A couple of weeks ago, I ventured to suggest a way to trick yourself into being your own proofreader. What I was getting at, or trying to, was the idea that a lot of the little things that go wrong with our prose might be corrected if we manage to look at our texts with fresh eyes. Not an easy thing to accomplish, I realise. But I thought it was a worthwhile idea, and still do.

So far, the only person who has commented (okay, MVP, who is kind enough to let me know she reads this drivel) remarked simply, 'I would have thought that the major changes should come first.' Which is a good point. Sure, you need to do that at some stage. And it's probably better to check out the foundations of the house before you go fiddling with the baseboard trim. On the other hand, my suggestion that you read for typos first is a sly way to get us to do it routinely – it has a sneaky didactic turn. Besides, it gets us to notice the little things. You have no idea how many long editorial comments I have read to the effect that 'we need to make sure that this paragraph covers government-mandated Objectives Ia, 2c, and 14d, and we need to make it clear that…', only to find that I could solve the problem by changing a phrase in the second sentence. Such is life.

I can't tell you when to fiddle with your Big Ideas, because I have no idea what your Big Ideas are. And won't, unless I read something you wrote and find out. And unless, when I read what you wrote, I can understand what you said. I'm not sure I'm competent to tell anyone how to get their Big Ideas across. And I know I'm not competent to tell anyone what their Big Ideas should be. But a book I tried to read last night gave me another idea about what gets in between us, our Big Ideas, and our readers. So let me share that, at least, and see if it helps anybody.

The Case of Henry James

Beautiful, different, proud, she had a congruity with things that were not as the things surrounding her, and these usual objects, in whatever abundance, were not the bribe to offer. He was glad, at this hour, that his name, by common consent above all, always, it was true, in Park Avenue cast a fine sharp traceable shadow, or in other words that his race had something of a backward, as well as of a not too sprawling lateral reach. He knew how little his possession of more mere money would help him, and also that it would have been in his interest to be personally quite of another type; but that his cleverness could on occasion please her he struck himself as in a position to remember,
and he at present, turning the whole case over, found aid in the faith that she might at the worst marry him for curiosity.

Henry James, The Sense of the Past.

Henry James' unfinished novel, The Sense of the Past, was published in 1917, a year after his death. It's a time-travel story about a man from New York who inherits an old English house. When he takes possession, he ends up in the past and has to figure out which girl he really loves: his fiancée, her sister, or the woman he left back in the future?

As you can tell, this novel is pretty awful. Henry James had little or no interest in history. He preferred living in his present, which he seems to have thought was just about perfect. (Remember, he died before the United States entered World War I, so he was spared finding out what that was like.) His novel rambles on and on about the people in it, their motivations, what they're thinking, etc, etc. Even Henry James fans seem to admit that it's tough going. And believe me, I am no Henry James fan.

The worst thing James does is to tangle the reader in sentences that are like skeins of yarn that the cat's been at. Look at those sentences. 'Beautiful, different, proud, she had a congruity with things that were not as the things surrounding her, and these usual objects, in whatever abundance, were not the bribe to offer.' What?

We get it. He's saying that the heroine, Aurora Coyne, is an unusual and talented person, and the hero, Ralph Pendrel, thinks he's too dull for her. What James had in mind for his novel, apparently, was to send the wimp time traveling so that he would be worthy of a 'magnificent' Gilded Age lady. Give me a break. But even granted this rather precious idea – which, frankly, sucks – could he not in the name of Heaven tell us that without so many parenthetical remarks?

I mean, I like commas, but this is the living end.

I included those particular three sentences, though, to show that, even as a stopped clock is right twice a day, at least in the United States, which refuses to use 24-hour time, so Henry James, master of the obscure and the obtuse, manages to wring a laugh from this tired writer when he intones, '… he at present, turning the whole case over, found aid in the faith that she might at the worst marry him for curiosity.'

I guffawed.

Friends, please don't write like this. To get people to read it, you usually have to pay them – in money, university degrees, or tenure.

Time Travel Done Better

So why was I interested in this lousy novel in the first place? Because I'd just watched a terrific movie I'd been trying to find for ages. The movie is called Berkeley Square, and it was made in 1933, and it stars British actor Leslie Howard. Berkeley Square is the film version of a play by the same name – a play written by none other than John L Balderston, the brilliant playwright and screenwriter who was responsible for the classic Lugosi Dracula, and incidentally, the Frank Langella version. Balderston's play took inspiration from The Sense of the Past, but of course it's much better. Even with scenes like this. Mush happens to the best of us.

What makes Balderston's work better? Two things. One is the Big Idea, of course. Balderston's story is about a man who becomes fascinated with his ancestor's old house, because he's an architect. Peter Standish lives in the 20th Century, but at the end of World War I. He knows what his world is like. When he switches places with his namesake in the 18th Century, it's a year after the end of the American War of Independence. Nobody is under any delusions about the levels of barbarity available in both centuries – except perhaps the naïve heroine, who's too young to realise that there is good and evil at all times. But unlike James, Balderston doesn't content himself with a love story. Instead, he opts for a more interesting solution – one that leaves the audience challenged in its understanding of space and time.

The other thing that makes Balderston's work better than James', though, is the simple, homely fact that the dialogue doesn't drive you crazy with 'howevers' and 'whereases'. Even characters living in 1784 are forced to toe the line and make sense when they talk. They are even allowed to complain at Standish when he uses 20th-century slang – they insist that the American ambassador, John Adams, has informed them that there is no such expression as 'push off'. What comes out is funny and honest and worth a watch. Don't you wish you had a real time machine, so you could go back and buy a ticket to see the original Broadway production? That would have been a worthwhile evening.

James might have gone, if only for curiosity.

PS Speaking of curiosity, if you'd like to try to read James' novel, with notes on the ending, be my guest. Personally, I found it better than a sleeping pill.

Writing Right with Dmitri Archive

Dmitri Gheorgheni

18.05.15 Front Page

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