Feelings attached

But it (a story) exists not as words written in books but as images with feelings attached.

Jane Smiley, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel

"Images with feelings attached." I like that phrase. 

A few days ago I posted something on the subject of how reading a book a second time is different from reading it the first time ("Same book, different experience," Aug. 17, 2026). This is what Jane Smiley is talking about in the line above quoted from her book, 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel.

Marlon Brando
 in a scene from The Godfather

I think this is one reason movies based on novels we have read tend to be so disappointing. The images in the films conflict with the images left in our mind from the novels. Because film images are so powerful, they tend to overpower those in novels. I read Mario Puzo's novel The Godfather before I saw the movie, yet ever after it has been the movie images that come to mind, not those I had while reading the book. I can't even remember how the novel differed from the movie.

One way to rekindle those original images is to reread the novel, although even then the images in your mind will be different from those you had when you first read the book, and they also may be heavily influenced by the movie.

Yet we still usually want to watch movies adapted from novels we love. We always hope against hope that the images in the film will conform with the images that linger with us from reading the book. Unless the film is really, really good, as The Godfather is, we are usually disappointed.

A distinctive style

Thomas Hart Benton's artistic style is so distinct that even an art amateur like myself can recognize one of his paintings easily. Yet, as Justin Wolff tells us in Thomas Hart Benton: A Life (2012), it took years for him to develop that style. Look at his early paintings and they look nothing like those we know him for.

Benton was the son of U.S. Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who wanted his son and namesake to follow in his footsteps. Instead the younger Benton went his own way, lived in poverty for years and eventually found the style that made him more famous than his father.

Benton called himself a realist, known for his murals that seem to shimmer. His images, while stationary, seem to writhe. Nobody has adequately described Thomas Hart Benton paintings, yet they are instantly recognizable.

Benton met and married Rita, the love of his life,  and she stuck with him through his years of poverty, his heavy drinking, his carousing and his failures, protecting his image as well as his images, selling and promoting his paintings.

It may be difficult to believe that Jackson Pollock, known for his abstract drip paintings, was his student, as well as one of his closest friends. Benton's hot-and-cold relationship with President Harry S. Truman also makes fascinating reading. Benton wanted Truman's approval, yet Truman tended to say what he felt, not necessarily what others wanted him to say.

What I find hard to swallow in Wolff's biography is his conclusion that Benton should have been more like Pollock, more open to abstract expressionism. True, Benton may have been out of step with many of his contemporaries, but he ultimately found his style, and that style served him well.

Library longings

Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag once called her personal library an archive of longings. Can this be true, not just for her but for everyone who reads? Perhaps.

You have heard it said that you are what you eat. Can we also say, "You are what you read?" No, I don't think so. But we might say, "You would like to be what you read."

This is sort of the point of James Thurber's famous short story "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty." Mitty is an ordinary man who imagines himself the hero of a variety of adventures, in part as a result of what he reads.

And so, those who read thrillers, mysteries and adventure stories probably imagine themselves the hero. How would they solve the crime or defeat the bad guys or get out of an impossible situation?

Those who read romances probably imagine themselves involved in similar love affairs.

Those reading the Bible long to be better than they are. They probably imagine Jesus telling them, "Well done, good and faithful servant."

A few weeks ago I wrote about Marilyn Monroe liking to be photographed reading a James Joyce novel. Perhaps she longed to be someone who actually read and understood James Joyce novels.

Want to know what someone longs for? Look at their books.

The Oxford comma

Until I read Anne Curzan's Says Who? I didn't know the term "the Oxford comma." I was well aware of the question the term refers to, but I didn't recall hearing the term itself previously.

The question, which most people never think about and is important mainly to writers and editors, is this: When words are printed in a series, should there be a comma before the and?

That is, should the title of the Steve Martin-John Candy movie be Planes, Trains and Automobiles," as it actually is, or should it have been called Planes, Trains, and Automobiles? Who cares? you ask. Well, those in the word business do care.

I have a newspaper background, and so I almost always eliminate this comma. (I do include it in quotations.)  In newspapers we try to save space wherever we can, and even a little comma takes up space. Why bother with an unnecessary comma?

The trouble is, sometimes the comma is necessary. Curzan gives an example, often cited. A book dedication supposedly read, "This book is dedicated to my parents, Ayn Rand and God." Without the comma, the dedication suggests that God and Ayn Rand are the author's parents. That is probably not the case. And so a comma is needed.

