It's a Fair Cop

A Brief Guide to British TV Detective Shows

The detective will be moody, irascible, and/or conflicted over family issues.

The detective’s boss will be a paper-pushing dolt.

At some point the paper-pushing dolt will take the moody, irascible, and/or conflicted-over-family-issues detective off the case.

All houses and flats in Britain seem to be furnished with a mail flap in the front door whose purpose is not to receive mail (the victims never get any) but (a) to allow villains to pour petrol through it and set fire to the house or flat or (b) to allow some nosy person to peer into the dwelling and discover a body in the hallway.

If the house or flat is not burned down or has no body inside but needs to be investigated, a spare key will be found (for a house) underneath a flowerpot to the left of the door or (for a flat) on the lintel above the door. Amazingly, no thief ever has figured this out.

If the detective decides that the key to the case is locked in someone’s computer, the detective will secretly access the machine and on the fifth try will successfully guess the owner’s password.

If the location of the action is either Scotland or Yorkshire, no subtitles will be available.

Note: None of the above holds true for Agatha Christie stories. Instead, substitute lots of drinking of tea (for the Miss Marples) or tisanes (for the Hercule Poirots).  

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Bonus Mini-Guide to Danish TV Detective Stories:

At some point everybody will have been thrown into jail.

Sum Ego

The widespread acceptance of a locution like “exact same” is surely indicative of the depths to which American English has sunk.  

J. A. F. Hopkins, Letter to the Editor, The New Yorker, issue of June 4 & 11, 2012

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You see, when the world was new, the heavens young,

People lived differently . . . 

Juvenal, “Satire VI”  (Translated by A. S. Kline)

And then it all went downhill.

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[E. B.] White, addressing the question of “I” versus “me,” in “The Elements of Style,” asks, “Would you write, ‘The worst tennis player around here is I’ or ‘The worst tennis player around here is me’? The first is good grammar, the second is good judgment.”

Joan Acocella, The New Yorker, issue of May 14, 2012

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After which, skipping again to a different subject (in the meanwhile his voice had recovered its usual bored, mocking tone), he asked me if, a little while ago, I hadn't happened to pass by, on my bicycle, along the Mura degli Angeli. At that moment, he had been in the garden: he had gone out to see what shape the rain had left the tennis court in. But because of the distance, and also because it was almost dark, he hadn't been sure I was that person who, without getting off his bicycle, and with one hand against a tree trunk, was standing up there, motionless, looking down. Ah, so it had been I?--he continued, after I had admitted, not without hesitation, that, coming home from the station, I had indeed taken the road along the walls: and this, I explained, because of the inner revulsion I felt every time I tried to pass in front of certain ugly characters gathered opposite the Caffe della Borsa, on Corso Roma, or spread out along Corso Giovecca. Ah, it was I?--he repeated. He had been sure! But in that case, if it had been I, why hadn't I answered his shouts, his whistles? Hadn't I heard them? 

Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (Translated by William Weaver)

  

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It should be plain to any native English speaker who hasn’t a tin ear that William Weaver, in order to maintain what E. B. White and Joan Acocella believe is “good grammar,” has totally abandoned “good judgment.” But White and Acocella show no good judgment when it comes to understanding English grammar. “. . . is I” would be the correct grammatical formulation and “. . . is me” would be totally incorrect if we were all back in ancient Rome conversing at the Forum. That is, if we were speaking Latin. Unfortunately for our language, some centuries ago there came into existence in England the idea that Latin grammar was the paradigm for all grammars, and, thus, for English. After all, Rome was a Golden Age, was it not? (Of course, Juvenal knew better).

I think I can safely say, however, that most teachers and writers who (in referring to English) spew out the terms “good grammar” or “correct grammar” have no idea that they are using Latin models and that those models are not universal but unique to Latin. Consider: English is not a descendent of Latin; but French is. And what did that most splendid of all French monarchs, Louis XIV, declare? “L'état, c'est moi” (“The state, that’s me”).

So, if over time a descendent language of Latin abandons Latin grammar and develops a “correctness” that differs radically from its ancestor, how can English be tortured into a “correctness” that is not even that of an ancestor language?

