This post is a recent column by Frank Bruni in the times, part of his series “For the Love of Sentences.” Here’s a link to the original.
Enjoy.
For the Love of Sentences
In The Autopian, Matt Hardigree explained one carmaker’s advantage: “You don’t buy a Subaru so much as you ascend into your final form as an outdoorsy Subaru owner when a ray of light beams down from the nearest REI, and all your clothes vanish from your body and are replaced by Patagonia.” (Thanks to Carol Goland of Granville, Ohio, for spotting this.)
In The Wall Street Journal, Rich Cohen remembered his excitement, as a boy, when the ice cream bonanza of Mister Softee jingled into his life: “The truck was a revelation, great in the way of the bookmobile but without the pain of learning. What thrilled me was the idea that this sweet thing could turn up like a messiah amid the blast furnace of summer, that you could join a crowd of kids giving it chase, that it could redeem an otherwise aimless day.” (Henry Pinkney, Farmington Hills, Mich.)
In The London Review of Books, Patricia Lockwood qualified her feelings about Sylvia Plath’s husband, the poet Ted Hughes, after reading some of Plath’s reflections: “It is not that I have no sympathy for Hughes. I have immense sympathy for him when Plath describes her shrimp casseroles.” (William Wood, Edmonton, Alberta)
In The Dallas Morning News, Robert Wilonsky reported on the tensions when a developer met with residents of the northwest Dallas area where he wants to put up scores of new townhouses: “It took, like, three minutes for the town hall to devolve into shouts, accusations, murmurs, boos. Three minutes for friends and neighbors to start speaking in fluent Internet Comment.” (Dorit Suffness, Dallas)
In The Athletic, Jayson Stark identified the special purpose of the Philadelphia Phillies player Kyle Schwarber as “whomping baseballs” that always threaten “to land either in somebody’s cheesesteak or in a crater on the moon — whichever gets in the way first.” (Leslie Ferreira, Studio City, Calif.)
In The Dispatch, Jonah Goldberg fretted the automotive implications of an A.I. chatbot’s recent Nazi-friendly meltdown (and made clever reference to an old Stephen King novel and, separately, a classic Disney movie): “Elon Musk announced this week that all Teslas will be equipped with the new version of Grok. I don’t think this means Teslas will start targeting Jews in intersections, like a souped-up Christine or Goebbels-Mode Herbie the Hate Bug, to deal with the ‘problem’ it sees ‘every damn time.’ But I do think Grok encouraged a lot of people who think that way. And some of those people drive.” (Michael Smith, Georgetown, Ky.)
In The New Yorker, Hanif Abdurraqib explored the scrutiny of Zohran Mamdani: “I tend to find Islamophobia unspectacular. That doesn’t mean I don’t also find it insidious and of serious consequence. I simply imagine it, like other prejudices, as a kind of ever-present static in the American psyche, tuned lower at times and then growing cacophonous with even a light touch of the volume dial.” (Hollis Rose Birnbaum, Chicago)
In The Times, John McWhorter questioned evolutions of language that are driven by political correctness: “Again and again we create new terms hoping to get past negative associations with the old ones, such as ‘homeless’ for ‘bum.’ But after a while the negative associations settle like a cloud of gnats on the new terms as well, and then it’s time to find a further euphemism. With no hesitation I predict that ‘unhoused person’ will need replacement in about 2030.” (Wim Kimmerer, Berkeley, Calif., and Lisa O’Melia, Norwalk, Conn., among many others)
Also in The Times, David Litt described the cultural and partisan divide between him and his brother-in-law: “It was immediately clear we had nothing in common. He lifted weights to death metal; I jogged to Sondheim.” Litt recommended communication, not contempt, in the face of such differences. “In an age when banishment backfires, keeping the door open to unlikely friendship isn’t a betrayal of principles — it’s an affirmation of them,” he wrote. (Kate Rosenbaum, Richmond, Va.)
Alissa Wilkinson remarked that the ranting of an old man in the new movie “Eddington” makes sense when the date is stamped onscreen — and situates him in the middle of pandemic lockdowns: “By late May 2020, even the most unflappable among us felt one raisin short of a fruitcake.” (Phillip Schulz, Brooklyn, N.Y.)
Lisa Lerer recognized the “long and storied history of over-interpreting New York elections as barometers of the national mood.” The Democratic Party, she added, “should spend more time thinking about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan than the Upper West Side.” (Carol Henton, San Mateo, Calif.)
Finally, in The Santa Barbara Independent, Nick Welsh distilled his objection to Trump’s megabill: “It shreds the safety net for the poor in order to give added bounce to the trampolines of the wealthy.” (Tom Hinshaw, Santa Barbara, Calif.)
David Labaree on Schooling, History, and Writing 