Category Archives: Reading List – Books

Capitalism and Freedom Part Three – Friedman

Part two of this blast from the past looked at The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom. There seems to have been some consensus in the 50s that economic and political freedom were separate items: Friedman argues that they are one and the same. In part three, we turn to chapter two: The Role of Government In a Free Society.

Friedman On Government as Rule Maker and Umpire

Nothing new here. These are the legislative and judicial branches of government. Government defines society. Government provides a level playing field for free enterprise. By maintaining personal freedoms (freedom to relocate to a different county or state, freedom to change careers, freedom to shop around, etc.,), free enterprise can function. But there is the thorny problem that to preserve one person’s freedom is to take away another person’s freedom. To demonstrate the point, Friedman has a memorable quote from a Supreme Court Justice: ‘My freedom to move my fist must be limited by the proximity of your chin’.

Friedman On the Necessity of Government

The need for government in these respects [i.e. to modify, mediate, and enforce rules] arises because absolute freedom is impossible. However attractive anarchy may be as a philosophy, it is not feasible in a world of imperfect men.

So anarchy would be feasible in heaven? It was surprising to see this admission by Friedman. He is full of surprises.

Private Monopoly, Public Monopoly, or Public Regulation?

Here’s a question that’s still hot today. Friedman talks about monopolies or regulation regarding the issues of his day: phones, railways, and letter delivery. Technical (phones) or infrastructure (railways) or competitive (letter delivery) factors in the decades leading up to the 1960 had made it so that telecommunications, railways, and the postal service had single providers. The question was whether they should be in the hands of a private monopoly, a public monopoly, and how they should be regulated. Today the question applies to things like BC Ferries, medical marijuana, the internet, the pharmaceutical industry, and so on. The industries are different but the question still relevant.

Here’s what Friedman says:

When technical conditions make a monopoly the natural outcome of competitive market forces, there are only three alternatives that seem available: private monopoly, public monopoly, or public regulation. All three are bad so we must choose among evils. Henry Simons, observing public regulation of monopoly in the United States, found the results so distasteful that he concluded public monopoly would be a lesser evil. Walter Eucken, a noted German liberal, observing public monopoly in German railroads, found the results so distasteful that he concluded public regulation would be lesser evil. Having learned from both, I reluctantly conclude that, if tolerable, private monopoly may be the least of evils.

Interestingly, since the 1960s, telecommunications, railways, and letters delivery are no longer monopolies. Still publicly regulated though. All three industries seem to be in good shape, at least from the viewpoint of the consumer. Maybe public regulation is the least of evils?

Friedman’s Predictions On the Future

The historical reason why we have a post office monopoly is because the Pony Express did such a good job of carrying the mail across the continent that, when the government introduced transcontinental service, it couldn’t compete effectively and lost money. The result was a law making it illegal for anybody else to carry the mail. That is why the Adams Express Company is an investment trust today instead of an operating company. I conjecture that if entry into the mail-carrying business were open to all, there would be a large number of firms entering it and this archaic industry would become revolutionized in short order.

DHL, Loomis, UPS, Fedex: it’s happened. And the industry has been revolutionized. Parcels from China or Great Britain arrive on the doorstep (Victoria, BC), in some cases, in less than a week. Crazy. In fact, the competition has become so efficient that Canada Post pays the likes of UPS and Fedex to move their mail around: it’s only on the last leg where the postie comes to the door that Canada Post ‘delivers’.

Top 14 Things the Government Does To Irk Friedman

1 Parity price support programs for agriculture [still around today, i.e. dairy industry]

2 Tariffs on imports or restrictions on exports, such as oil import quotas, sugar quotas [less today with NAFTA and other free trade deals]

3 Government control of output, such as through the farm program, or through prorationing of oil as is done by the Texas Railroad Commission [the Texas Railroad Commission was the OPEC before OPEC (setting prices on oil) and the farm program gave money to farmers for not growing crops: seems to be less government control of output today than in the 1960s, though I am not sure on this one]

4 Rent control [still around and on the rise in the form of low income housing]

5 Legal minimum wage rates [here to stay and more and more of a contentious issue, i.e. ‘minimum living wages’]

6 Detailed regulation of industries, such as regulation of transportation or banking [on the rise after the Great Recession. If the banks have a problem, fix it with regulation!]

7 Control of radio and television by FCC [no problem, we have internet these days]

8 Present social security programs, especially old age and retirement programs [these programs are getting bigger and bigger, pretty soon CPP will be bigger than the Canadian economy!–then what?]

9 Licensure provisions in various cities [Uber vs taxi licences]

10 So-called ‘public housing’ [You know this one doubly irks Friedman because he uses ‘so-called’ and surrounds ‘public housing’ with quotations as well!]

11 Conscription in peacetime [Friedman won over some unexpected allies with this one back in the day]

12 National parks [Friedman is referring to BIG places like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone]

13 Legal prohibition to carry mail for profit [No longer!]

14 Publicly owned and operated toll roads [Trend is toward P3 projects that are a mix of private and public funds with a private operator leasing out assets for 100 years. In fact, a Canadian company, Brookfield Asset Management, is a world leader in maintaining and managing infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.,) the world over]

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and, while Doing Melpomene’s Work isn’t a monopoly, it seems like I’m the only one doing it!

Capitalism and Freedom Part Two – Friedman

In part one of this hard hitting series, I reviewed the 1982 Preface, the 2002 Preface, the original 1962 Preface, and the Introduction to Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom. It’s been 53 years since the book came out. It started out from a position of obscurity before taking the world by storm in the 80s. How does it fare today? This second instalment looks at Chapter 1: The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom.

Friedman, The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom

In chapter one, Friedman outlines what he is for and what he is against. Here is what he is for: competitive capitalism, laissez faire, economic freedom, political freedom, Jeremy Bentham, Benthamite liberalism and the Philosophical Radicals, the descendants of the Philosophical Radicals (Dicey, Mises, Hayek, Simons), liberals (in the 18th century meaning of ‘liberal’ meaning supporting the freedom of the individual and free trade), division of labour, and decentralized and/or small governments.

Here is what he is against: democratic socialism, totalitarian socialism, nationally mandated retirement plans (think Canada Pension Plan), fair trade laws, communism, Fabian socialism, Labour party, the BBC, centralized authority, rich magnates backing radical movements within capitalist societies (Field, Blaine, Lamont, and Engels).

How Could Anyone Not Like the BBC?

