Thorn: Bee’s knees and cat’s whiskers
From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on December 9, 2015:
Just the other day, a writer for Men’s Health requested an interview with me about the origin and evolution of the jock strap, supporter, and cup–which prompted my recall of the venerable Jacques Strop, a character in Robert Macaire, a once-famous play of the 1830s. I had little else to offer the interviewer, but this essay, penned for The Woodstock Times a decade ago, leapt to mind. I think it’s still pretty good (probably I should say swell); maybe you will too.
Miss Doherty’s assignment to her English section of sophomores at Richmond Hill High School was to write a single-page essay on “My Favorite Books.” My response was to award the palm to Heinrich Harrer’s Seven Years in Tibet, the book I had most recently read; mild approbation to Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles and mysteries in general; and short shrift to the entire genre of military books, which I said I just “couldn’t stand.” Miss Doherty indulged my opinions and kindly graded the essay at 90, but noted in the margin that my chatty remark that had meant to tar-brush everyone from Martial to Churchill was “colloq” [colloquial] and thus deficient. By way of explanation after returning the paper to me, she added that good writing was “elevated speech.”
For decades I had displayed that naïve and frankly not so hot (“colloq”) essay in a frame on the wall of my study, to chasten me and to hearten others who might pause to read it. Today it resides in a box in storage, and I have come to like Miss Doherty less well than I did when I was her pupil in 1960. Only in recent years have I realized the lasting impact of her offhand observation that good writing is somehow more formal, more structured, more dignified than good talk. I became an English major in college and wrote stiff and stuffy if well received papers. I became a professional writer of sports-history books, differing from my peers in that my prose seemed generally professorial and chilly where theirs was often imprecise yet energetic.
Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2015/12/09/bees-knees-and-cats-whiskers/
Originally published: December 9, 2015. Last Updated: December 9, 2015.