Steering the Craft, Ex. 2: “I am Saramago”
Awareness of punctuation.
This second chapter of Steering the Craft shows off some of Ursula K. Le Guin’s sense and humor. She admonishes “grammar bullies,” and makes the point that many grammar rules are arbitrary, or even flat-out oppressive! Some rules function as a control of culture via language rather than guidelines for clear communication.
She uses the example of they as a neutral pronoun — the rule barring this practice is based on the idea that “they” is plural, so a sentence like “The cloaked figure darts through alleyways, and then they pause to listen.” moves from a singular the cloaked figure to a singular verb darts to a plural pronoun they and a plural verb pause.
But you knew what I meant, right? You didn’t suddenly envision a host of people under the cloak? People huddling together then pausing to navigate a puddle? You’re smart enough to read the context of the first mention of the sentence’s subject. An anonymous character needs no gender reveal, and they don’t need to be a he by default.
Le Guin also picks apart the arguments surrounding passive verbs. The passive verb is a useful way to introduce a noun. So why shy away from it?
Politicians, administrators, and the likes of them often use passive verbs when they wish to distance themselves from negative events. A person who says “the budget is in the red” takes no responsibility, but “we overspent our budget” takes responsibility and prompts follow-up questions. But passive verbs aren’t grammatically incorrect, they’re just one more tool for the writer to consider as they craft a piece.
Naturally, Le Guin has the reader throw convention out the window in Exercise #2. She asks us to compose a paragraph with no punctuation. Here’s my ‘graph:
a dance of the hands a kick a thrust of the head a swing of the feet zebra dance sting and snap a dance to show off a dance to show out the troops the masters a dance of defense hidden in grasses the zebra dance the hunter sees black and white leaves a dance of shadows and grasses the zebra dance the rhythm of gallop the rhythm of freedom a striping of shadows and light the zebra dance a rhythm a stampede a way out a gallop into the forest the striping of shadows the zebra dance a dance of defense a dance of the hands a kick a thrust of the head a swing of the feet the zebra dance
I was thinking about Capoeira when I wrote this. Though the origins of Capoeira are unclear, it’s suspected that the dance developed partly from Angolan zebra dance — something of a competition in which the winner wouldn’t have to pay a bride price to get married.
Capoeira was later practiced as a defensive martial art by Afro-Brazilian slaves. Masters weren’t too keen on this, so just add music & flourish and self-defense becomes dance — innocuous in appearance. Grasses and their striped shadows.
But now what I really want is a Kung-Fu style movie about slaves using Capoeira to dance their way to freedom.
Further reading: my response to Exercise #1: “Being Gorgeous”