If you’re going to be against the BBC, you’d better be going against it on good authority. Friedman cites Churchill’s experience with the BBC leading up to WWII:

From 1988 to the outbreak of World War II, Churchill was not permitted to talk over the British radio, which was, of course, a government monopoly administered by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Here was a leading cities of his country, a Member of Parliament, a former cabinet minister, a man who was desperately trying by every device possible to persuade his countrymen to take steps to ward off the menace of Hitler’s Germany. He was not permitted to talk over the radio to the British people because his position was too “controversial”.

The larger point is that dissent is difficult in socialist and communist societies because of government interference. To be able to express dissent is a function of free societies. Government censorship and regulation of Google or Facebook in Communist China today would be analogous to Churchill’s experience with the BBC. To express dissent is not possible without danger to friends, family, job security, and perhaps life and limb. Look what happens to Putin’s enemies: 15 billion could not save liberal Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky from being sent to jail on trumped up charges.

But what about dissent in democratic capitalist societies? Friedman turns to McCarthyism. During the McCarthy era, communist sympathizers or alleged communist and socialist sympathizers were routinely blacklisted by the government. Now, if you are blacklisted in a country where the government controls the job market, you are hooped. But in a country such as the USA where a large private and free market exists, you can dissent and be blacklisted and still be gainfully employed. Friedman uses 1950s Hollywood as an example. 15% of Hollywood movies in the 50s were written by blacklisted writers working under pseudonyms. Because you can dissent and still be gainfully employed, you remain free. Dissenting on an empty stomach in the middle of Siberia is a hard thing.

Strange Bedfellows

Now, Friedman doesn’t talk about this, but it strikes me as something odd and interesting enough to mention. Hollywood is a product of a free society. You don’t find Hollywood in East Germany or Russia. Hong Kong (capitalist) cinema is much more advanced than mainland China (communist) cinema. But take note of the values Hollywood promotes: private enterprise (i.e. corporations) are evil, the free market is evil, bigger government is better. Examples: Elysium, Divergence, and The Wolf of Wall Street. If someone into the free market becomes the hero, it is only by accident. Think of Oliver Stone’s Gordon Gekko. Stone was making a movie about what an ass Gekko was. It was only by some kind of accident that Gekko became a folk hero. It was sort of like John Milton writing Paradise Lost: Satan got all the cool lines and God got all the lame lines. Even though Milton was a devout Puritan, Satan emerged as the Byronic hero.

Now what happens if someone approaches Hollywood to do a movie where industrialists are the heroes, corporations do good, and government invades people’s civil liberties? Well, it just gets turned down. Atlas Shrugged was privately financed.

But here’s the point: isn’t it strange that anti-capitalist socialism loving Hollywood is made possible by a capitalist democracy?

Economic and Political Freedom

Most of the effort in the first chapter is directed at the following argument: economic freedom equals political freedom and vice versa. It seems pretty clear today, but I guess this wasn’t always the case. From Friedman’s arguments, it seems that back in the 50s and 60s, the prevailing argument was that economic freedom and political freedom were entirely different things.

Friedman argues that exchange controls in Great Britain after WWII (ostensibly a limit on economic freedom) made it impossible for her citizens to vacation in the United States (a political freedom). So limiting one limits the other. Conversely, compulsory old age programs administered by the government (ostensibly a limit on political freedom) results in an additional clawback on each paycheque (a harm to economic freedom).

As an aside, when I worked for Bayside Mechanical, there was a DB pension plan administered by Local 324, the Plumber & Pipefitter’s Union. I deregistered from the plan and took a higher salary instead. The freedom to be able to choose my own investments and my own destiny meant more than the convenience of having a third party make my investments for me. That the trustees of the carpenter’s union a few years ago had squandered their pension funds on speculative real estate investments made that choice a no brainer. With freedom comes responsibility to do the right thing. In fact, true freedom is only free in the sense that it is free to do the right thing.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m thankful for the freedom to be Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Capitalism and Freedom Part One – Friedman

I love the Chicago School. Paying Melpomene’s Price will be set to Chicago Manual of Style guidelines. That means footnotes. No MLA or APA style parentheses or endnotes, which are all the rage today. Damn the trend. Footnotes are beautiful: no need to flip to the back of the book (and lose the page); no parentheses sitting in the text like stumbling blocks for eyes to trip over.

My investments are modelled after the efficient market hypothesis, a financial theory fathered by Eugene Fama at the University of Chicago. The efficient market hypothesis states that the price at which an asset or a stock trades in the open market is its price. Stocks are neither undervalued nor overvalued: all the information out there is reflected in the price of the stock. Isn’t that the most beautiful idea?

Finally, believe it or not, the risk theatre is inspired by Chicago School economics theories: Frank Knight’s Risk, Uncertainty and Profit and James Buchanan’s Cost and Choice. The gist of what they say is that there is an opportunity cost to choice. That’s not far from what happens in tragedy: make a choice and pay the price. The Chicago School appeals to my sensibilities: there is no free lunch. Life is nasty, brutal, and short. It’s dog eat dog. This is no Disneyland we’re in.

At Disneyland, the oppressed mice run free (Tom and Jerry, Mickey Mouse), society is egalitarian (Cinderella), and the natural order of the world punishes evil (Evil Queen in Snow White, Captain Hook). But notice: to keep the magic inside Disneyland, it is necessary to build a big gate around it complete with toll booth. It’s a fantasy world. To work its magic, it must sequester itself from the real world. Some people say Keynes is the opposite of the Chicago School. I say Disneyland is the opposite of the Chicago School, not Keynes. But in my imagination, Keynes is somewhere inside the gated world, cavorting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Now Chicago is about as far away as you can get from Los Angeles in the States. I would laugh out loud if someone were to try to build a Disneyland in Chicago: it just wouldn’t work. Even compare their sports teams. In the 80s, the LA Lakers–the ‘Showtime’ Lakers–dominated basketball by fast breaking their way to effortless championships. They were even led by a guy called Magic who would dazzle opponents with impossible sleights of hand. In the 90s, the Chicago Bulls dominated basketball by grinding it out with the Bad Boys from the Detroit Pistons (remember Bill Laimbeer?). They were led by His Airness, Michael Jordan. Hierarchy, organization, and sacrifice: this is what gets things done in Chicagoland. Showtime was replaced by sacrifice (remember Jordan getting snubbed by teammates during the 1985 All Star game?). Dues had to be paid. The Windy City is a very different place than Disneyland: they represent competing worldviews. People who believe in an unlimited supply subscribe to the Mickey Mouse worldview. People who see many people competing for limited resources subscribe to the Chicago School.

