It’s All About the Benjamin
Posted on March 7th, 2011 in Uncategorized | 17 Comments »
America’s most incomprehensible sportswriter covered Harvard’s big victory against Princeton the other night. See if you can make sense of this lede:
And now, they wait.
After the win, after the rushing of the court, after the emotion and the excitement and the odes to past players and coaches, Harvard’s immediate fate has been taken out of its hands. The Crimson did what they could. And now, their focus shifts to Philadelphia, to The Palestra, where Princeton will take on Penn Tuesday in the game that will decide the next step for Harvard.
Oh, dear. Where to start?
One could get specific: What is “the rushing of the court”? “Harvard’s immediate fate”? Why is the “t” capitalized in “The Palestra”?
(This last is an editor thing and may seem persnickety, but someone has to fight the encroachment of what I call commercial-speak upon proper grammar. Even the Coliseum does not get called The Coliseum.)
But really there’s just a general issue of over-writing here. Is there no editor at the Globe who can sit down with AB and tell her three words: “Less is more”?
17 Responses
3/7/2024 10:42 am
As a PhD in English, I object most strongly to the disgraceful misuse of the word ‘ode.’
(However: What’s ambiguous about ‘rushing of the court’?)
Ineptitude on parade —
However: Go Tigers!
SE
3/7/2024 10:55 am
I think one might say “rushing the court,” as in “rushing the stage.” Or perhaps “rushing onto the court.” But “the rushing of the court”—no.
3/7/2024 11:18 am
Yeah, the ‘of’ is an artifact of the initial inept ‘the,’ which is the sentence’s original sin. Once you have the ‘the,’ you (I mean not you, but A. Benjamin) are stuck either adding the ‘of’ or saying ‘the rushing the court.’
As Wallace Stevens said, about writing and garbage,
“That’s the moment when the moon creeps up
To the bubbling of bassoons. That’s the time
One looks at the elephant-colorings of tires. …
One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail.
One beats and beats for that which one believes.
That’s what one wants to get near. Could it after all
Be merely oneself, as superior as the ear
To a crow’s voice? …
…Is it peace,
Is it a philosopher’s honeymoon, one finds
On the dump? Is it to sit among mattresses of the dead,
Bottles, pots, shoes and grass and murmur aptest eve:
Is it to hear the blatter of grackles and say
Invisible priest; is it to eject, to pull
The day to pieces and cry stanza my stone?
Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the.
3/7/2024 11:18 am
The poem is “The Man on the Dump.” It has something to say about bad newspaper writing.
Now, in the time of spring (azaleas, trilliums,
Myrtle, viburnums, daffodils, blue phlox),
Between that disgust and this, between the things
That are on the dump (azaleas and so on)
And those that will be (azaleas and so on),
One feels the purifying change. One rejects
The trash.
3/7/2024 11:20 am
Aptest eve, invisible priest, and stanza my stone should all be italicized. OBVIously.
3/7/2024 11:23 am
It was particularly painful to read because it was on the same page with the jump of the Bob Ryan column, which started on the front page. Painful not just because he can write and she can’t. The opinion columnist made the game sound exciting (as it was), but the person actually reporting on the game leads with “And now, they wait”? That is not what happened Saturday night. There was absolutely no sense in Lavietes Pavilion after the game that this was but the first shot of a one-and-one. This game was an end in itself, and there was an enormous release of tension in the celebration that followed.
So on top of her prose problems, AB just got the story wrong. I wonder if she was even there.
3/7/2024 11:55 am
It’s not exactly wrong to have a gerund + objective genitive, just a little pretentious, which is why grown-ups generally move away from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.
Quite so on Odes, SE. Horace would be spinning in his sarcophagus.
3/7/2024 3:59 pm
Here is another wooden sentence: “Harvard can now only demonstrate its patience, counting down until that game on Tuesday, when it is determined whether it will win the Ivy League title outright or they will share it with the Tigers.” First of all, the only advantage of “demonstrate” over “show” here is that it has more syllables, which is actually a disadvantage. In fact, making Harvard “only be patient” would be even better, but why use a simple adjective when you can use an abstract noun instead? But note also the way Harvard shifts from being “it” to “they” in the conjoined clauses at the end of the sentence, when the author discovers in mid-sentence that she has to save “it” for something else, or maybe that two “it”s in this sentence are enough and she should find another word that means the same thing. Argh.
3/7/2024 4:00 pm
Sorry, should have said maybe she decided to limit her sentence to THREE “it”s and that is why the fourth became a “they.”
3/8/2024 1:33 am
….just love listening to you guys talk about this stuff:) More fun than poetry itself.
3/8/2024 9:13 am
Richard,
It is clear that she is a terrible writer.
However, it is also clear that you know little about college basketball.
I have been going to The Palestra since 1961. There is one and only one Palestra. It is a special place… The Palestra. There is no other re college basketball.
She may have been wrong in everything else she had to say, particularly “the rushing of the court” (should have been, as you said, “rushing onto the court”), but she got The Palestra correct.
Some of the best college basketball games have been played at The Palestra, not only Princeton-Penn, but The Big Five, and a number of tournament games as well. Ask any current Harvard player and I’d bet they would tell you there is nothing like playing at The Palestra. Whenever I think of Payne Whitney, I think of a psychiatric clinic.
Clearly, Princeton has a huge edge tonight. If form holds, it’ll be interesting to see what happens in the playoff.
Go Tigers!
BTW, when was the last time your alma mater got the automatic birth to the NCAA tournament?
3/8/2024 10:25 am
Ah, but Sam you are now using “rush” as an intransitive with a prepositional phrase, whereas our author clearly meant it as a transitive with direct object.
A late-arriving player rushes onto the court, but fans rush the court and therefore can execute a rushing of the court, stylistically unfortunate as that is.
3/8/2024 10:41 am
Sam,
I concede that I know nothing about college basketball. To me, the Palestra sounds like a junk food additive that gives one digestive issues.
Yale’s star at the time of my enrollment was Chris Dudley, who went on to set the NBA record for consecutive missed free throws (13).
He also set the record (the year before) for missed free throws (5) in a single trip to the foul line.
Worse, he subsequently became a right-wing candidate for Oregon governor. (Whew! He lost.)
Interestingly, his wife is also named Chris.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dudley
I still resist The capitalization of The definite article, however.
3/8/2024 11:01 am
The RT
Looking forward to hearing more from you on transitives with direct objects on April 19th., but perhaps there will be more interesting topics to discuss.
3/8/2024 11:25 am
I too, Sam, and share your hope, though verbs are pretty interesting.
3/8/2024 9:08 pm
Bring on the Crimson!
Tiger Tiger Tiger sis sis sis boom boom boom bah.
3/12/2023 7:03 pm
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3D-6udv8PCJJc%26feature%3Dplayer_embedded&feature=player_embedded&v=-6udv8PCJJc&gl=US