fact, the second clause of my original example is a passive construction-- whose assumptions were in error?

At the end of the semester I will send you a few dozen student final reports and then we'll see what you think of the desirability of the passive voice

Edited October 21, 2006 by chris

[Nate Dorward]

Chris--I'm afraid neither of your examples is passive voice. Passive voice is "to be" + past participle. "had hoped" is past perfect ("had" + past participle). "...some assumptions were in error" is plain old past tense of the verb "to be".

Edited October 21, 2006 by Nate Dorward

[chris]

Chris--I'm afraid neither of your examples is passive voice. Passive voice is "to be" + past participle. "had hoped" is past perfect ("had" + past participle). "...some assumptions were in error" is plain old past tense of the verb "to be".

Nate-- you'll have to argue with the American Heritage Book of English Usage on this example (http://www.bartleby.com/64/C002/007.html)

as the example I am using turns out to be a parallel to one they use:

"We had hoped to report on this problem but the data was inadvertently deleted from our files."

Regardless if twittering, the point is clear. Even the beloved Language Log recognizes the problem of evasion of responsibility with passive voice in the very post you showed us (given the caveat that this is only true in the common, "limited" conception of grammar, their alternative to which we are not privileged enough to know yet, and their optimistic assumption that people utilize this technique at "their own peril" notwithstanding

Like I said, if you'd like to look at a few dozen final student project reports in mid-December and see if you can maintain that minimizing passive voice isn't a good rule of thumb for SOME audiences (which is all I have maintained), PM me your snail mail and it will be done. Some of them are masters at constructions which obscure their responsibility for their own project results...

There are dozens of such "rules" that are effective at some stages and for some writers. Such as "Avoid ellipses." "Just use 'said' in dialogue." And "don't start sentences with a coordinating conjunction ."

Edited October 21, 2006 by chris

[Nate Dorward]

Nate-- you'll have to argue with the American Heritage Book of English Usage on this example (http://www.bartleby.com/64/C002/007.html)

as the example I am using turns out to be a parallel to one they use:

"We had hoped to report on this problem but the data was inadvertently deleted from our files."

Chris--this example is correct, but you are looking at the wrong part of the sentence. The passive is in the second part: "...the data was inadvertently deleted" (form of "to be" + part participle of "deleted"). The first part is not, it's just past perfect again.

Of course student reports are full of poor writing--I've marked papers before--but handing students a non-rule about a syntactic construction they can't identify correctly anyway isn't going to help matters.

[Simon Weil]

This has nothing to do with AAJ.

But....

...some middle-aged local songstress and/or lounge pianist trotting out another round of The Songs You've Come To Loathe, or A Man Who Has Practiced Other Peoples Music All His Life, of which there seems to be an endless supply of in these, the Last Days Of Jazz, when everybody who has nothing to say is finally getting a chance to say it.

My glass would be half-empty if it didn't have a crack in it.

Simon Weil

[Good luck to CJ Shearn]

Edited October 22, 2006 by Simon Weil

[CJ Shearn]

thanks Simon. Here is the first thing to go live besides my Trio Beyond review. http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=23498

Edited October 22, 2006 by CJ Shearn

[clifford_thornton]

do i vaguely or moreso recall you doing a few of the label profile things? i'm glad AAJ is out there but i do think editors worthy of the 'word' have a responsibility to dig up hot stuff, or at least give ya'll the chance to be hot... some people are NOT, no matter what, but they may bring other qualities to the table. some people just don't have it; it's ok to give 'em a chance, let 'em improve... if they want it badly enough, they will (maybe)... so far, the ecumenicism of AAJ is pretty laudable tho' i think the content needs work.

I agree on the broadness of AAJ - it's good to have on the one hand, interviews with Dave Rempis and on the other Maria Schneider, both on front page. However, it's a tug-of-war between the historical/academic and the currently hip, and though I tend to hit the former a bit more regularly, there's an attraction of the latter that's hard to deny. I mean, it's living music so some of that life has to be found now, right? And each contributor (in theory) has a talent/area that allows AAJ to be what it is (or might be) - though there is also that tug-of-war between giving people the chance to stretch out for the first time, and to maintain some sort of regular base of writers.

Re: label profiles, yeah I've done a bunch. It's interesting to see what is happening on that end, as so much of the music's history has been documented as a commercially-recorded medium. Evolution in the studio vs. evolution on the bandstand (or in the head) is a fascinating thing.

