Commas in a List

As a university lecturer of English one of the subjects I teach is basic composition. I do not teach grammar, but grammar and syntax often make out part of essay writing. It is inevitable. One thing that the American style textbooks we use advocate is not having a comma before the final “and” in a list. This comma is sometimes referred to as the “serial comma.” In the following example we see how American English neglect the final serial comma: “I like apples, bananas, lemons and gooseberries.” In British English the comma is required: “I like apples, bananas, lemons, and gooseberries.” This is known as the Oxford comma.

Some people would probably say that it doesn't matter and that it is merely a question of geographic preference, such as the pronunciation of tomato as either to-may-to or to-mah-to. While I'm usually fairly flexible with language, I think the extra comma just before “and” serves a very important purpose and leaving it out can causes confusion, especially when the list contains combined items. For example: “I like apples, bananas, lemons, and gooseberries and blueberries.” Notice how the meaning and feel of this sentence changes when we remove the final comma: “I like apples, bananas, lemons and gooseberries and blueberries.” Without the final comma in the latter sentence, lemons, gooseberries, and blueberries are combined as one syntactical unit, which differs from the former sentence where “lemons” is differentiated from the two berries; with “gooseberries and blueberries” forming one syntactical unit and “lemons” forming a separate syntactical unit, like “apples” or “bananas.”

For a while now I've omitted the final comma in much of my writing in an attempt to practice what I preach (or rather to practice what the textbooks from which I teach preach). However, having thought about it for some time, I am resuming the British custom as it communicates meaning better in my opinion, as illustrated above. Now, I'm not saying that one ought never leave out the final serial comma. There may be poetic value in its exclusion. Commas not only separate items, they also indicate a natural pause in language and the writer (poet) may wish to leave out that comma for the sake of rhythm or tempo.

On Happiness

A prerequisite, I think, is that you ought not to be intelligent.

I remember once, having sprained an ankle, I couldn’t sleep because of the throbbing pain, and while so beset in the midnight hours my empathies stretched out to all those other wretched souls writhing in pain far worse than my own. I cried for the victims of all sorts of cancers, bemoaning their tortured fates, squirming from their ache in cold, hygienic, marbled hospital wards. I knew very well that my sprained ankle, such a silly ailment if there ever was one – the bane of the clumsy – could compare in no way to the agony felt by the really ill. It is in our own moments of suffering that we can have empathy with the suffering of others, and I’m sure many a man has felt similar compassion when he found himself in a situation of discomfort.

The intelligent man, the honest man, need no autobiographical moment to evoke empathy. The artificial construct of the imagination, yeah the knowledge of life (that life is a series of experiences many of which are toil and suffering), is enough to create in the intelligent man, yes the honest man, sympathies with people he do not know but for the anthropomorphic moulding of his imaginings. Of course, one can be intelligent and deceitful and lie to yourself; assembling a padded cage of denial. Yet, one has to wonder whether such a man can authentically be called intelligent.

However, if you are a wise man, i.e. honest and intelligent, you will always be aware that your own happiness rings as a foiled mocking note against the unheard cries of the suffering. For this reason, I believe, the intelligent man cannot be happy. An intelligent man that welcomes self-deceit cannot be happy for his own lies taunt him; the intelligent man that in honesty accepts the true state of affairs is unhappy too, for the truth of others’ suffering flies in the face of his own comforts and pleasures.

The solution is to be either a simpleton or a sadomasochist. As for the former, that’s not much of a choice. A simpleton ambitious for intelligence will not know the life of discontent that awaits him until he has acquired sufficient intelligence and once he has acquired it, it will be too late; for one can seldom return to your former state of stupidity. As for the latter, you need to be of that tandem-disposition. Being only a sadist will not ensure you durable happiness, since it is only a matter of time before some suffering befell you too. And being a masochist only will not cause enduring happiness either, for some fickle good fortune tends to smile, occasionally, even on the most unfortunate of creatures. Only a sadomasochist, and better yet a stupid one at that, who is preferably void of intellectual ambition, can truly be happy this side of Heaven. Ironically, it is Heaven, of all places, where the sadomasochist would suffer most, and not be happy.

The Liminal Michael Jackson

Reposted from my main blog: Skryfblok
[Image Source: Rasha]

I’ve avoided the Michael Jackson-saga on purpose. What is there too add? Then I started to think* about what a liminal being Michael Jackson was.

Isn’t Michael Jackson the epitome liminal being? What is Jackson’s ethnicity, what’s Jackson’s gender, what’s Jackson’s “age”? Throughout his career, Jackson seemed to transcendent such labels. Of course he is African-American, but we all have to agree that it is not that simple. Jackson did not look African-American. Imagine an alien being visiting Earth and seeing the Pop-icon for the first time. Seeing Jackson’s ethereal white complexion, silky wavy hair and chiselled-coned nose, the alien visitor would never have been able to guess Jackson’s “ethnicity”. Although politically incorrect and slightly distasteful, there is a reason why we find the following humorous: “Michael Jackson was born a poor black boy, but became a rich white woman.” Regardless of having fathered numerous children, many people still question his sexual orientation. In fact, he is has become an almost asexual being. And towards the end of his life, it would seem that he refused to age, not merely outwardly, because of the many plastic surgeries, but rather inwardly; as if he became a psychological Benjamin Button.

The great essayist James Baldwin wrote in the essay “Here Be Dragons” the following:

The Michael Jackson cacophony is fascinating in that it is not about Jackson at all. I hope he has the good sense to know it and the good fortune to snatch his life out of the jaws of a carnivorous success. He will not swiftly be forgiven for having turned so many tables, for he damn sure grabbed the brass ring, and the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo has nothing on Michael.

All that noise is about America, as the dishonest custodian of black life and wealth; the blacks, especially males, in America; and the burning, buried American guilt; and sex and sexual roles and sexual panic; money, success and despair–to all of which may now be added the bitter need to find a head on which to place the crown of Miss America.

Freaks are called freaks and are treated as they are treated–in the main, abominably–because they are human beings who cause to echo, deep within us, our most profound terrors and desires.

Indeed, Michael Jackson became a freak – a liminal being in who we projected “our most profound terrors and desires”; and that’s why we hated him so much. That’s why we loved him so much.

* My thoughts about Michael Jackson’s liminality was spurred on by an article I started writing recently on the similarities in liminal spaces in Samuel Taylor Coleridge epic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” and “Tales of the Black Freighter: Marooned”, the comic-within-a-comic, in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel Watchmen. [Previous posts on Watchmen here and here.]