But enough about Disneyland. Frank Knight’s most famous student was Milton Friedman. This post is the beginning of a series devoted to Friedman’s most influential work: Capitalism and Freedom. This first post covers the 2002 preface, the 1982 preface, and the original 1962 introduction.

Before beginning, here’s an interesting twist of fate. When applying to grad schools back in the spring of 2003, the University of Chicago was one of the places which rejected my application. The rejection letter was beautiful. There were many students competing for limited enrolments. I lost to a better student. I’m fine with that: it reflects the natural order of the world.

Friedman: Capitalism and Freedom Back Blurb

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of his immensely influential economic philosophy–one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. The result is an accessible text that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and shows every sign of becoming more influential as time goes on.

Friedman Author Blurb

Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and the Paul Snowden Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Chicago. In 1976 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics. He has written a number of books, including two with his wife, Rose D. Friedman–the bestselling Free to Choose and Two Lucky People: Memoirs, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

Friedman 2002 Preface

Forty years after Capitalism and Freedom came out, Friedman added a three page ‘2002 Preface’. He takes the government spending as a proportion of national income (GDP) as a barometer of freedom. His thesis is that the more government spends, the more it takes away people’s freedom (by spending, government makes choices for the people). In 1956, government spending was 26% of GDP (non-defence = 12%, defence = 14%). In 1982, government spending rose to 39% of GDP (non-defence = 31%, defence = 8%). In 2000, government spending dropped to 36% of GDP (non-defence = 30%, defence = 6%). This is all for the US, of course.

It would be interesting to see how much government spends today. According to the IMF’s website, in 2014, government spending (in the US) accounted for 40% of the GDP (non-defence = 35%, defence = 5%). Government spending in Canada in 2014 was not far off: 41% of GDP (non-defence 40%, defence = 1%).

The trend in the last 50 years has been for government spending to go up. The effect would have been even more pronounced had military budgets remained constant. As it is, military budgets have fallen in both Canada and the US from 14% to 5% (US) and from 8% to less than 1% (Canada).

As a proportion of GDP, the welfare state has grown in the last 50 years. In the US, from 1956 – 2014, it has almost tripled (excluding military, from 12% to 35%).

It should be interesting to see what happens in the US and Canada. The welfare state accounts for 39% (US) and 40% (Canada) of national income already. People want more. But what will happen to people’s freedoms when the welfare state keeps going up?

Friedman 1982 Preface

In 1982 Capitalism and Freedom had been out 20 years and Friedman takes a look back. He notes when the book first came out, nobody reviewed it at all. With some satisfaction, he goes on to say it’s sold 400,000 copies, getting recognition, and also influenced Alex P. Keaton from the TV show Family Ties. No, he actually did not say the last part. But he did say that he finds himself vindicated by problems in Russian and China. In the 80s it was becoming clearer that Russian and China were going into the gutter. Remember, in the 60s and the 70s, it was not so clear cut who would prevail: US or Russia, West Germany or East Germany, South Korea or North Korea, and so on.

The tide was changing: the Fabian socialism of Great Britain (which also exercised a hold on the American intelligentsia) was also on the way out. The 80s were the decade of free trade, laissez-faire economics, capitalism, and freedom. After 20 years of obscurity and ridicule, Friedman’s time had come: he had powerful champions in Reagan and Thatcher.

Friedman Original (1962) Preface

Some interesting notes about his influences. Friedrich Hayek and Frank Knight of course. Friedman also mentions he has drawn from some previously published material in various books and journals promoting ‘individuality’. Yes, of course, it had never really occurred to me, but capitalism and freedom must be the symptoms of an intense awareness of individuality, of being different than others, of having different end goals. It has as its antithesis the collective where everyone is working not for oneself, but for everyone else.

If Friedman’s ideas are to be attached, it must be here: his unrelenting pursuit of individuality at the cost of the collective. To pursue individuality to the extreme leads nowhere: no man is an island. It’s interesting to note that in the 60s and onwards, music shifted from communal, traditional, and folk forms to rock and pop, which are distillations of the individual. Individual genius (Hendrix) or individual suffering (‘King of Pain’ by the Police). Individualism is good, but taken too far becomes egocentricity. Take Sting singing: ‘There’s a flag-pole rag and the wind won’t stop: that’s my soul up there’. Cry me a river.

Friedman Original (1962) Introduction

Friedman defines his standpoint and objectives:

As it developed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the intellectual movement that went under the name of liberalism emphasized freedom as the ultimate goal and the individual as the ultimate entity in the society. It supported laissez faire at home as a means of reducing the role of the state in economic affairs and thereby enlarging the role of the individual; it supported free trade abroad as a means of linking the nations of the world together peacefully and democratically. In political matters, it supported the development of representative government and of parliamentary institutions, reduction in the arbitrary power of the state, and protection of the civil freedoms of individuals.

Flash forward to 2015. How does it look for Friedman? Is the individual still the ultimate entity? Yes, it appears so. As the middle class emerges in Asia and Africa, the individual will become even more pronounced. Is freedom still the ultimate goal? Sometimes. Sometimes when a democracy is installed the people vote democratically for a party that limits individual freedom (e.g. people vote for fundamentalist regimes). What happens there?–the people have used their freedom to take away their freedom. Has free trade been successful? Yes and no. It has made the world a more competitive. Competition has led to innovation which has kept costs low (look at agriculture and computers, for instance). But, free trade has created supranational bodies such as WTO and NAFTA which limit the freedom of the individual. Look at Greece. I don’t think they’re a sovereign nation anymore. Does the reduction in the arbitrary power of the state lead to increased protection of civil freedoms? The jury’s still out on this one. In the 1960s, populations were more homogenous. It’s more of a melting pot now with different classes of people wanting different things. Look at Vancouver. They call in Hongcouver. In Richmond, Asians now outnumber white Christians. There’s been a lot of non-European immigration in Canada since the 60s. The state seems to be assuming greater powers now in order to protect civil freedoms. There’s a election coming up in Canada in the next few days. Hot topics include whether or not federal employees should be allowed to wear a niquab and whether citizenship can be revoked for terror suspects. On a municipal level, the big question in Vancouver and Richmond is whether Asian businesses with Asian signage are legally obliged to post in English as well. The very definition of civil freedom is changing.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and it’s thanks to the Chicago School that the inspiration came to Do Melpomene’s Work.

