My hit list includes words like specifically, meaningful, solon, mishap, newshen, and multi-awarded.
These aren’t awful words in themselves – well, maybe a couple of them are – but they’d be terribly awkward to use in fiction, for reasons I’ll explain.
This discussion was suggested by a recent experience in a class of mine where the word "specifically" came up in a story. It was a very small thing, but it caught my interest because it was an opportunity to demonstrate the differences in the registers of language as you move from journalism or the essay to fiction and poetry.
There’s no doubt that "specifically" is a useful word, to denote one or a few among many possibilities. We talk of bags specifically designed for cameras, or menus specifically meant for vegetarians. That’s fine in everyday prose and even in business or industrial contexts, but what happens when you use it in fiction? "He was specifically interested in her, among all the women in the party." It’s not wrong, it’s just uninteresting. Adverbs that end in —ly are often used as shortcuts to description by lazy and unimaginative writers, and a preponderance of them is a sure sign of feeble writing.
What’s the alternative? A little more work, something like "In the swirl and crush of bodies on the dance floor, above the Marlboros and the pepperoni and the Tommy Girl-laced sweat, she seemed to stand still for him, and when she moved, however imperceptibly, the space she left brightened, like an afterglow." (OK, that’s not too hot, either, but it was a five-minute finger exercise.)
The point here is that good writing often consists in replacing an abstraction like "specifically" – and, for that matter, that soon-to-be most meaningless of words, "meaningful" – with its concrete equivalent. Fiction thrives on precision and concreteness. Ambiguity should reside not in the words but in the situation.
What about solon, mishap, and newshen? These are words beloved of some newspaper reporters and editors, replacements for "lawmaker," "accident," and "female (or woman) journalist." The real Solon – an Athenian lawmaker and poet who once pretended to go crazy so he could say what he really felt without violating the law – would probably turn in his grave at the antics of his Pinoy counterparts (some of whom don’t even need to feign insanity to break the law), and "mishap" has an anciently literary touch to it; but used and abused dozens of times a day, they’ve lost all freshness and all nuance, and should have no place in vivid, vibrant prose. "Newshen" is, simply, a freakish abomination; why are there no "newscocks" to match? Why turn journalists into chickens (even granting that some of them – us – are, well, fine, feathered, and friendly?)
I’m especially averse to "multi-awarded" – to me, the ugliest word in Filipino English bar none. "Awarded" is bad enough, but the "multi" prefix makes it even worse. It’s a Franken-word, cobbled out of parts that couldn’t stand by themselves. If you want to say that someone has won many awards, say so; better yet, describe them. Instead of saying "She is a multiawarded photographer," try "Her photographs of flowers in desolate landscapes have won her great acclaim, including the 2001 Ansel Adams Prize." In fiction, you won’t even say that, but instead walk us through her study or living room, dwell on a photograph or two, and then pan, camera-like, to a trophy or a citation or a cluster of them. In other words, you have to work a little harder – a lot harder – than most other writers in giving life to an experience that actually never was.
That’s how I like my stories, but maybe that’s just me.
Taste, of course, is a matter of culture, whether highbrow or pop (and, let’s not forget, of economics; one of the most fascinating lectures I’ve ever attended was one at the Newberry Library on the development of "taste" as something that was made possible by the growth of global commerce, which offered up a range of choices for dress, food, and reading fare, among others). And then again some preferences are proposed and set by the market. Some of us may prefer our banks to announce themselves in arch-conservative Copperplate or Palatino, but some banks – less pretentious than us and more conscious of the power of the jologs – might rather do their signage in Comic Sans or some even wackier font.
But there are also many things that are less a matter of taste than of sheer execution – of hewing to the design of the job, and of doing it well. We Pinoys have a word for this kind of meticulous workmanship, pulido, by which we mean a certain exactness in the construction of a piece. Pulido is what we want our newly built houses and body-repaired cars to be – not a beam out of joint, not a warp in the metal. The work speaks of a mind aware of and attuned to the finest possibilities of things, of a respect for materials and for design, and of pride in one’s craftsmanship, regardless of what one gets for the job.
Unfortunately, what we often see around us is the exact opposite – a wanton disregard for fit and finish, especially in public works projects such as roads and buildings. Sidewalks and gutters are concreted in slapdash fashion, with wayward gobs of cement or careless splotches of paint (and sickly fluorescent green paint at that) marring the finish. In many places it looks like the builders used a banana leaf for a ruler. Our roads are notoriously baku-bako, and when they do get fixed it’s by pouring a bucket of asphalt into the cavity in the concrete. Compare that to a highway in Europe or even Malaysia.
But naturally we can always argue that all those straight angles and flawless surfaces cost money to build and to maintain. Agreed, but I don’t see the difference, cost-wise, between doing something right and doing it sloppily – unless we’re talking about materials compromised by kickbacks and corruption. Bad workmanship even costs more in the long run, because of the need for repairs and maintenance.
I think it’s really in the mindset, in the pwede na rin attitude we apply to our work – an attitude, sadly enough, often warped by what we perceive to be a climate of corruption; if the whole project is a sham meant only to enrich a few, why bother polishing that floor or flattening that crease? What’s the point of building something wonderful if it can’t be properly maintained?
This goes back to what I mentioned last week about high personal standards as, ultimately, the only measure we can fall back on, especially in a time of carelessness and confusion. Why should our streets be straight? Why should we care? Because every act of perfection brings us closer to the ideal and ennobles us, even and especially in our dire poverty.
And when he wrote it was most likely with his fountain pen (and, of course, a cigarette in his mouth); once, when both of us were guests at a function in Tagaytay, I couldn’t help observing and remarking that the pen clipped to his barong was one of my Holy Grails – a Parker Duofold Centennial in mottled pearl and black, an inspired choice in a world of corporate Crosses and Montblancs. I hope they didn’t bury it with him.
One of the last things Sec. Ople was able to do was to donate P1 million to the UP Institute of Creative Writing, to be used by the ICW in its mission of promoting new Philippine writing, for which Filipino writers present and future who didn’t even know Blas Ople will be deeply grateful. (Incidentally, the UPICW is pushing back the deadline for applications to the Baguio summer writers workshop to Friday, January 30.)
Ople’s replacement, Mrs. Delia Albert, could not have been better chosen. I had the pleasure of meeting her a couple of times some years ago during a month-long fellowship in Canberra, Australia, where she was serving as our ambassador. Next to our embassy in London – which stands across Kensington Palace, made more popular by its occupant Lady Diana – our Canberra embassy has to be the prettiest, among those I’ve seen. But it takes money, which we famously lack, to maintain special places like these – and this was where I saw the mettle of Mrs. Albert, who rounded up the embassy’s discarded but serviceable curtains and used them to upholster the embassy’s chairs and sofas with. Her resourcefulness was well matched by her sharpness of mind and her unflagging enthusiasm for her work. Our Foreign Service should be privileged to have this career diplomat at its helm.