Let me start by stating that I am a firm believer in rhetoric.
And with the exception of one very quirky, very talented newspaper-copy-editor-turned-professor I had the pleasure of knowing in college, I can’t think of a single person I’ve ever met who loves grammar more than I do.
If vocabulary is the foundation of language, then grammar is the infrastructure. It is fundamentally essential for communication. Even Stephen King, an inarguably masterful and prolific writer, addresses the importance of having a structure for language in his book, “On Writing.”
“Communication composed of parts of speech must be organized by rules of grammar upon which we agree. When these rules break down, confusion and misunderstanding result. Bad grammar produces bad sentences.”
(The last line always gets me. Bad sentences are a writer’s greatest fear. And if they aren’t, they should be.)
The great ones, McCann adds, break the rules on purpose.
Clear communication on a personal, national and cultural level requires that we collectively agree on a common set of rules about how words should be used. One can make an entire argument that language, itself, has no rules because it constantly evolves, but that’s a different topic for a different blog on a different day.
Back to grammar.
The funny thing about literature is that some of our most cherished authors chose to blatantly ignore rules that the rest of us follow with such ardent fervor that it occasionally borders on obsession. Consider these …
Run-on sentences: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…” — Charles Dickens.
Sentence fragments: “Pale druggists in remote towns of the Epworth League and flannel nightgown belts, endlessly wrapping up bottles of Peruna…. Women hidden away in the damp kitchens of unpainted houses along the railroad tracks, frying touch beefsteaks…. Ticket-sellers in the subway, breathing sweat in its gaseous form…. Farmers plowing sterile fields behind sad meditative horses, both suffering from the bites of insects….” — H. L. Mencken
Double negative: “She owned that, considering everything, she was not absolutely without inclination for the party.” — Jane Austen
Even the paragon of American English style guides, “The Elements of Style,” written a century ago by William Strunk (then enlarged and revised in the late ’50s by E.B. White), acknowledges the flexibility of language in the book’s introduction:
“It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric.”
But Strunk goes on to say that unless a writer is certain of doing well, it’s best to simply follow the rules. King addresses this poignant observation in his book.
“If you don’t have a rudimentary grasp of how the parts of speech translate into coherent sentences, how can you be certain you are doing well? How will you know if you’re doing ill, for that matter?”
So, you need to know the rules in order to break them; a certain level of mastery is required to upend the system.
Colum McCann echoes this sentiment in “Letters to a Young Writer.”
“To hell with grammar, but only if you know the grammar first. To hell with formality, but only if you have learned what it means to be formal. To hell with plot, but you better at some stage make something happen. To hell with structure, but only if you have thought it through so thoroughly that you can safely walk through your work with your eyes closed.”
The great ones, McCann adds, break the rules on purpose.
This is not an idea confined to realm of literature. In an interview on R.E.M.’s iTunes Originals album, lead singer Michael Stipe shares a lesson from one of his favorite painters, Paul Klee.
“One of his primary teachings was this idea of a circle … At the very bottom of the circle was a place of naiveté and innocence, where you don’t know anything about what is is you’re embarking on; the particular craft or skill you’re moving toward,” Stipe explains. “[Klee] taught that through education, you could move up the left side of the circle until you reach the top. And that represented a complete education, where you knew everything there was to know about your particular field. You could then become a craftsperson.”“The lesson got really interesting when you continued down the right side of the circle: He said that to be a craftsperson is fine, but to become an artist, you have to start to forget everything you know. And it’s when you come back to the bottom of the circle, to a place of naiveté and innocence [that] you’ve achieved artistry.”
Stipe feels this way about his own work. In the decades of songwriting with R.E.M., he also came back to that place of naiveté, adding that his best material comes when he turns his thinking brain off and allow a more unconscious voice to take over and do all the work.
And if you’re still not convinced of this idea, look to the stars. Even the universe breaks rules from time to time.
Stipe was only able to achieve this level of intuition after he had a firm knowledge and command of his craft. He relied on the rules the most before relying on them the least.
And if you’re still not convinced of this idea, look to the stars. Even the universe breaks rules from time to time.
Albert Einstein first determined that the laws of physics appear the same to all observers (special relativity) and that space and time are interwoven (space-time continuum) in the early twentieth century. When performing calculations to develop his theory of general relativity, he discovered that massive objects cause a distortion in space-time. This is felt as gravity. General relativity therefore elegantly explains how celestial bodies of the macrocosm interact, including quirks like the expanding universe and the potential for time travel.
Where general mechanics are continuous and deterministic, quantum mechanics are probabilistic.
Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, gives us a framework for the microcosm. This realm of science accounts for light and matter at the atomic and subatomic level, in addition to describing the properties of electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks and even gluons. It gives us electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, and even a fundamental understanding of chemistry.
They’re both beautiful scientific concepts that help us better understand the inner workings of the universe we call home.
Now, here’s the kicker: Quantum mechanics breaks the laws of general relativity.
It’s true. And these fundamental theories don’t just disagree. As seasoned science journalist Corey S. Powell describes it, quantum mechanics allows connections forbidden by classical physics.
“Relativity and quantum mechanics are fundamentally different theories that have different formulations. It is not just a matter of scientific terminology; it is a clash of genuinely incompatible descriptions of reality,” he explains.
General relativity maintains that objects exist in a specific place at a specific time. Quantum mechanics does not. Where general mechanics are continuous and deterministic, quantum mechanics are probabilistic: Every cause in general relativity matches up to a very particular effect; events in quantum mechanics produced by subatomic particles happen in leaps and bounds (quantum leaps, to be exact) without any definite outcome.
Is it possible to have two irreconcilable theories of physics be true at the same time? Maybe.
According to Powell, “Relativity gives nonsensical answers when you try to scale it down to quantum size, eventually descending to infinite values in its description of gravity. Likewise, quantum mechanics runs into serious trouble when you blow it up to cosmic dimensions.”
Quantum mechanics only works at the microscopic level, and general relativity functions exclusively outside of it. Even the cosmos recognizes the power of breaking the rules — in the right circumstances. There’s poetry in that.
Just as gravity keeps planets orbiting around their host star, grammar rules keep budding writers honed in on the skills and knowledge needed to master their craft.
The expert storyteller, on the other hand, can be more like quantum mechanics: not beholden to any definite outcome, taking leaps and bounds into the unknown.
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