The Changeling

“Has he changed? Oh my God yes,” says Michael Levine, his agent. “Conrad has come to appreciate what it means to be disadvantaged He is a far more sensitive and introspective person than he was six, seven, eight years ago.” Vanity Fair 

“You know, the judge told me she thought I was a better man now, and I took that as a sort of head-patting expression on her part, you know, that she had the wisdom to send me to prison. But I think she’s right. I probably am. It is a broadening experience.” Vanity Fair

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Today, Conrad Black (aka Baron Black of Crossharbour) was released from a US federal prison, having served three years for defrauding investors in a company he controlled (before his legal problems Black was a major figure in newspaper publishing; his properties included the Daily Telegraph in England, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Jerusalem Post). He was promptly re-arrested by immigration authorities and deported to the country of his birth, Canada, where he has been granted a temporary resident permit—temporary, because in 2001 “Black renounced citizenship of his native home,” as the Guardian (UK) put it, “in exchange for the seductions of the British House of Lords.” 

The peerage fitted perfectly with the lavish spending and in-your-face flaunting of wealth by Black and his wife. (They “once had the gall to attend a party at Kensington Palace dressed as the power-crazed Cardinal Richelieu and Marie Antoinette, the most hated woman in pre-revolutionary France,”  the Observer noted.) And as a Guardian editorial stated in 2007:

Once Conrad Black expected to get what he wanted. If he wanted to refurbish his Rolls-Royce at a cost of $90,000, he did. A $42,870 birthday party for his wife? So be it. And if a jet crept on to the wish list, he is said to have told investors: "I can have a 747 if I want."

 His wife was no slouch either: 

Asked why Hollinger [Black’s company] needed two private jets, she once explained, “It is always best to have two planes, because however well one plans ahead, one always finds one is on the wrong continent.” Vanity Fair 

Black’s legal woes have taken a big chunk out of his bank account. But as Bryan Burrough  wrote in VF: 

For all the talk of his financial “ruin,” Black won’t exactly lead a pauper’s life in Toronto. A good guess of his net worth is $80 million—80 percent less than the $400 million he could once claim, but far from “ruined.” “I can live on $80 million,” he notes with an arching of his eyebrow. “At least I think I can.”

The Whisper of the Muse

“I want to play the way a cat jumps.”

Claudio Arrau, Chilean pianist

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Fortune cookies aren’t always right (though the next-to-the-last one I got--“You are an exciting and inspiring person”—was spot-on). My most recent one read: “The important thing is to express yourself.” The idea of expressing yourself I associate with three types of people—parents of brats, artistic wannabes, and British football (i.e., soccer) commentators.

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To take the last first. The football commentators, usually resorting to the third person plural and forgetting that they are talking about a team sport, bemoan any defensive strategy by a manager as not letting the players “express themselves.” It is interesting that in all the years that I have watched ice hockey (which is a parallel sport, only on a different surface), I have never heard a commentator speak of his desire for the players to express themselves. If anyone got down to the essence of team sports it was Freddie Shero, who coached Stanley Cup championship teams in Philadelphia: "If it's pretty skating they want, let 'em go to the Ice Capades."

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“Lady Constance's flush deepened. Not for the first time in an association which had lasted some forty years, starting in days when she had worn pigtails and he had risked mob violence by going about in a Little Lord Fauntleroy suit, she was wishing that her breeding did not prohibit her from bouncing something solid on this man's bald head. There was a paper-weight at her elbow which would have fitted her needs to a nicety. Debarred from physical self-expression by a careful upbringing at the hands of a series of ladylike governesses, she fell back on hauteur.”

P. G. Wodehouse, Service With a Smile

I have most often associated “self-expression” not so much with aristocratic granddames but with bratty children. They not only throw things (as Lady Constance refrained from doing) but scream at the top of their lungs until they get what they want. Their doting parents usually dismiss those antics by explaining that the child was only “expressing him/herself.” What exactly a child’s “self” is—and why it couldn’t be expressed at a lower volume—has never been satisfactorily explained to my philosophically-probing mind.