Style: Towards Clarity and Grace – Williams

15 years. That’s how long it’s taken to read Style: Towards Clarity and Grace by Williams and Colomb. Professor LB recommended it back in 2000. I picked up a copy at the University of Victoria bookstore (the sticker is still on the back). I read a few chapters. Then it went onto a sunny spot on the bookshelf. You can tell because the parts of the cover that were exposed have been bleached white by the sun. The cover was originally an attractive bright yellow colour.

Williams ‘Style’ Cover Illustration

Style Back Blurb

This acclaimed book is a master teacher’s tested program for turning clumsy prose into clear, powerful, effective writing. A logical, expert, easy-to-use plan for achieving excellence in expression, Style offers neither simplistic rules nor endless lists of dos and don’ts. Rather, Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb explain how to be concise, how to be focused, how to be organized.

Filled with realistic examples of good, bad, and better writing, and step-by-step strategies for crafting a sentence or organizing a paragraphs, Style does much more than teach mechanics: it helps anyone who must write clearly and persuasively transform even the roughest of drafts into a polished work of clarity, coherence, impact, and personality

Style Author Blurb

Joseph M. Williams and Gregory C. Colomb are sought-after communications consultants. Williams is Professor Emeritus in the University of Chicago’s Department of English Language and Literature and author of Origins of the English Language. Colomb is professor of English language and literature at the University of Virginia.

I never knew: Williams is Professor Emeritus with a capital ‘P’ whereas Colomb is only a small ‘p’ professor! That could be because ‘Professor Emeritus’ is a title whereas ‘professor’ is the name of an occupation like ‘plumber’. But poor Colomb: not only is he a small ‘p’ professor, he teaches English language and literature with small a small ‘l’ at Virginia whereas Williams is part of Chicago’s Department of English Language and Literature with a big ‘L’! Colomb seems to get short shrift, no? And besides co-authoring two chapters in Style, has Colomb published anything? He certainly doesn’t seem to have written an Origins of the English Language like how Williams has done!

Why It Took Fifteen Years to Read Style

Unlike Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (which is short) or Stephen King’s On Writing (which is fun to read), William’s Style is neither short (208 pages) nor fun to read. Will it make writers write better? Perhaps some. Will it make writers better readers. Yes. The numerous examples give a x-ray view into how other writers write well or poorly. The problem is that it’s hard to evaluate your own writing with the same set of eyes you’d evaluate others’ writings. Perhaps the reason why it’s taken me so long to read Style is because while it it undoubtedly helpful, it makes writing less enjoyable for me.

Part of the problem is that Style presupposes that the writer is already at quite an advanced level. For writers not already there, it’s a headache to take in all the tips. Mind you, they’re good tips. For example, avoid nominalizations (nouns derived from verbs):

The police conducted an inquiry into the matter.

Just use the verb by itself:

The police investigated the matter.

But nominalization is good for effect at the end of a passage:

…until in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old (Churchill).

Williams’ Style reminds me of economics articles on Bloomberg or Marketwatch. Do you ever read the business section and notice how the articles are laid out? Well, it goes something like this. Let’s say they’re talking about interest rates (but it could be anything: employment numbers, GDP growth, bond yields, etc.,). The article will start off saying they’ll raise/lower interest rates. Then it will quote two specialists who will give their rationale. As they explain their thinking, then they will say their projection is based on x, y, and z. Then they have the hedge or the ‘get out’ clause: if x, y, and z are different than what the consensus is, then things will turn out opposite to their projection. To me, what they’re actually saying is that they have no idea of what’s going to happen. If they’re right, then they’re clever. If they’re wrong, well, they weren’t really wrong; it was just that variables x, y, and z did not play nice.

Well, Style is sort of like that. Williams will point out certain rules. He shows why his rules work with a bunch of examples. Then he takes a really famous and beautiful passage (a so-called purple passage) and rewrites it according to his rules. Invariably, his rules damage the beauty of the purple passage, making it seem pedestrian. So it’s like he tells you how he thinks you ought to write, but cautions you against writing like that. Sort of like the self-defeating economics articles in Bloomberg and Marketwatch.

But there is a certain honesty to that approach: rules are made to be broken. What I find is that after reading Style, I focus very carefully on how the words and sentences and paragraphs are put together. Did I use nominalizations? Did I put the new information towards the end? Did I get to the point quickly enough? How many subjects are there in the paragraph–is it too many? But to think about all this stuff…is hard. But perhaps that’s what a good style guide should do: push the writer to think more. The jury’s still out on this one.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I’m finding that to do Melpomene’s work with clarity and grace is easier said than done.

WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide – Hussey

How easy is it to set up a WordPress blog? With the right guidebook, it’s as easy as pie. My computer skills are limited: familiar with Microsoft Office, can back things up myself, not too familiar with Facebook and LinkedIn, no coding experience. But, with the right guidebook, I was able to set up Doing Melpomene’s Work. The guidebook in question was: WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide by Tris Hussey. Published by Que in 2014. 410 pages. Lots of full colour screenshots. I read it in a week. After reading it, I was able to create the blog in an evening. You can do it too. BTW, as I write this in September 2015, the book is still very much up to date.

Hussey, WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide

WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide Back Blurb

More than 70 million websites and blogs run on WordPress: it’s the world’s #1 web development tool. Now, you can make the most of WordPress without becoming a technical expert. WordPress Absolute Beginner’s Guide is the fastest way to get comfortable and productive with WordPress and its most powerful tools. Whether you’re new to WordPress or not, this practical, approachable book will show you how to do exactly what you want, one incredibly clear and easy step at a time – all explained with full-color illustrations.

Leading WordPress instructor Tris Hussey provides step-by-step instructions for every task requiring more than one step. Screenshots and illustrations guide you through complex processes, so you’ll never get lost or confused. You’ll find friendly, patient, crystal-clear coverage that always respects your intelligence, and never patronizes you. Hussey covers all this, and much more:

Understanding the mechanics of a WordPress website

Installing WordPress yourself, along with the themes and plug-ins you want

Using WordPress.com if you don’t want to run WordPress on your own equipment

Setting up your site right the first time, to avoid problems later

Tweaking themes to make your site look perfect

Integrating images and media

Making your site mobile-ready

Using basic search engine optimization techniques to get your site discovered

Troubleshooting, maintaining, and performance-tuning your site

WordPress: Absolute Beginner’s Guide Author Bio

Tris Hussey was Canada’s first professional blogger, and has since become a freelance writer, bestselling author, technologist, and lecturer. His bestselling books on social media and technology include Create Your Own Blog, Using WordPress, and Sams Teach Yourself Fourquare in 10 Minutes. Hussey has taught social media, WordPress, and podcasting at University of British Columbia and produced the WordPress Essentials video collection.

