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MUHAMMAD
Ali sparred with heavyweights as with hearty words.
Quick in verbal improvisation, he titled the catchy
“Thrilla in Manila” as he psyched himself up thus about
his upcoming bout with Joe Frazier in 1975:
There’s
gonna be a killa, there’s gonna be a thrilla, when I
whip that gorilla over in Manila.
Ali had
style, both on the mat and with the mouth. A year
earlier in “Rumble in the Jungle” against George Foreman
in Zaire, he worked rhythm into his riffs when comparing
his condition during his fight with Sonny Liston a
decade earlier:
I’m
experienced now. Professional. Jaw’s been broke. Been
knocked down a couple times. I’m bad! I been chopping
trees. I done something new for this fight: I done
rassled with a alligator. I done tussled with a whale. I
done handcuffed lightning, throwed thunder in jail.
That’s bad!
Simple
sentences.
Had Ali been a writer, he would have been world champion
in prose and poetry. Notably, he practiced the basic
rule of using simple words and simple sentences.
To
illustrate simple sentences, let’s review grade-school
grammar. Complete sentences consist of the Subject and
the Predicate Verb, plus sometimes the Object (direct,
DO, or indirect, IO). Constance Hale in Sin and Syntax
reminds us of the four basic patterns:
• S + V.
Cicadas buzz.
• S + P
+ DO. The meek inherit nothing.
• S + P
+ IO + O. The scientists give the monkeys bananas and
crickets.
• S + LV
+ C. (Linking Verb and Complement, like a predicate noun
or a predicate adjective.) National politicians have
become incredible tricksters and manipulators.
Power
and punch.
The sample sentences above are easy to grasp, and even
recall. They conjure strong images in the mind of the
reader or listener. For power and punch, nothing beats
the simple sentence. And Ali was a master of it. While
in Zaire preparing for that 1974 “Rumble in the Jungle,”
he composed an S+V+DO rap to unnerve Foreman:
Only
last week, I murdered a rock. Injured a stone.
Hospitalized a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.
Purple
prose.
By contrast, flowery prose turns people off. A story
goes that essayist-lexicographer Samuel Johnson went
livid when he picked up a revised version of the New
Testament at the country house of a friend. The eleventh
chapter of John he knew to contain the simple, touching
words, “Jesus wept.” But these unceremoniously were
replaced with, “Jesus, the Savior of the world, overcome
with grief, burst into a flood of tears.”
Purple
may be the color of royalty. But purple prose—elaborate
style, containing too many literary effects—is never
regal.
‘Miller
Chop.’
As simple words tend to be short, simple sentences are
brief, too. Short, simple sentences work well not only
in literary prose but in journalism, as well. Crime
reporter Gene Miller, Miami Herald, was noted for
combining simple sentences with longish (but not quite)
ones. He was hailed for the “Miller Chop.” Example, this
opening for a report on the murder of a rich lawyer:
He had
his golf clubs in the trunk of his Cadillac. Wednesday
looked like an easy day. He figured he might pick up a
game later with Eddie Arcaro, the jockey. He didn’t.
Jolting
statement.
Edna Buchanan, Miller’s disciple, improved on the Chop
with what a critic termed “the simple matter-of-fact
statement that registers with a jolt.” On the killing of
a rowdy ex-con who lurched into a church’s outlet,
demanded fried chicken and started a fatal brawl when
offered chicken nuggets instead, Buchanan wrote this
lead:
Gary
Robinson died hungry.
Then
there’s her lead in a story about a lovers’ spat:
The man
she loved slapped her face. Furious, she says, she told
him never, ever to do that again. “What are you going to
do, kill me?” he asked, and handed her a gun. “Here,
kill me,” he challenged. She did.
Computer
helps.
The computer can make your sentences short:
Default
your word-processing program (say, Microsoft Word) to a
font that’s easy on the eyes, like rounded, serif types
Palatino or Bookman.
Set it
at 14 points for easy reading and rewriting.
Set the
width at 6 picas or 12 inches.
As you
type away, monitor how many lines your sentences take.
One or two lines is readable. If a sentence exceeds
three lines, rewrite.
(Next
week: Edit and reedit yourself) |
