Toxic Alan Fans and Their Disappointing Discourse

The author of X-Amount of Comics: 1963 (WhenElse?!) Annual assails the paucity of critical debate surrounding the work ...

Ms. Meg Must-Read: Critical Rave for Clarissa!

This is an unsolicited comment from my colleague who is proofing and Beta-reading my Ms. Megaton Man Maxi-Series manuscript (you can read the same chapters right now online): 

"Finished chapters 1-7 of Clarissa James' memoirs. Really enjoying it. From what I've read, I wouldn’t change a thing. There's the right balance of exposition and movement, and I find Clarissa's voice to be a perfect fit for the story. Keep it coming and I look forward to catching up on chapters 8-10!"

"Lets Me Do My Thing!": The Mystery of Alyssa G. and Her (Un)Broken English

It's been obvious for a long time that the internet and social media in particular has brought out every form of kook, conspiracy theorist, and beyond-the-fringe nutjob with their own idiotic take on the world. On my Facebook page, for example, fans are thrilled to have located the creator of Megaton Man, a comic book series they enjoyed as a teenager, but their very next post is how I'm a libtard for not caring about John Podesta's emails.

But I wasn't quite aware how far this mass insanity has spread until last week, when I came across one self-styled social commentator bold enough and ignorant enough to have made up his own grammatical rules to fit his conspiratorial world view, one in which evil corporations are not only taking over his personal Matrix but trying to staff fast-food restaurants with grammar-challenged immigrants.

What sparked his ire was a particular job recruitment poster he saw at McDonald's somewhere in the northeastern corridor of the United States. In it, a young girl, presumably of Latino ethnicity named "Alyssa G." and clearly enjoying her day off in a pink tanktop and blue yoga pants (and presumably listening to an NPR podcast on her device), declares, "Today my job let me do my thing."

"Today my job let me do my thing." It's called the past tense. But to Our Social Commentator, it's a conspiracy not only to recruit and exploit minorities, but also a sinister plot to spread "broken English." (Also Spanish, since this version of the poster is bilingual; so much for McDonald's secret scheme to appeal to Latinos, which Our Social Commentator is convinced he has single-handedly uncovered!)

Our social commentator created a video of this, with a very creative three-minute handheld shot of the poster affixed inside the glass door of a busy McDonald's. While we get seasick watching this cinema verite image, he reads the tagline from the poster over and over again, slowly, in a mock-Hispanic cadence, convincing himself that "my job LET me do my thing" is "broken English." Not only is McDonald's Corporation, in his view, intentionally appealing to Latinos from "down south" to come north and work for them for less than a liveable wage (and take away gainful employment from "legal" American citizens, as he repeatedly asserts), but they are also encouraging bad grammar.

Of course, "Today my job let me do my thing" is perfectly correct written English, grammatically speaking. It's called the past tense. "Today my boss let me have the day off; I went for a jog and listened to itunes; I did my thing rather than salt french fries or stand for eight hours at the take-out window. Today my job let me do my thing."

(One could, arguably, insert a comma after "Today." "Today, my job let me do my thing." But why quibble?)

Not only is Our Social Commentator an illiterate stooge, he's also an inept cameraman with no sense of artistic composition. Technology enables such mental mediocrities to seem reasonable and "part of the conversation."

Presumably her job didn't let her do her thing yesterday; maybe tomorrow it won't either. Maybe she'll have to go in to work tonight and perform oral sex on her (white male) boss to get the day off she wants next week (the comments on Our Social Commentator's video posting make even worse misogynistic, racist, and hateful remarks about "Alyssa G.," believe me). But today, her job let her do her thing.

Our social commentator, however, insists that his willful misreading of the phrase amounts to "broken English," and demands for the sake of Civilization that the word "let" be corrected with an "s" on the end, so as to read "lets." "Today my job lets me do my thing" would be his amended phrase.

However, "Today my job lets me do my thing" makes no grammatical sense whatsoever. In the simple present tense, which is what "lets" is, her job would have to let her do her thing every day, not just today. "My job lets me do my thing everyday." In fact, McDonald's already has a variation of this recruitment poster that reads, "My McJob lets me do my thing."

"My McJob lets me do my thing." Since the letting isn't confined to just today, it's also perfectly correct grammar. It's called the simple present tense.