But it’s not only bratty children and overpaid footballers with bad haircuts who have a desire to “express themselves.” A good number of years ago I was browsing through Bloomingdale’s (in New Jersey; I was never chic enough to be allowed through the doors of the New York store), finally ending up in the stationery department, when my shuffling through greeting cards was interrupted by an intense woman followed by a covey of serious young men and women. The leader of the pack moved quickly to a table and pointed. “I’m not satisfied with that display,” she said. “I wanted to make a statement.” It took all my powers of self-restraint to keep from shouting at her: “Lady, they’re just boxes of goddamn envelopes!”

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For many years I have collected quotations by artists in all fields from jazz to ballet about the nature of artistic creation. And I have never once read or heard a serious artist—in any field—speak of his/her need for “self-expression.” Indeed, what those artists have said is the exact opposite—the creation of art is a selfless undertaking. Consider the words of Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos: “I create music out of necessity, biological necessity. I write because I cannot help it.” Or those of the great jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli: “When I improvise and I’m in good form, I’m like somebody half sleeping.” Or those of the poet Elizabeth Bishop: “I really don’t know how poetry gets to be written. There is a mystery and a surprise, and after that a great deal of hard work.”

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“Sally pinched him. 'Ass,' she said. 'I'm interested. Tell me why a poet doesn't have to be a man who needs a hair­cut.'

'Because,' said Cadogan, uneasily attempting to gauge the length of his own hair with his left hand, 'poetry isn't the outcome of personality. I mean by that that it exists independently of your mind, your habits, your feelings, and everything that goes to make up your personality. The poetic emotion's impersonal: the Greeks were quite right when they called it inspiration. Therefore, what you're like personally doesn't matter a twopenny damn: all that matters is whether you've a good receiving-set for the poetic waves. Poetry's a visitation, coming and going at its own sweet will.'“

Edmund Crispin, The Moving Toyshop

What the fictional poet Cadogan says is what so many artists have said; the art seems to have been mysteriously introduced into the artist by some outside force. The art chose the artist.

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“I didn’t make a decision to pursue astronomy. Rather, it just grabbed me, and I had no thought of escaping."

Carl Sagan

Just as with artists, so too with scientists. In ancient Greece there were not only Muses for artists like poets and musicians and dancers, there was a Muse of astronomy, Urania, and it was her twentieth-century counterpart who picked out Sagan, who could not escape doing astronomy. Any more than Marina Tsvetaeva could escape writing poetry:

“Why I write”

“Not for the millions, not for some one-and-only, not for myself. I write for the poem alone. The poem, through me, writes itself.”

And when the work is completed, perhaps every true artist utters a version of what novelist Edna O’Brien calls the writer’s prayer:

“Please, God, let me start another.”

Ill Wind

After writing a few blogs ago about the retirement of the great singer Thomas Quasthoff, I began thinking about the artistic talents that I sadly lack but wish I had. Singing is one of them. Mel Torme is who I wish I could sing like; he was a great interpreter of ballads, but could also swing the pants off anyone else. Alas, that punctured tire lying over there is less flat than my voice.

I also wish that I could draw. I would like to be able to produce caricatures. However, the best I could ever do was a stick man (and that was in the first grade). It wasn’t some childhood sexism that prevented me from producing a credible stick woman; I just could not manage the trapezoid for her dress.

And the piano. Yes, I would love to be able to play the piano. Actually, I can play the piano: with one finger I can tap out “My Coun-try Tis of Thee Sweet Land of Li-ber-ty Of Thee I Sing” (exactly like that—and please don’t ask for the next line). Although today I can’t imagine myself wanting to play any other instrument than the piano, I once did try to learn to play the recorder. I thought, "What could be an easier way to be musical than blowing into a little wooden tube?" So, outfitted with the wooden tube and a borrowed book of songs for beginners, I went to work. The first step was to try to figure out the notes. Following the little instruction booklet that accompanied the instrument, I attempted to place my fingers over the appropriate holes and blow. Sometimes a noise came out; I had no idea if it was a note or not. Finally, after running through noises that I hoped were all the notes of the scale, I decided to make music and turned to the borrowed beginner’s songbook. Fingers placed over holes; blow. Re-finger other holes; blow. After a few minutes of unconnected noises, I conceded defeat. Besides the fact that a noise followed by a silence (while finger repositioning was in progress), followed by another noise and another period of silence, and so on, was not very tuneful, I had no idea if I was actually producing the appropriate noises--since I had no idea what the tune I was attempting to play was supposed to sound like. Because all those songs for beginners had titles like “Bulgarian Tractor Dance” or “Albanian Hopscotch.”

