From Wesley McNair’s wonderful piece about the late poet Donald Hall and his assistant Kendel Currier, three things are abundantly clear.

First, Donald Hall was a truly delightful man.

Second, The Paris Review is one of a handful of must-read literary magazines still publishing. I need to quit reading it online and purchase a subscription. You should, too.

Third—and perhaps most obvious—I should definitely get an amanuensis. Pretty sure the lack of one is all that’s keeping me from the literary fame and fortune I so richly deserve.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

“Not quite a cliché, not quite a term of art,” writes Olga Khazan, “a buzzword is a profound-seeming phrase devised by someone important to make something sound better than it is.”

That’s a pretty good description—and if that were the end of it, we wouldn’t have a problem. But it’s far more insidious than that, Khazan alludes. “Typically, the buzzword develops a shibboleth status in a given field…to the point where everyone is saying it and everyone feels as if they must say it.”

The thing is, everyone also knows it’s BS. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have, courtesy of the Atlantic, a March Madness-style bracket enabling Twitter voters to decide on “the most nauseating of them all.”

Again, I’m not opposed to buzzwords qua buzzwords.* If your job is such that you feel the need to “dress up [your] otherwise pointless tasks with fancier phrases,” that’s on you. It’s when jargon’s purported benefit—saving time—does more harm than good. To this day, in fact, I have no idea what value added actually means. And I’m guessing the vast majority of those who use it are just as ignorant.

But according to Copenhagen Business School professor Mary Yoko Brannen, it’s not in pursuit of clarity or efficiency. No, it’s all about fitting in with the other office drones. So we blithely go about our business, day in and day out, repeating meaningless phrases in order to blend in? That’s depressing.

*Except for lean in, obviously. I swear to God if I hear that steaming pile uttered even one more time I cannot be held responsible for my actions.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

You’ve all heard the rule: “I before E except after C.” But as the great Stephen Fry points out, it’s…not a rule. In fact, there are 21 times more instances of words that break this “rule” than those that abide by it.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

This one’s a beast: affect or effect?

The simplest answer is that affect is a verb; effect is a noun. Except when they’re not—because affect is also a noun and effect is also a verb. Confused? Yeah, you and everyone else.

First, let’s take a look at the most common usage:

Courtney’s foul language is affecting office morale. (verb)
Courtney’s foul language is having an effect on office morale. (noun)

If you can remember that, you’ll be golden 99.9 percent of the time.

Where it gets weird is when you swap the parts of speech. Here, it helps to know that when affect is used as a noun, it’s pronounced with an emphasis on the first syllable, rather than the second (AFF-ect). Used primarily in psychiatry, the noun form of affect refers to a visible display of emotion or mood…

Courtney’s foul language was just a verbal manifestation of a surly affect.

…whereas effect as a verb simply means “to cause.”

In attempt to effect a change in office morale, Carl put a swear jar in the employee break room.

In the entry for “affect/effect” in Common Errors in English Usage, Paul Brians writes that “nobody ever said that English was logical: just memorize it and get on with your life.” With that in mind, I recommend memorizing that affect is a verb (starts with an A, just like action) and effect is a noun (cause and effect)—because that’s all you really need to know.

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: the writing life  |  make a comment

This is the Manhattan office of Milton Glaser, Inc.

Just about every time we’d visit New York City, Linda and I made a pilgrimage to this place, stand across the street, and ponder what he and his team were working on. We never actually encountered Milton Glaser, but just seeing his four-story office building was inspiring enough.

The transom window over the entry reads “Art is Work.” Glaser believed in hard work. Persistence. A commitment to one’s craft. And his enormous talent provided the joy that kept him working right up until his death on June 26—his 91st birthday.

Once, when he was asked what he does all day, Glaser replied, “I move things around until they look right.” And he made his work “right” quite often. Best known for his 1967 Bob Dylan poster and the 1977 “I ♥ NY” logo, Glaser produced identity programs, book and album covers, packaging, signage, exhibit and environmental design, and countless posters. He co-founded New York magazine and authored three books about design. In 2009, he became the first graphic designer to receive the National Medal of Arts. And the list goes on. His contribution to graphic design is immeasurable.

While standing next to a stoop across the street from Glaser’s office, a neighbor told me he’d see Milton arrive in a black limousine late in the morning to start his day and see the car return to pick him up late in the afternoon. He was design royalty, after all.

posted by: CK Anderson  |  category: the design life  |  make a comment

“Let me tell you somethin’ right now. You’re only allowed three great women in your lifetime. They come along like the great fighters, every ten years. Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Louis. Sometimes you get ’em all at once. Me? I had my three when I was 16. That happens. What are you gonna do?”

Chazz Palminteri, from the screenplay to A Bronx Tale

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

“International Drive has developed into a tacky gauntlet whereby families are stripped of armloads of cash on their way to and from Disney parks. It, like Greater Orlando, is premised upon one thing: Uncle Walt’s sloppy seconds.”

“Ugly as homemade sin.”

“On July 9, 1844, a letter from a dead man arrived at the post office in Burlington, Wisconsin, forty miles southwest of Milwaukee. Addressed to ‘Mr. James J. Strang,’ it had been postmarked three weeks earlier in the Mormon city of Nauvoo, Illinois. The dead man was Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

“’What the f—, I’m not worried,’ he said. ‘I’m sure I already have it. What do I care?‘”

“If you’ve been wondering about the risk of contracting Covid-19 while performing common activities vs. the risk of doing stupid shit, XKCD has you covered.”

“…from acrobatic Ospreys to hungry hummingbirds to busy woodpeckers.”

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment

In his diary entry of July 14, 1911, A. C. Benson recounts a college dinner at Cambridge for old members—and shows that, even before social media, people were self-centered bores:

Many of them were obviously drunk, and the awful stupidity of the talk! I really felt myself to be cleverer than some of the guests. Several people asked to be introduced to me, said they wished to make my acquaintance, and then talked continuously. One man asked me for a photograph, for his wife—said he didn’t himself care about such things. But it seemed to me a vile thing to see the kind of mess people make of their lives—the inevitable mess—and then becoming pursy and short-winded and red-nosed and stupid beyond words. None of them…could talk; they could only go on with endless repetitions. And then they could do little but tell tales of their desperate deeds….

posted by: Aaron Bragg  |  category: random thoughts  |  make a comment