Hmm, I wonder if it should read ‘Tris Hussey is Canada’s first professional blogger’?–he seems like a young guy!

The Book

I had originally planned to review a newer book that just became available at the library: WordPress: The Fast and Easy Way to Learn 3rd ed. by George Plumley. It’s part of the ‘Teach Yourself Visually’ series. The Plumley book is shorter (310 pages) and newer (2015). If you like screenshots on every page, go for the Plumley book. If you like a more detailed explanation, Hussey is the better option: there’s more text. If I were to start all over again, I’d go for the Hussey volume. The Plumley edition is even more basic than the Absolute Beginner’s Guide.

WordPress is pretty simple to use. The jargon is complicated though. WordPress today is like what computers were before Apple made everything simple: it’s not complicated but appears complicated if you’re not familiar with it. Hussey cuts through all the jargon. For me, that was a big help. For example, there’s wordpress.com blogs and wordpress.org blogs. And then, of the .org blogs, you can do install your own web server or you can find a host that offers an easy or one-click installation.

There’s chapters in Hussey’s book on both wordpress.com and wordpress.org but the book is more geared towards the latter. I imagine that’s what most people will be interested in. BTW Doing Melpomene’s Work is a wordpress.org blog hosted by GoDaddy. One-click installation. It’s been running just over a year without any major problems. The only problem was one time I changed pages while one of the plugins was still updating. GoDaddy helped me resolve the problem in about 10 minutes. Not bad.

In addition to chapters on setting up and installing, Hussey also guides you through the process of selecting the plugins you really need. Plugins are little widgets and tools that make your site more user friendly: social media buttons, comment boxes, and things like that. And then there are chapters on attaching media into your blog: video, photo, and sound files.

Usually I like the ‘Missing Manual’ series. But, after looking through the 10 or 15 WordPress beginner books they had at the Vancouver Chapters, I went with Hussey. It had the right blend of screenshots and text. Explanations were easy to follow. The writing was interesting (he relates how things have changed since he started blogging in 2004). If you’re thinking of starting a blog, this is a good place to start doing research.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and thanks to Tris Hussey’s help, I’m Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

Now that the rewriting and editing process has started, it was high time for new dictionary. The dictionary that came with the laptop (MacBook Pro running OS 10.10.5) is good, but I wanted another one for a second opinion. I also wanted a reference dictionary to keep spellings and hyphenations consistent. Hyphenation is rapidly evolving: it’s no longer ice-cream but ice cream. And not bumble-bee but bumblebee. Hyphenation is like a double-breasted suit: out of fashion. As the stock dictionary is The New Oxford American Dictionary and I use British spellings, I was also looking for a specifically British dictionary. I thought about getting a physical dictionary, but if a suitable app could be found, that would be preferable. In the 90s and even 2000s the reference dictionaries were always physical. I was hoping that in the 2010s that has changed. It has: the search led to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary.

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary

The app was downloaded from the Apple app store for $28.99 CAD. This is the sixth edition, version 2.4, Oxford copyright 2007, updated February 28, 2015. It must be licensed out to WordWebSoftware, who put it together and copyrighted the software part of it in 2011. I wonder why Oxford couldn’t do it in house?

Here’s the online blurb from the Apple App Store:

Description

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains an incredible one-third of the coverage of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary and includes all words in current English from 1700 to the present day, plus the vocabulary of Shakespeare, the Bible and other major works in English from before 1700.

With new coverage of global English, as well as slang, dialect, technical, historical, and literary terms, and rare and obsolete words, the Sixth Edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary contains more than 600,000 words, phrases, and definitions, with coverage of language from the entire English-speaking world, from North America and the UK to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, and the Caribbean. It has been fully updated with 2,500 new words and meanings based on ongoing research at Oxford Dictionaries and the Oxford English Corpus.

This is a mobile dictionary with content from Oxford University Press and advanced search and language tools that have become the staple of quality language apps from MobiSystems.

SEARCH TOOLS – effortlessly find words using a clear, functional, and easy-to-use interface. The integrated search tools activate automatically the moment you start typing:
* Search autocomplete helps find words quickly by displaying predictions as you type
* Keyword lookup allows you to search within compound words and phrases
* An automatic ‘Fuzzy filter’ to correct word spelling, as well as ‘Wild card’ (‘*’ or ‘?’) to replace a letter or entire parts of a word
* Camera search looks up words in the camera viewfinder and displays results

LEARNING TOOLS – engaging features that help you further enhance your vocabulary:
* ‘Favorites’ feature to create custom folders with lists of words from the extensive library
* ‘Recent’ list to help you easily review looked-up words
* ‘Word of the day’ section to help expand your vocabulary every day

Sounds good! Now, you may be asking: why not just get the unabridged Oxford English Dictionary (OED)? Well, amazon.ca is selling the 20 volume set for $1447.04. That’s the 1989 edition. It must weigh a ton. And to get the latest (i.e. what’s happened between 1989 and 2015), you have to get all the supplemental volumes. No thanks. But doesn’t the OED come in an app? Not that I can find. There’s a cd-rom version for $295 USD (about $375 CAD). Most of the links to it from Oxford’s own site are broken. The cd-rom version apparently is designed for Macs with a PowerPC processor. Those are the Macs from 10+ years ago! Not about to drop $375 for a dictionary that probably won’t work and doesn’t appear to be supported. It surprises me that Oxford would even continue to sell such stone age software.

That’s sort of disappointing the unabridged OED isn’t available for download. I was prepared to pay up to $200 for it. You can subscribe to the online version for $295 USD a year. This seems like a ripoff. And you have to be online to use it, which is a turn off. At any rate, the Greater Victoria Public Library subscribes to it and you can access it FOR FREE by logging in with your library card. But you still have to be online and it would be a pain to login each time you wanted to look up a word. Imagine! Sheesh!

So, because the unabridged is too hard to access, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the next best thing. At 600,000 words, the word-count is almost double the 350,000 words in the New Oxford American Dictionary, the dictionary which comes stock with my computer.

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Versus Stock Dictionary

Let’s go head to head. Here’s works I’ve actually been using whilst writing Paying Melpomene’s Price.

Here’s aporia in the stock dictionary:

aporia |əˈpôrēə| noun an irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, argument, or theory: the celebrated aporia whereby a Cretan declares all Cretans to be liars.• Rhetoric the expression of doubt.ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: via late Latin from Greek, from aporos ‘impassable,’ from a- ‘without’ + poros ‘passage.’