Presumably this applies not only to today but everyday.

The only way "Today my job lets me do my thing" would make grammatical sense is if the person speaking were a senior citizen. "Fifty years ago, I had to work sixteen hours a day in a coal mine. But today my job lets me do my thing. That's because I'm basically retired and sit around all day sipping coffee in a McDonald's." In other words, "today" would have to mean "nowadays." And it is hard to imagine how a young woman going for a job on her day off would be using the word "today" in that sense.

McDonald's also has a recruitment poster with two other imaginary employees. "Join our team," it announces. One employee, a woman in a blazer, chirps, "Today my job got me promoted to general manager." A second, a hardworking student, says, "Today my job got me two credits closer to my degree." The third, our lovely Alyssa G., repeats her familiar tagline, "Today my job let me do my thing."

Which phrase is in broken English? That's a trick question, because all are perfectly grammatically correct. "Today my job past tense." Written communication never ceases to amaze!

Which of those phrases are "broken English"? Answer: none of them! They are all perfectly grammatically correct. It's called the past tense.

I commented on Our Social Commentator's handheld video clip. I wrote, "You're quite the grammarian. The phrase is perfectly correct as is."

His response was, "No it wasn't, asshole."

Now, a phrase is either grammatically correct or it isn't; it's not a question of is or wasn't.

Which leads me to think not only that Our Social Commentator (who is a self-professed Right-Wing bigot, I should mention, in case that wasn't already clear) is inventing "broken English" in commercial messages where none exists to suit his conspiratorial world view; he also seems to have a serious learning disability (possibly dyslexia), which prevents him from recognizing and distinguishing verb tenses in written English.

No doubt, McDonald's knows who they want to appeal to with their recruitment posters. And maybe they do want to staff their counters and drive-through windows with underpaid illegal immigrants just to fuck up my man Commentator's Extra Value Meal order. But I think it's safe to say that McDonald's Corporation, or its advertising creators, at least know the correct usage of present and past tenses.

In a world of ignoramuses with smart phones, subscriber channels, and silo thinking that is impervious even to objective Standard English usage, that is some reassurance at least.

Time was when hate-mongers, crazies, and other morons who shouldn't be let out on their own recognizance had to resort to cutting letters out of magazines (to compose ransom notes), or had to type out their ramblings (chain letters and other documents of their delusion) on portable typewriters, replete with misaligned text and worn-out ribbons. Such communication, on its face, looked amateurish; it was invalidated and dismissed by minds of average intelligence a priori.

Nowadays, slick technology comes with designer fonts, automatic alignments, and reasonably professional results, even if the operator doesn't know how to hold their smartphone still long enough to make their ignorant assertions. To discern the lies and insanity from legitimate communication requires of us, more than ever, critical thinking. That, and a sharp eye for detail. Luckily, the shitheads still give themselves away because the elements of basic grammar will always elude them.

"Leaves me alone and lets me do my thing!" Okay, pal.

Bleak House, Part II

I finally finished Bleak House - although much of the final third was rough slog. As warm, direct, and unassuming as I found Esther Summerson's first-person narrative, I found Dicken's objective, cynical, sardonic present-tense narrator at times impenetrable. The syntax was garbled, not so because of the present tense so much as Dickens trying too hard to be cynical and sardonic.

The only function of this narrator seemed to be to tell portions of the story that Esther herself could not have witnessed - also to remind the reader, heavy-handedly, that Dickens is after all a satirist. These passages would have been better had Dickens not tried so hard to overdo it. (This objective narrator is at his best at such times as when, late in the book, the steel manufacturer,  Rouncewell, converses with his long-lost trooper brother, George.)

Esther Summerson as narrator, for all her warmth, is every bit as penetrating and insightful - of such characters as Skimpole, Mrs. Jellyby, and Mr. Turveydrop - as is Dicken's presumably "objective" narrator, without the bite, and without seeming to be aware of her often sarcastic and critical transcriptions. The characterization of the seemingly roundabout but in fact relentless Columbo-like Inspector Bucket, for example, is completely consistent between the two narrators, offering no difference in point of view. Bleak House would have been a better book if told completely from Esther's generous (but not unflinching, as it turns out) perspective, rather than being shared with the intrusive and too-snarky "objective" narrator.