But take another phrase mentioned by Curzan: "my brother, the doctor, and the nurse." The comma indicates the brother is a doctor. If that is not the case, the comma is misleading and should have been left out.

It is called the Oxford comma because way back in 1893 Oxford University Press adopted a style that this comma be included in any series. The Associated Press thinks differently, and most U.S. newspapers follow the AP Stylebook.

Yet, as the two examples above show us, the comma is sometimes needed. Other times it should be left out. Most of the time, of course, it doesn't matter at all. Do whatever you please.

What if ...?

The late Clifford D. Simak, like other science fiction writers, started his stories with an idea. In his case, the more outlandish the better.

Reading the nine stories that make up All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories (1962), one can imagine him wondering, "What if ....?"

What if the creatures on a distant planet conquer others by sacrificing themselves? ("Drop Dead")

What if an alien on Earth gets drunk by listening to the sad stories all humans have to tell? ("Crying Jag")

What if chemically-induced homesickness were the only way people could be persuaded to leave their home planet and travel in space? ("Condition of Employment")

What if a time machine leaves explorers stranded thousands of years in the past? ("Project Mastodon")

What if aliens from another planet seem to be perfect baby sitters, accepting no payment because they are stealing the youth from their charges? ("The Sitters")

And so it goes in these totally unbelievable, yet entertaining, tales.

Yet I notice that the shorter his short stories are, the better they usually are. Sometimes he packs too many "what ifs" into a story, as in "Installment Plan," and it becomes too much to manage. One or two weird ideas per story seem to work better.

You guys

Is the phrase "you guys" offensive to women or not? It is hard to know, for one hears some women complain about it while other women use it themselves when talking to other women.

A "guy," of course, is understood to be a male. If there is a sign on a door in a restaurant that says "Guys," women do not enter. Yet one may hear female servers in that very restaurant address a table of female diners as "you guys."

Even more confusing is the expanding use of the word "bro" in conversation. It is an abbreviation of brother, a masculine reference. Yet increasingly one hears both men and women using the term when addressing women, as well as men.

Should we go with the flow and consider both "you guys" and "bro" to be genderless terms? Or should we pay attention to that shrinking number of women who are offended? I try to avoid both terms in all contexts.

As for the phrase "you guys," that is just another consequence of the problem English gives us because the word you can be both singular and plural. We may know it to be true, but it just doesn't seem right when we use it as plural. We want to add something. And so, depending upon where you are in the world, you may hear "you all" or "y'll" or "youse" or "you'uns" or whatever. The phrase "you guys" may turn out to be the winner, crossing state lines and international boundaries.

The end of writing?

Heather Cass White

Writing itself is a technology, and a fairly recent one, that decimated older forms of communication and experience, and created new ones that shape the world as we currently understand it.

Heather Cass White, Books Promiscuously Read

We probably don't think of writing as a technology, yet for most of human history, writing did not exist. Human beings made do, however. Then it existed but only for an educated few. Eventually it became widespread, Wherever there are schools, children learn to write. The world is better because of writing, but is literacy essential for civilization to continue?

Not all technology lasts forever. The wheel and fire may be permanent. The eight-track tape not so much. What about writing? It seems inconceivable that writing could become lost, but there are disturbing signs.

One is the fact that children are no longer being taught to sign their own names. Today most writing is done using keyboards, and most reading is done with words reproduced on keyboards. Young people today cannot read their grandmother's letters or diaries. They may never want to, of course, but historians and biographers of the future may need to. What if they can't? For that matter, what if nobody cares?

So many college graduates know little about history or great books. Other than texting, they do little writing. Artificial intelligence can do the writing for them. Why bother?

It seems unlikely that writing — or reading — will disappear altogether any time soon, but it seems conceivable that a return to the Middle Ages could be possible, a time when only the educated few know how to read and write. Most people, because of new technology, won't need to.

White writes, "If reading disappears, something else will take its place. Not its precise place; if reading were lost, much that is valuable would be lost. But we would get over it, or successive generations would, and whatever replaced it would have advantages we can't imagine."

Before literacy, most people didn't miss it, just as we didn't miss home computers or cell phones until they became a necessary part of modern living. What Heather Cass White says about the disappearance of writing is disturbing, but it could be true.