Feint Praise, the Pinch, the Ouch, and the Critical Eye

As noted last week, I've been given a sneak peek at Andrei Codrescu's forthcoming Bibliodeath. The book I'm reading is what's known to writers as a galley proof, a sort of mock-up used by proofreaders to spot typographical errors. It contains one phrase that might be a typo, or might be one of those insights that make multilingual writers so rewarding to read: "feint praise."

Feint praise? I savor the possibilities. The standard phrase is "faint praise," meaning weak, feeble praise. "How do you like the picture I drew for you, Mommy?" "Ummm...that's a picture, all right! Lots of colors!"

But "feint" is a word in its own right; it means the kind of faked move, especially in boxing, used to trick your opponent into preparing to block Strategy A so that you can then beat him with Strategy B. Would "feint praise" be the kind of vapid compliment used to disguise a sneaky verbal attack, as in "Everybody likes you, Tracy, and we all understand why it seems to be so hard for you to finish a project on time, but WHY can't you at least try to remember to refill the coffeepot?"

The word "feint" is what dictionaries call a cognate to the word "feigned," which could also describe a kind of praise: "How do you like the picture I drew for you, Daddy?" (Without shifting eyes away from the TV) "Ummm...great, fine, wonderful...look at THAT!" (meaning the TV)

Wondering whether this felicitous phrase will appear in the book I'm hoping to sell in an actual store next year, I think of other delights that pop up from time to time in the writings of people who are still learning to write English "correctly." Whole books of these phrases have been collected. "To protect the innocent, and the guilty, and myself" is starting to become a cliche in its own right, like "I want to be equally unfair to both sides" and "one Nation under God Invisible" and several others.

I was talking with Grandma Bonnie Peters last night, and she recalled an unusual phrase that popped out of a little girl we used to know. As her baby-sitter, I was "helping" this child write a thank-you letter to a relative. The three-year-old had scribbled on a page and was "reading" her thoughts to me. She dictated a few correct sentences, thank you for the package, I especially liked the picture book, and then for no obvious reason she said, "I am sending you a pinch and an ouch. The ouch is to say when you get the pinch."

Where that came from will never be known. The child was not in the habit of pinching people, was not pinching me, and never pinched the relative who had sent the package. But her whole extended family have been enjoying that phrase, and quoting it in all sorts of contexts, for thirty years.

Back then, every library still had copies of the once wildly popular comic novels by Leo Rosten, The Education of Hyman Kaplan and The Return of Hyman Kaplan. Really they were collections of short stories about the world's wackiest English as a Second Language class, in which a rather pedantic teacher dutifully corrected a variety of early-twentieth-century European immigrants to America, often indulging in sarcasm at their expense, and almost always having to concede a point to the ebullient student Hyman Kaplan. In contrast to shy, hypercorrect Miss Mitnick and depressive, overwhelmed Mrs. Moskowitz, Mr. Kaplan loved making a funny mistake or asking an imponderable question. He wasn't content to memorize things like "bad, worse, worst"; he wanted to argue for the merits of "bad, worse, rotten." He gave the teacher, Mr. Parkhill, headaches, but in some way Mr. Parkhill knew he needed Mr. Kaplan's daily brain-stretchers.

Maybe the adventures of Hyman Kaplan don't need to be reprinted--even when my husband and I reread them at the turn of this century, thinking how ESL teaching techniques and classes have changed interfered with enjoying the story--but the character's willingness to be ridiculous while thinking out loud lives on. One place where it lives on is in a handful of boldly comic thinkers and writers, of whom Codrescu is one, who are willing to attempt to be both witty and insightful in five languages.

Maybe it's because I'm too shy even to write blog posts in Spanish that I'm impressed by his discussion of how a poem he'd written in English, in collaboration with a Romanian correspondent, "works, but it's a different poem" in Romanian. Well, of course, isn't that always true of successfully translated poems? But how many writers dare to translate their own work? Don't most of us wait for a publisher to demand our consent to let someone else translate our stuff, so that, when (or if) that's done, we can wail about the translator being a traitor etc. etc.? (The cliche of traduttore-tradittore originated in Italian; I think by now it's global.)

Maybe all people who write successfully in five languages have to be people who are willing to laugh at their own mistakes, publish their mistakes, invite others to laugh at them too. Once you're a famous international poet, you can publish things like "feint praise," and readers will be impressed by your cleverness. However, Codrescu wasn't always a famous international poet; once he was an unknown immigrant youth who stumbled onto city buses asking "Can I buy this bus for..." and people laughed, and the driver growled, "Go buy another bus," and thought, "...smarty-pants!"

Years ago, as a young, pedantic typist in the habit of correcting foreign students' term papers, I mangled a manuscript written in admiration and imitation of Ishmael Reed. I was so young I hadn't even discovered Reed's books yet. I assumed that his admirer was trying to write standard, freshman-term-paper-type English, and not succeeding. I callously "corrected" a lot of effects that would have worked with a more mature audience, found something to flag as an unworkable mess on every page, and generally alienated a potential client.

A few years later I read one of Reed's novels. Right away I remembered the ambitious young author, and recognized what he'd been trying to do. Because Reed had got his novel published and well reviewed, I agreed that his surrealism worked, read more of his books, even recognized a family story he shared as identifying a distant relative of mine. Ishmael Reed continued to gain respect in the literary world, becoming one of the more successful male novelists of the late twentieth century. I don't remember whether Reed's admirer had even finished his novel; he never got it into bookstores. I had to wonder whether his complete novel might have worked...if people hadn't assumed that, because he was young and obscure, he was trying to write a more conventional kind of story, and not succeeding. If he hadn't found his own writing voice yet, at least he was a sophisticated reader.

I've tried at least to profit from this experience. Sometimes a hypercorrect approach ends up blocking a "mistake" that was actually a valuable new insight.

More recently, a prizewinning foreign poet was awarded a fellowship at one of Washington's universities. Having practical as well as "creative" intelligence, he used this opportunity to earn a real degree in economics. I had the opportunity to proofread his term paper. It was informative, even a good read, and a bit of a surreal read, because when I tried to parse a sentence that made good intuitive sense I realized that the poet's English grammar was atrocious; that sentence might equally well have been interpreted to mean something entirely different than what I guessed it meant. And it was a long paper, containing at least twenty sentences like that. I thought the amount of work and thought that had gone into that paper really deserved to be worked up into a book...and, at the same time, I couldn't say it was ready to be submitted as a term paper. And it was due in the morning.

But at least, while flagging the perplexing sentences, I respected the writer. I think the notes I wrote on those flags showed that respect. He was well past the stage in a writing career where writers need much encouragement from proofreaders, but all writers always deserve more of a "Did you mean this, this, or this?" tone than a "This makes no sense!" tone.

Not every messy first draft or student paper needs to be a book, but I'd like here to ask the English teachers and copy editors of this world to bear in mind that some messy manuscripts are going to become books. Good ones, too.

Sometimes critics, teachers, and editors need a pinch and an ouch.