Still, the book finishes strong, and is quite moving, particularly in the reunion of the two brothers and Esther's corrected matrimony to the philanthropic Dr. Allan Woodcourt. In many respects, Bleak House is every bit as panoramic as Vanity Fair, albeit with a forced taciturn quality in the former that pulls in the negative direction as much as the latter pulls in a faux-comic upbeat direction.

Bleak House is not a novel to begin when I did (in 1985, at the age of 23), but it is a novel to read when you're almost 57. It is a middle-age novel, when one can appreciate the passing of time, look back with some objectivity over foolish life choices, and can appreciate the wisdom of experience.
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Vanity Fair and Bleak House, Part I.

An Abbreviated Leve: An Unpublished Book Review

Ariel Leve, An Abbreviated Life (Harper Perennial, 2017). $15.99 paperback.

Journalist Ariel Leve has produced a memoir of growing up as collateral damage in literary New York. Divorced at the dawn of the 1970s, the author’s mother, a poet dubbed Suzanne, places her own career aspirations and uncontrollable drives above the encouragement and support, and sometimes protection, of her daughter. In a complex mosaic of impressions from childhood and adult life, Ariel realizes that even in this sometimes brutal relationship, a love of words has been imparted from mother to daughter, playing no small role as tools in the author’s eventual liberation.

Composed of seemingly random snippets presented out of chronological order, the book is a highly structured argument on the effects of neglect and emotional abuse in childhood on adult intimacy. Ariel the child is at once the neglected, manipulated daughter of a self-indulgent literary diva momentarily rescued by a series of surrogate parents, and the uncertain adult Ariel groping for connection with a loving, supportive partner and his affectionate twin daughters. A third character, the author herself, is the relatively unitary mind trying her best to step back and make sense of these tortured experiences in the very composition of this memoir. 

Against this relatively concrete self-portrait is pitted the abstract maelstrom of Suzanne, the compulsively needy mother, the picture of artistic self-centeredness and unpredictable turmoil personified. Tangible only when making demands or offering timed depth-charges of love and support, Suzanne is a ubiquitous presence that has left fingerprints on Ariel’s psyche that reach to the other side of the world. Now the conflict is within Ariel herself.

The relatively few names dropped are enough to suggest that anybody who was anybody was likely to turn up at one of Suzanne’s raucous dinner parties thrown in her Upper East Side penthouse, interrupting Ariel’s homework and sleep pattern. The child pleads for famous directors, novelists, and magazine editors to go home, and tap dancers, opera singers, and Broadway composers make it impossible to rest. By the time we meet Andy Warhol, we are as unimpressed as the seven-year old who has once again been kept up well past her bedtime on a school night.

In Ariel’s waking hours, her mother’s inappropriate appearances at school and erratic behavior in restaurants are the source of even greater humiliation. Suzanne’s extra-literary reputation has preceded her adult daughter even across the Atlantic, where Ariel has fled as much to escape her mother, since become a documentary filmmaker and Broadway dramatist, as to pursue her own career in journalism. Reports of her mother’s latest scandals follow Ariel even to Bali, despite efforts to curtail communication, and Ariel dreads running into Suzanne when her itinerary brings her back to New York.

Even more virulent prove to the coping strategies Ariel has had to improvise in order to survive her childhood, now hard-coded into her brain and threatening to derail her adult efforts at establishing safe and loving relationships. Thanks to nurturing guidance provided by more stable caregivers, prolonged therapy, and sheer trial and error, Ariel comes to realize that her worst enemy is herself.

It is at this point that the narrative may seem inexorably drag on, as a relentless and increasingly erratic Suzanne only redoubles her efforts to maintain a manipulative presence in Ariel’s life and defeat her. But survivors of toxic childhoods will recognize that realization is not the same as resolution, and establishing new terms for an adult relationship, let alone effecting a clean break, with an irrepressible loved one can involve numerous false starts, prolonged effort, and discouraging relapses. A force of nature such as Suzanne is a worst case scenario.

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Note: This is a book review I submitted June 29, 2016; it was accepted for publication but never run. After two years, I think it's safe to run it on my own. Although the book was well-written and even gripping, it lacked a feel-good happy ending, and didn't seem to make a major splash.

More book reviews I have done since 2014.