And here’s the same word in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

aporia əˈpɔ:rɪə , əˈpɒrɪə noun. m16.

1Rhetoric. The expression of doubt. m16.

2 A doubtful matter, a perplexing difficulty. l19.

ORIGIN: Late Latin from Greek, from aporos impassable, from a- ¹⁰ + poros: see aporetic , -ia ¹.

I almost find the stock dictionary better! One nice thing about the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary are the pronunciations: press on a button and it says the word out loud.

The next word is Capitoline. That word is not in the stock dictionary. But here’s the entry from the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:

Capitoline kəˈpɪtəlʌɪn adjective designating or pertaining to the hill at Rome on which the Capitol stood ; of or pertaining to the Capitol: e17.

Let’s see how they deal with the proper name Melpomene. The stock dictionary has:

Melpomene |melˈpämənē| Greek & Roman Mythologythe Muse of tragedy.ORIGIN Greek, literally ‘singer.’

The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t have an entry for Melpomene, only ‘melpomenish’:

melpomenish mɛlˈpɒmɪnɪʃ adjective. literary. rare. e19.

Tragic.

ORIGIN: from Greek Melpomenē (lit. ‘singer’) the Muse of tragedy + -ish ¹.

Shouldn’t it have Melpomene if the melpomenish entry refers back to the name?

Surprising: the stock dictionary outperforms and the Shorter Oxford in some ways underperforms expectation. It IS, however, nice to have both dictionaries. I’d make the same purchase again.

To sum up: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a good buy at $28.99. The sound files are a big plus for pronunciations. 600,000 words is plenty. Besides proper names, haven’t run across any words it doesn’t have. The interface does the trick. If you’re looking for an authoritative dictionary with British spellings, this is your ticket until the unabridged OED becomes available for download.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong and I don’t like to be a spelling slob whilst Doing Melpomene’s Work.

On Writing – Stephen King

Sometimes such a tremendous book comes along you have to lay aside everything else you’re reading. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen Edwin King is one of those books. The last one that had that power was Consilience by Wilson.

King, On Writing Cover Illustration

Hmmm, what’s in the cellar?

Assiduous readers will know that I’ve been reading style guides and ‘how-to’ books on writing lately. Big King fan JC in the 90s had persuaded me to try reading ‘The Long Walk’, a short story by King. I liked it a lot more than I thought I would. JC also told me that King had written a book on writing horror. Now that is in line with what I like. It’s always been in the back of my mind to read it. It would be like learning about comedy from Seinfeld: learning from the master.

So I picked up On Writing at the library. But looking at the publication date (2000), this wasn’t the right book! It turns out Danse Macabre is the book that JC had mentioned. But no matter. On Writing fits the bill of what I’m looking for: some tips on how to write for readers.

King, On Writing Back Blurb

‘If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write’.

In 1999, Stephen King began to write about his craft–and his life. By midyear, a widely reported accident jeopardized the survival of both. And in his months of recovery, the link between writing and living became more crucial than ever.

Rarely has a book on writing been so clear, so useful, and so revealing. On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King’s childhood and his uncannily early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the stuffing years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, will afford readers a fresh and often very funny perspective on the formation of a writer. King next turns to the basic tools of his trade–how to sharpen and multiply them through use, and how the writer must always have them close at hand. He takes the reader through crucial aspects of the writer’s art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection.

Serialized in the New Yorker to vivid acclaim, On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how King’s overwhelming need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brough him back to his life.

Brilliantly structure, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower–and entertain–everyone who reads it.

Wow, the back blurb wasn’t written by King: he hates adverbs. Most of the time.

The Book

The book is part autobiography, part style guide, part analysis of his own novels, and part about living. The best way to put it is that it’s a book on the writing lifestyle: writing and life are intertwined. To prove the point, King even has tips on where to place furniture:

It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you site down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.

Oops, my writing table is smack dab in the middle of the living room…the sign of an apprentice writer!

It’s refreshing to read King after reading the other style guides. King doesn’t like pretentious writing books either. The only one that passes his ‘bullshit rule’ is The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. King advocates simple writing. I love one of his examples:

He came to the river. The river was there.

That’s no less a writer than Hemingway.

Now, every style guide advocates simple writing. But King provides good and bad examples from his works and others. They are entertaining examples. That’s what makes this book good: you want to read it.

But there are places where he taught me something new. For example, he talks about paragraphs, and how to make paragraphs look nice and inviting to readers. The first thing readers do, even before they start reading, is they scan the page: how to the paragraphs look? Easy? Or do they look big and daunting? I had never thought of that. Thanks, King! I will make paragraphs shorter and more evenly sized! Why didn’t I think of that? Or someone else, for that matter?

King advocates honesty. Write about things you know about. That’s what he does. His characters are the types of people he runs across. Even when he was run down, as he was going in and out of consciousness, it struck him that the careless driver was someone straight out of his novels. Even the advice he gives writers is deadly honest: if you can’t write, his book isn’t going to help you. Nothing will. The most his book can do is make a competent writer a good writer. Going from bad to good is out of the question. Going from good to great is also out of the question. That’s what genes are for.

Although King talks about fiction writing, the wisdom is transferable to any sort of writing. Writing to King is just like a toolbox. There may be special tools for fiction writing, but in the fiction toolbox are all the sorts of tools you’d make everything else with too. Yes, he uses the toolbox analogy. His writing toolbox is actually modelled after his uncle’s toolbox. I like this book. Things are real. You can touch them. It’s not one of those writing books filled with linguistic theory. When I read those books I feel like they are bashing me over the head with a hammer.

So why write?

Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

Damn, I like that! Speaking of getting happy, I am happy to have read this fine book! And now I think I will have to read The Stand somewhere down the line…in another twenty years maybe…

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m getting happy by Doing Melpomene’s Work.

Hard to Love – Nowinski

A good friend who has been fighting the good fight recommended Joseph Nowinski’s book on MBPD: Hard to Love: Understanding and Overcoming Male Borderline Personality Disorder. It was published by Central Recovery Press in 2014. The book is written for two audiences: friends and family seeking to understand what it is to suffer MBPD and those with MBPD seeking to overcome it. Here’s the cover illustration:

Cover Illustration, Hard to Love by Nowinski

Hmmm, is that a picture of some brain process? I guess when you have a captive audience, cover illustration is not that important: people will read the book no matter what’s on the cover.