[ep1str0phy]

This has nothing to do with AAJ.

But....

...some middle-aged local songstress and/or lounge pianist trotting out another round of The Songs You've Come To Loathe, or A Man Who Has Practiced Other Peoples Music All His Life, of which there seems to be an endless supply of in these, the Last Days Of Jazz, when everybody who has nothing to say is finally getting a chance to say it.

My glass would be half-empty if it didn't have a crack in it.

Simon Weil

[Good luck to CJ Shearn]

I mean, damn. It's on these occasions that I truly, painfully feel that my generation of improvisers (the twentysomethings) is hardcore screwed (won't stop me from playing, though...).

[JSngry]

You wanna make sure that your generation is not screwed?

Stop worrying about being screwed, tell my generation to go fuck itself (we'll be dead soon enough), and make the music in your gut. Not in your brain, but in your gut. Tell your story in your language, and if "we" can't handle it, fuck us.

I. for one, will love y'all for it, even if I do or do not "like" the music that ensues.

[ep1str0phy]

Hey, in less vitriolic terms, that's what I wake up in the morning fer--even though I do sometimes feel like a one-man military campaign.

[JSngry]

Vitriol is a very useful thing in a person your age, especially when they're right.

Besides my generation, don't be afraid to tell your generation to go fuck itself too. Tell everybody to go fuck themself.

But do it with love.

[Simon Weil]

This has nothing to do with AAJ.

But....

...some middle-aged local songstress and/or lounge pianist trotting out another round of The Songs You've Come To Loathe, or A Man Who Has Practiced Other Peoples Music All His Life, of which there seems to be an endless supply of in these, the Last Days Of Jazz, when everybody who has nothing to say is finally getting a chance to say it.

My glass would be half-empty if it didn't have a crack in it.

Simon Weil

[Good luck to CJ Shearn]

I mean, damn. It's on these occasions that I truly, painfully feel that my generation of improvisers (the twentysomethings) is hardcore screwed (won't stop me from playing, though...).

Y'see, my take on this is that it's not just Jazz. There's something weird happening right across culture. So, for me, Bush is representative figure. The sort of oppressive/repressive political regime he's put in place since September 11th speaks to and for some wider oppressive cultural force. That is to say the sort of speaking to the lowest common denominator that Bush does is the spirit du jour.

But the lowest common denominator is only a part of society, a part of people. If it wins, yes, it's the last days. But that doesn't mean it's going to win. I mean you can fool all of the people for some of the time.

And then....

Simon Weil

[Eloe Omoe]

Anyway, sorry for the nitpickiness but I just can't fathom these kinds of bizarre quasi-rules that no-one ever follows anyway.

It would be nice if AAJ'd endorse Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing...

"These are rules I’ve picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I’m writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what’s taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over.

1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want.

2. Avoid prologues.

They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want.

There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s “Sweet Thursday,” but it’s O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy’s thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story.”

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated,” and had to stop reading to get the dictionary.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

. . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs.”

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories “Close Range.”

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight.

9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things.

Unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you’re good at it, you don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.

And finally:

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he’s writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character’s head, and the reader either knows what the guy’s thinking or doesn’t care. I’ll bet you don’t skip dialogue.

My most important rule is one that sums up the 10.

If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.

Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can’t allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It’s my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.)

If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character—the one whose view best brings the scene to life—I’m able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what’s going on, and I’m nowhere in sight.

What Steinbeck did in “Sweet Thursday” was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. “Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts” is one, “Lousy Wednesday” another. The third chapter is titled “Hooptedoodle 1” and the 38th chapter “Hooptedoodle 2” as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: “Here’s where you’ll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won’t get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want.”

“Sweet Thursday” came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I’ve never forgotten that prologue.

Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word."

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for that, Eloe. I'll probably never get around to writing the novel that I've been thinking about, but just in case, I've printed out those "rules".

[Eloe Omoe]

Thanks for that, Eloe. I'll probably never get around to writing the novel that I've been thinking about, but just in case, I've printed out those "rules".

Don't know if you have ever read Elmore Leonard's novels, Dan. He's a great writer, in my opinion (but I'm a little biased, since I am his Italian translator...).

Anyway, his latest, The Hot Kid, is set in KC and Tulsa in the Thirties, and is full of music, particularly jazz. Among the characters, there's also a long cameo by Jay McShann (one of the few examples, as far as I know, of a living jazz musician in a fictional literary work).