But I did take away an important life lesson: If I wanted to call the tune, I would have to pay the piper.

You Were Saying, Milord?

It was around the year 2002 that I was forced to write a letter to the editor of the Times of London. One of the paper’s columnists, a certain William Rees-Mogg, had written that “everyone knows” that Hillary Clinton will run for President of the United States in 2004. I protested that that statement was in error, for I didn’t know that and several persons of my acquaintance (like my butcher, my baker, and my candlestick maker) swore that they did not know that either.

The Times did not publish my letter, which was just as well, seeing that Rees-Mogg was correct, Ms. Clinton transgendering herself to run under the nom de ballot “John Kerry.”

It should be noted that Rees-Mogg, the peerless prognosticator, was no less than a life peer, having become Baron Rees-Mogg of Hinton Blewett in the County of Avon in 1988.

To be honest, though, one must admit that the Baron’s prognosticating skill was really less peerless than common. Recent books by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman* and the pair of Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson** cite the research of Philip Tetlock***, who gathered over 80,000 predictions from political and economic prognosticators. The results, to quote Kahneman, were “devastating”:

. . . people who spend their time, and earn their living, studying a particular topic produce poorer predictions than dart-throwing monkeys . . . .

I wonder if the Baron would like a banana.

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*Thinking, Fast and Slow.

**Mistakes Were Made (but not by me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts.

***Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?

Trippingly on the Tongue

I spent the day getting a haircut and irritated. (Pedantry note: that’s a rhetorical trope known as “zeugma.”) After returning home from the shearing, I decided to watch a DVD of Shooting the Past, a BBC drama from 1999. IMDB.com concisely describes the show as follows:

A US property developer realises that he has a battle on his hands when he tries to renovate a London building containing a vast photographic collection and discovers that the library employees will resort to anything to thwart him.

What irritated me about the show were the Americans—not that they were depicted as philistine, heritage-bashing money-grabbers, I can live with that—but the fact that on British television and in British movies they can’t get American voices right. And it doesn’t matter if the American is played by someone from the British Isles or by an American himself (in Shooting the Past, one by an Irishman, another by a San Franciscan) he or she is going to sound wrong. It’s as if all the drama schools told everyone playing an American (who isn’t instructed to bellow his or her lines in exaggerated Southern twanginess or alleged Nooyawkese) to pronounce every “r” as if it were as important as the last trumpet and to speak generally as if a clothespin were a permanent fixture on one’s nose.

It’s not as though British actors can’t be believable as Americans; they are—when they don’t try to sound American, don’t attempt to act the voice. For example, quite recently, I watched a DVD of Bugsy, a movie I had seen years ago. When the final credits rolled, I was surprised that the actor who so perfectly played the Jewish New York gangster Meyer Lansky (and without the Nooyawkese) was Ben Kingsley, of all people (although I had noted his name in the opening credits, I promptly forgot about him). But, of course, that was an American movie.

Cary Grant, James Mason, and Anthony Hopkins are a few other British actors who have played American roles in American-made movies and were successful—because they didn’t do acting-school American-ese, which no one in the 50 states speaks. Oh, they may have sounded at times a bit moneyed and cultured, but they never sounded wrong.

Then again, there’s the otherwise wonderful Hugh Laurie, whose comic Prince of Wales (in Blackadder) was only bettered by his embodiment of Bertie Wooster; he has so de-Britished his accent for House that he sounds neither British nor American, but perhaps a native of some yet-to be-discovered landfall in the middle of the Atlantic.

But probably the worst British portrayal of an American was perpetrated by a Scotsman—Sean Connery—who, in A Fine Madness, uttered some Bronxish babble in his role as the eccentric poet Samson Shillitoe. It almost, but not quite, makes one yearn to hear once again Dick Van Dyke doing cockney in Mary Poppins.