And the back blurb:

Renowned clinical psychologist Joseph Nowinski defines Male Borderline Personality Disorder, describes symptoms, and offers solutions that work. Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) occurs commonly in both men and women, but is frequently misdiagnosed in men, resulting in either no treatment (or worse, jail time) or the wrong treatment. Dr. Nowinski lays out the origins of BPD in men and helps a man determine if BPD describes the problems in living he’s experienced, and if so, how to fix them. This book provides easy-to-implement solutions for BPD men and those who love them.

The following indicators are tell-tale signs of BPD: difficulty making relationships work, tendency to see things in black and white terms, starved for attention, emotionally instability, and drug/alcohol abuse. For some reason, the tell-tale signs of BPD reminded me of rock stars. According to Nowinski, BPD is the result of abandonment as a child. The way to overcome it is through building up psychological resilience: thinking thoughts along the lines of ‘my marriage is secure and my wife loves me’ instead of ‘I am not lovable or good enough for my wife’.

One of the reasons Nowinski wrote the book is to establish MBPD as a distinct disorder. Nowinski feels too often MBPD is misdiagnosed as depression or anxiety in men. This leads to the wrong treatment and the wrong medicines being prescribed. This was the hard part for me to understand: if the symptoms of BPD are difficulties staying in a relationship, a tendency to see things in black and white, being starved for attention, emotional instability, and drug/alcohol abuse, then how is it functionally different than depression? Here’s an easier example. Let’s say there are suitcases and backpacks. I say that suitcases are black, rectangular, have handles, and transport things. Then I say that backpacks are black, rectangular, have handles, and transport things. But then I say it’s critical not to confuse suitcases with backpacks. Would that be confusing?

Obviously backpacks aren’t suitcases. But to differentiate the two, distinctions must be made between the two: you can say, for example, that suitcases are hard and backpacks soft. I don’t feel that Nowinksi does this. He says MBPD is not depression but it’s not clear to me why they’re different. What the book needs is a chapter on the biological basis of MBPD. If not a chapter, at least a few paragraphs.

I understand the book is an introduction to MBPD. But even the short online blurb the National Institute of Mental Health reveals that there is a biological basis to MBPD:

Recent neuroimaging studies show differences in brain structure and function between people with borderline personality disorder and people who do not have this illness. Some research suggests that brain areas involved in emotional responses become overactive in people with borderline personality disorder when they perform tasks that they perceive as negative. People with the disorder also show less activity in areas of the brain that help control emotions and aggressive impulses and allow people to understand the context of a situation. These findings may help explain the unstable and sometimes explosive moods characteristic of borderline personality disorder.

Another study showed that, when looking at emotionally negative pictures, people with borderline personality disorder used different areas of the brain than people without the disorder. Those with the illness tended to use brain areas related to reflexive actions and alertness, which may explain the tendency to act impulsively on emotional cues.

These findings could inform efforts to develop more specific tests to diagnose borderline personality disorder.

Nowinski argues that MBPD goes back to childhood abandonment. But then the National Institute of Mental Health suggests that the disorder is genetic and inherited:

Studies on twins with borderline personality disorder suggest that the illness is strongly inherited. Another study shows that a person can inherit his or her temperament and specific personality traits, particularly impulsiveness and aggression. Scientists are studying genes that help regulate emotions and impulse control for possible links to the disorder.

So which is it–does it have a biological basis or is it from abandonment? If it has a biological basis, are drugs effective? If Nowinski argues that MBPD has environmental roots (this is my impression), he should at least mention the other viewpoints. After all, I think it must be safe for me to assume that Hard to Love and the National Institute of Mental Health are talking about the same disorder?

What Nowinski is good at is telling stories of the difficulties people with MBPD go through in their day to day lives. People with MBPD find it difficult in relationships to give the other person the benefit of the doubt: they automatically assume the worse about themselves and others. The book opened my eyes to how it would be difficult to live like this. So, to my friend and all the others out there suffering from MBPD, keep fighting the good fight!

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I’m Doing Melpomene’s Work.

The Elements of Style – Strunk & White

Brief digression: a BIG thank you to everyone who responded to Monday’s post! Beta readers are going to make Paying Melpomene’s Price more accessible, clearer, and more fun to read. To those of you on the fence: join in the fun! There’s no commitment: do as little or as much as you please! I’m looking for feedback, comments, suggestions… It’s good to be writing for an audience again; for too long I’ve been writing for myself. Even knowing that the text will be beta read forces me to think more in terms of the reader. That is a good thing. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White is the shortest and most frequently recommended of all styleguides. The body of the text weighs in at 85 pages. With the forward, introduction, glossary, afterword, and index, it is still a lean 123 pages. I have been meaning to read it for a long time. They say classics are books that everyone wishes they have read but no one wants to read. Well, The Elements of Style is definitely a classic. I am glad to have finally read it. I should have done so earlier. Better late than never.

Why would such a short book require two authors? It turns out that Strunk (1869-1946) was an English professor at Cornell. He wrote The Elements of Style to distribute to students. White was one of Strunk’s students in 1919. In 1956, seeing a need for such a book, White published it. He expanded Strunk’s original 43 pages and added an introduction and a concluding chapter (‘An Approach to Style’). That is the reason the book has two authors.

Back Blurb

Making ‘every word tell’ is what The Elements of Style is all about. This famous manual, now in a fourth edition, has conveyed the principles of plain English style to millions of readers. It is probably the only style manual ever to appear on the best seller lists.

Whether you write letters, term papers, or novels, the ‘little book’, as it has come to be called, can help you communicate more effectively. It will show you how to cut deadwood out of your sentences; enliven your prose with the active voice; put statements in a positive form; approach style by way of plainness, simplicity, orderliness, sincerity.

The original ‘little’ book was written by William Strunk, Jr., late professor of English at Cornell, for use by his students. Years later, one of the most illustrious of those students, E.B. White, prepared an edition of the book for the general public, revising the original and contributing a final chapter of his own that sought to lead the reader beyond mere correctness toward distinction in English style.

This Fourth Edition includes a new glossary of grammatical terms. In addition, the book has been revised to update many of the references in examples and to reflect contemporary usage. These changes help make the ‘little’ book even more accessible to new generations of readers and writers.

The Eureka Moment

Believe it or not, it wasn’t what Strunk had to say but what White had to say in the final chapter that was the eureka moment. What Strunk lays out in the main body of the text is good. For example, one thing that’s always been on my mind is the difference between that and which. Here is how Strunk clarifies the difference between the two:

That is the the defining, or restrictive, pronoun, which the non defining, or nonrestrictive.