Luca

[Dan Gould]

Thanks for that, Eloe. I'll probably never get around to writing the novel that I've been thinking about, but just in case, I've printed out those "rules".

Don't know if you have ever read Elmore Leonard's novels, Dan. He's a great writer, in my opinion (but I'm a little biased, since I am his Italian translator...).

Anyway, his latest, The Hot Kid, is set in KC and Tulsa in the Thirties, and is full of music, particularly jazz. Among the characters, there's also a long cameo by Jay McShann (one of the few examples, as far as I know, of a living jazz musician in a fictional literary work).

Luca

Unfortunately I haven't (saw the movie that was such a hit about ten years ago though) but that description of his latest makes me very curious about it.

[Eloe Omoe]

Unfortunately I haven't (saw the movie that was such a hit about ten years ago though) but that description of his latest makes me very curious about it.

Here's part of a review that appeared on the Toronto Star:

"Something odd and distracting occurs half way through The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard’s new novel: a living person, as opposed to a fictional character, turns up as a figure in the story. The person is Jay McShann, the Kansas City jazz and blues pianist who still performs today at age 89 (in fact, he appeared at the Montreal Bistro in Toronto just last month).

The Hot Kid takes place in Oklahoma, with side trips to McShann’s home territory in Kansas City and other nearby spots of lively interest, during the decades between the two world wars. Most of the action, of which there is plenty, centres on Carl Webster, a U.S. marshal who kills a lot of people but is fair-minded about it. When he arrests bank robbers and other villains, he leaves his gun in its holster, warning the bad guys, “If I have to pull my weapon, I’ll shoot to kill.”

Carl’s major rivalry in the book, the enmity that drives the plot until the very last page, is with Jack Belmont, a truly nasty piece of work. Like Carl, Jack is the son of a rich Oklahoma oilman. Unlike Carl, Jack is spoiled rotten and a psychopath who enjoys killing for its own sake. Even his girlfriend says of Jack, “there’s something wrong with his head.”

It’s partly to track down Jack that Carl travels to Kansas City. The other reason for the journey is to look for Louly Brown, the pretty little thing Carl is sweet on. His first night in town, Carl falls into a conversation in a club with a black guy who introduces himself as Jay McShann the piano man.

In four pages of dialogue, McShann tells Carl his life story. How he grew up in Muskogee, Okla., taught himself music and jobbed with bands around the southwest; how he now works with his own trio in K.C., the great jazz town. Then McShann tells Carl about the drinking club where Louly Brown is employed to wait on the gentlemen while wearing only a skimpy teddy.

When McShann exits the scene and the book, he leaves behind puzzlement. Readers ask themselves, what is a real person doing in this novel? The first question is soon followed by a second: If one character is real, is that the case with others in the book? Or, putting the second question another way, which people are real and which are made up?"

[Dan Gould]

Hey, at least its not the Reagan biographer inserting himself into history - its just a cameo by a historical figure who was a part of the world in which the novel takes place.

I think the better question isn't whether any other characters are 'real' but whether Leonard did anything other than a little AMG research. Did he talk to Jay beforehand?

[Eloe Omoe]

I think the better question isn't whether any other characters are 'real' but whether Leonard did anything other than a little AMG research. Did he talk to Jay beforehand?

I think that they've been knowing each other for a long time. Leonard is not a young guy anymore (he's 81) and he grew up in Oklakoma in the '30s. Anyway, since Leonard will come over to Italy next December, I'm going to ask him in person...

There's another novel of his (The Switch) where a couple of crooks' favorite music is a tape of Groove Holmes...

Luca

[Nate Dorward]

Here's part of a review that appeared on the Toronto Star:

"Something odd and distracting occurs half way through The Hot Kid, Elmore Leonard’s new novel: a living person, as opposed to a fictional character, turns up as a figure in the story. The person is Jay McShann, the Kansas City jazz and blues pianist who still performs today at age 89 (in fact, he appeared at the Montreal Bistro in Toronto just last month)."

Which year did the review appear? I ask because this year McShann's gig was cancelled, which was one of the major reasons why the Montreal Bistro closed.

I like Leonard's fiction, though haven't read any of it for a while. It's a little too easygoing for me, maybe (in that I tend to prefer blacker, more fatalistic hardboiled worlds--I'm sure there are exceptions but there are a lot of Leonard novels where the good guys win, the bad guys end up in jail, & the really bad guys get killed). Lovely ear for dialogue, though.

Edited October 23, 2006 by Nate Dorward