I’m old but I can write

A friend of mine convinced me to start contributing to this site. In short order, I’ve discovered that I’m old, as you can see by the picture to the left of this sentence. I have my own teeth and hair, I don’t use a cane, I go to the gym regularly for 30–40 minutes of aerobics and 15 or 20 minutes of weights and work at my job about 50–55 hours a week , draw several cartoons a day and more, but at 63, I’m fucking ancient. And irrelevant. Apparently.

When I started reading things posted on this site I noticed a distinct difference between the writing on Medium and the writing I am used to (i.e., grew up with). I was raised at a time when magazines like Harper’s, the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly set the standards for public writing. People read whole books and whole newspaper articles.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to tell you things were “better” in “my day.” They weren’t. But the writing “back then” was written by people who had large vocabularies and a clear command of the English language, as well as a good founding in sentence structure, grammar and syntax. If my English composition teacher in high school said your essay was “breezy” or “peppy” or “zippy” or “a fun read” those were negatives, not positives. Positives were marginal comments like “Point well made!” or “Very well developed observation!” In the cave man days of my youth, we were taught that a piece of writing needs to introduce itself, develop, branch off into supporting ideas only if necessary, and sum itself up along the way. One of the masters of great essay writing, E.B. White (who literally wrote the book on it) said “Never use a long word when a diminutive word will do.”

That doesn’t mean you have to write in an uneducated fashion to express yourself. It’s possible to convey deep thoughts with simple words, if you pick the right words. Proof of that is the previous sentence — I used only one three syllable word and all of the words I chose are part of standard daily speech.

I have three observations about much of the current writing I read on Medium and elsewhere. One, that a lot of writing these days is done too quickly, hammered out in record time because everyone — even old people like me — are in a huge goddam hurry all the time. Or they’re being pushed to hurry up. The result is the same — rushing through things simply to get them done and over with produces less than good results.

My second observation is that, because of the digital media & the internet, information is endlessly recycled, cut & pasted and read and re-worded. People are always taking someone’s ideas, borrowing (intentionally or not) words and phrases and quotes and turning the ‘net and news reporting into one giant information mix tape that lacks personality and is often filled with vague generalities and utter bullshit.

This is what happened to whiz kid Jonah Lehrer, whose story is a chapter in Jon Ronson’s newest book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed.” Lehrer was riding high as a wunderkind until a journalist noticed that he’d swiped a few phrases from other peoples’ writing. Lehrer’s life and career suddenly snowballed, flew downhill and hit a big tree with a loud thud. His explanation/excuse was something about unconsciously absorbing the plagiarized bits without realizing it. Reading too fast, writing too fast and not knowing your source material. Fatal errors. A trifecta of fuck ups.

All of this applies to three types of articles that proliferate on Medium.

The first is a glut of self-promotional pieces, articles by a start-up CEO or one of his/her minions about how to create a successful start up or how to be successful or how to tie your shoes successfully etc. These pieces read like the script for a power point presentation given at the local Holiday Inn by some scam artist and titled something like “Inventing Your Vision for A New Century.” Not good or interesting writing in my opinion.

Another category that I personally find uninteresting are the list” pieces — 10 things to do to find real friends/make the perfect omelette/create a successful start-up, etc. It’s not that these pieces are bad or badly written, they just don’t personally interest me. Every time I read one I finish and say to myself “Yeah? So?”

Lastly, there’s the humor category. Everybody wants to be funny, including yours truly who performed a stolen stand-up routine for his class in 4th grade. I’ve been a humor addict since I was a kid: Mark Twain, MAD magazine, underground comics of the 60s, Archie and Jughead, sitcoms sitcoms sitcoms, stand up borscht belt comics on Ed Sullivan, the original National Lampoon, Carlin, Hicks, Pryor, Gould, Kline, Black, Bamford, Rivers, Gottfriend, Monty Python when they first came to U.S. TV, H. Allen’s Smith’s “The Complete Practical Joker,” Dave Barry, Robert Benchley, SNL when it first aired, Tomlin, Martin, Hedberg, Wright, Boden, Morgan Murphy, Marc Maron and other people with “M” names, Bugs Bunny, Seinfeld, Simpsons, Futurama, “Office Space,” “The Big Lebowski,” on and on, laughing my damn ass off.

But not so much on Medium. Because, to me and my feeble, ancient mind, too much of the humor I read falls flat. It relies on tropes like turning verbs into nouns or vice versa, tacking suffixes like ‘worthy’ or ‘ism’ onto the end of words to make them sound clever (‘cringeworthy,’ ‘mosh-ism,’ ‘fuckitude,’ ‘pukeability’) or using a cultural reference to beef up a weak joke (Why did the chicken cross the road? No, wait, I’ve got it! Why did the KARDASHIAN cross the road? No? How about this one? Why did the Bill Cosby rape trial cross the road?) And, of course, inserting a lot of cynicism and sarcasm and sneering and attitude. I recently read a piece on Medium mocking Ikea and people who like Ikea. It was deemed by other Medium readers to be “hilarious.” Thus, it made me — and probably someone else — feel like a loser asshole because I buy furniture at Ikea and I do it for a lot of reasons. Primarily because it fits my meager budget. Also because I’m old and I realize nobody’s going to come over to my place and be impressed unless I have Richard Nixon’s head in a jar.

Personally, I find ripping up something and attacking it to be a cheap shot, like when someone’s losing an argument and they resort to saying things like “Oh yeah? Well your ex said you never had an orgasm!” It’s too easy and ultimately it makes folks feel bad and what’s the point in that? You may be a funny, hilarious bully but you’re ultimately still a bully.

But hey, what the fuck do I know? I’m old. The world is different. Good writing is as useful as a rotary dial telephone, right? Well researched and original essays are as useful as a floppy disc, huh? Taking the time to create your own jokes and metaphors is as pointless as talking to Vladimir Putin about civil rights, y’know?

Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go take my thirty-two old people pills, have a nap then go pick up my new orthopedic shoes and get to the restaurant by 4 p.m. for the early bird special.

this material is copyright protected, 2016 by charles o’meara. for permission to use all or part of this piece contact [email protected]