The lawn mower that is broken is in the garage. (Tells which one)

The lawn mower, which is broken, is in the garage. (Adds a fact about the only mower in question.)

The use of which for that is common in written and spoken language (‘Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass’.) Occasionally which seems preferable to that, as in the sentence from the Bible. But it would be a convenience to all if these two pronouns were used with precision. Careful writers, watchful for small conveniences, go which-hunting, remove the defining whiches, and by so doing improve their work.

That is pretty good, but not the eureka moment. The eureka moment is in White’s final chapter on style:

With some writers, style not only reveals the spirit of the man but reveals his identity, as surely as would his fingerprints. Here, following, are two brief passages from the works of two American novelists. The subject in each case is languor. In both, the words used are ordinary, and there is nothing eccentric about the construction.

He did not still fell weak, he was merely luxuriating in that supremely gutful lassitude of convalescence in which time, hurry, doing, did not exist, the accumulating seconds and minutes and hours to which in its well state the body is slave both waking and sleeping, now reversed and time now the lip-server and mendicant to the body’s pleasure instead of the body thrall to time’s headlong course

Manuel drank his brandy. He felt sleepy himself. It was too hot to go out into the town. Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito. He would go to sleep while he waited.

Anyone acquainted with Faulkner and Hemingway will have recognized them in these passages and perceived which is which. How different are their languors!

Or take two American poets, stopping at evening. One stops by woods, the other by laughing flesh.

My little horse must think it queer

To stop without a farmhouse near

Between woods and frozen lake

The darkest evening of the year.

…

I have perceived that to be with those I like is enough,

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing,

laughing flesh is enough…

Because of the characteristic styles, there is little question about identity here, and if the situations were revered, with Whitman stopping by woods and Frost by laughing flesh (not one of his regularly scheduled stops), the reader would know who was who.

It dawned on me: no one would mistake Faulkner for Hemingway or Frost for Whitman. In the above passages, there is nothing bombastic in the style: in Hemingway’s case it is even sort of mundane (e.g. ‘Besides there was nothing to do. He wanted to see Zurito’). But yet they are all great writers. The eureka moment for me was that style does not come from trying to do something fancy. Style comes from within. It is in every word we write.

Style is sort of like clothing. One can wear a suit jacket or a t-shirt. One can wear a dress or a blouse. There is style in both. Those with the best style don’t do anything pretentious with clothing. They wear clothing that fits the body. Not too tight, not too loose. Colour is nice. But not too bright and not too subdued. They choose colours to fit the occasion. There are winter colours and summer colours. There is no use in making clothing bombastic, loud, or pretentious: that is not style. Style comes from within. It is probably the way we carry ourselves in the clothing. Words are sort of like that: they are the things we dress up our thoughts with.

What’s the takeaway from all this? First, read The Elements of Style. It is a nice short book. The way books ought to be. Second. When writing, don’t worry about style. It’s everywhere. It’s part of you. It is you. You don’t have to think about style to write with style. But do think about finding the words that fit just as you would find clothes that fit. And by fit I mean both the body and the occasion. Using a foreign word, for example, is like wearing the latest Spanish cut. And so on.

Until next time, I’m Edwin Wong, and I am Doing Melpomene’s Work in style.

The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told – Lyons

As assiduous readers will recall, the risk theatre (otherwise known as my interpretation of tragedy) sees tragic heroes as gamblers of sorts. They play for higher and higher stakes and, in the mania of white heat, finally encounter the unexpected. The unexpected does bad things to them. Which is sort of surprising, since can’t the unexpected also be good? Well in tragedy, the heroes never run across fat tails on the right of the bell curve (unexpectedly fortuitous events such as winning the lottery); they always run across the fat tail on the left of the bell curve (some disastrous event). Here’s an explanation of fat tailed risk from the New York Times. So, that’s the reason why I’m interested in gambling.

But unfortunately I don’t have one single gambling bone in my body! To find out more about this world, I bought some stock in the Great Canadian Casino company (ticker GC.to). And I also went down to their View Royal location to observe other gamblers in action. They also kindly gave me a used deck of cards for the Dead Man’s Hand photo shoot (did you know each deck of cards is only used once?). But that wasn’t enough. I wanted to read about gambling. That’s when I came across this book of 31 gambling short stories (some are excerpts from novels) put together by Paul Lyons.

Lyons, The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told

Just the cover illustration tells an interesting story! Did the fellow on the left lose and the one on the right win? But what about the guy in the middle?-he seems impassive to it all.

Back Blurb:

Whether your vice be a tame game of bingo or a visit to the local horse track, a friendly game of poker with friends or a tense match of billiards in a smoky parlor, chances are that you, at one time or another, have gambled on something. And nowhere is man”s fascination with gambling more clearly evident than in the massive profits amassed each year by illegal bookmakers and the lavish casinos in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and abroad.

In The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told, editor Paul Lyons has compiled thirty-one of the finest writings, both fact and realistic fiction, ever penned about our collective gambling vice, which has been a part of our history and culture since Biblical times.

With contributions from such renowned writers as Fyodor Dostoevsky, David Mamet, and Charles Bukowski, as well as some rare, lesser-known gems of the genre from Dan McGoorty, Michael Konik, and Jane Smiley, The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told is an entertaining and enlightening collection sure to appeal to anyone who has ever picked up a cue, cards, dice, or racing form, and to anyone out there looking to feel a little bit of “juice.”

Paul Lyons, the editor of The Quotable Gambler, was raised in New York City, and received his early gambling training at Guys and Dolls Billiards-recalled in his novel Table Legs. He received a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now teaches English at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Lyons, The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told, Contents 1

Lyons, The Greatest Gambling Stories Ever Told, Contents 2

As editor, Lyons is our guide throughout the book. He writes the standard introduction. But he’s at his best in the short little introductions preceding each of the 31 stories: he points out why the selection is special. For example, Lyons directs the reader to appreciate how Zweig captures the interior, physiological sensation of gambling through his hero: a lady who is an astute observer of hands. That’s something I would have missed, but it made that selection all the more enriching.

The other thing awesome about this book is that I finally get to meet all these characters of lore: fast Eddie, Minnesota Fats, the Cincinnati Kid, and so on. And believe it or not, I have never read Balzac and D.H. Lawrence! Looking forward to that. And why is it that some people are always referred to by first initials and last name? Like T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence. You wouldn’t really say ‘Eliot’ or ‘Lawrence’ but T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence. I wonder.

And yes, I cheated! I am not through the collection, just through the first couple of stories! Oh my…