James J. Kilpatrick 1920-2010: Court adjourned
This 1965 black-and-white file photo, shows then-Richmond News Leader editor James J. Kilpatrick testifuing on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Henry Griffin, File)
The Court of Peeves, Irks & Crotchets is adjourned.
James J. Kilpatrick, whose erudite column The Writer’s Art was carried for years in the Review-Journal died Sunday. He was 89.
Though he wrote authoritatively about politics and the law, it was his insightful and humorous take on the subtleties of the English language that I will miss.
His column often pilloried grammatical abuses his readers would find in their local newspapers, and he had faithful readers in Las Vegas who often sent him toe-stubbers from the Review-Journal.
Here is one example out of many:
“From the Las Vegas Review-Journal, reporting on the victims of a Singapore Airlines crash: ‘The victims laid on stretchers with their arms stretched stiffly in front of their torsos.’
"Very well. What do the experts say about ‘lie’ and ‘lay’? The editors of Webster's Dictionary of English Usage note that until the early 1800s the two verbs were used almost interchangeably, without much comment or distinction. Then the grammarians and schoolmasters seized upon the issue. Since then at least 60 professional commentators have weighed in.
"Some of them have weighed out. Bergen Evans in 1957, Wilson Follett in 1966 and Rudolf Flesch in 1983 announced their willingness to abandon the distinction between ‘lie’ and ‘lay.’ …
“Eventually, I suppose, ‘lie’ and ‘lay’ will be laid to rest, but not yet. Not yet.”
Kilpatrick’s love of language and quirky phrases came across in his friendly explanation of cliches, such as this one:
“In the 1970 senatorial election in Virginia, Harry Byrd Jr. garnered more votes than his two opponents combined. A country editor said Byrd ‘took them up Salt River.’ Not long ago I stumbled over an explanation of the term. The story is that during his 1832 campaign against Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay hired a boatman to take him up the Ohio River for an important speech in Louisville. The wily fellow, an ardent Jacksonian, rowed Clay up the Salt River instead. Clay missed the speech and lost the election.
“In their dictionary of word and phrase origins, William and Mary Morris say the story is probably phony -- Clay was no dummy, and the modest Salt River is no Ohio -- but why let a few facts interfere with a good story? Clay came up short, and when he looked for the rogue, the boatman turned up missing.”
He was self-deprecating about his own abilities in the writing arts, explaining once his difficulty in writing what his editor called “brites.” But he recognized and applauded the skill in others:
"There's more to the comic art than sweat of the brow. The great funnymen find a niche or a gimmick and make it their province. It is the equivalent for writers of Groucho's trademark walk and Durante's bulbous nose. One such device is the art of impossible exaggeration. Read Mark Twain on French duelists or Ring Lardner on baseball players. P.G. Wodehouse created Jeeves the impeccable butler and Bertie Wooster the blithering bungler. Everything is drawn to some wildly overblown scale.
“Dave Barry loves the trick. He recently watched his 4-year-old daughter playing for the pre-kindergarten Wolverines in a soccer match. The rival Dragons won 4-2, but the Wolverines turned better cartwheels.”
To let the ear savor (mixed metaphor) some of Kilpatrick’s takes on various word usages, here are some nearly random clips from the electronic files of the Review-Journal:
Jan. 4, 2009:
“In the ‘Born Loser’ strip, Brutus Thornapple is having a bowl of vegetable soup in a diner. He looks unhappy.
“The cook asks what’s wrong with the soup. ‘There only seems to be one vegetable in it— a celery stalk.’ Poor ol’ Thornapple meant that there seems to be only one vegetable.
“Why is the unoffending ‘only’ so abused? I have no idea, but I can speak from experience: Once your ganglia begin to quiver at the misplacement of an ‘only,’ you’ll find orphaned onlies everywhere.”
Dec. 21, 2008:
“Writing in the Chicago Tribune last month, columnist Steve Chapman began a think piece: ‘Obama can’t flout a military record, but his strengths have a way.’ Wrong verb! To flout something is to treat it with ‘contemptuous disregard,’ the very worst kind. The writer wanted ‘flaunt,’ defined as ‘to wave or flutter showily.’”
Oct. 26, 2008:
“While we’re talking ‘style,’ in the copy-editing sense, a tut-tut goes to The Wall Street Journal for a story in September. The piece began, ‘Alberta Davidson woke up at 5 a.m. one morning last March to a blaring alarm.’
“Regrettably, an alarm bell did not blare of the reporter’s redundancy. Last time we looked, timewise, ‘ante meridiem’ covered all activity between midnight and high noon. Style-wise, Ms. Davidson awoke at 5 o’clock one morning or at 5 a.m. one day.”
Sept. 9, 2/07 on split infinitives:
“The construction is subject to the same guidelines that govern all prose composition: Our sentences should be clear, and they should fall trippingly from the tongue. These are judgment calls. One of the Times writers stoutly urged those mine operators ‘to quickly adopt existing systems.’ To have relocated the ‘quickly’ either fore or aft would have avoided the split but wrecked the sentence. Split on, I say! But think for a moment first.”
June 25, 2008:
“As Mark Twain taught us long ago, we use one vocabulary in talking to a maiden aunt, another for the kindergarten nephew. All I’m suggesting is that writers and speakers err on the side of plain old comprehension. It’s sound advice. Vraiment!”
The court concludes its assizes.
