The gentle corrector

‘When fishermen cannot go to sea, they repair nets.’

– Steve Jobs (1955 –2011), co-founder of Apple.

The best part of this job? That’s easy: readers. Some days, readers like me; other days, they can’t stand me; sometimes, they want me to quit the business and get a job knitting hand puppets.

It’s all fair. I’ve been doing this for a while, at this publication, and I know what it’s like to have nobody read what I’m doing. That anyone including ‘the teacher who saw me’ would take a moment to read my column feels like a blessing, for which I’m grateful.

For instance, Arnold Somerset. A kindhearted gentleman and Goldman Sachs mathematician, who liked brightly patterned shirts and funky sunglasses, Arnold was the patriarch of an eccentric family I’d known since I’d met his youngest daughter, Alison, during my postgraduate studies at Columbia University. She’s super close with my wife – both hepatologists at Columbia University Irving Medical Centre in New York.

Arnold was a devoted reader of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Ayn Rand and Philip Roth.  When I got a job working in this newspaper, he cheered me like I’d landed on the surface of Mars. With great regularity, he’d check in on me—always with a thoughtful comment about something I’d just written, and almost always with, well … a grammatical correction.

Here’s something you may already know about newspapers: We don’t always get the grammar so good. This especially applies to me truly. My command of English is fungible at best; I have a copy of Strunk & White sitting somewhere in my house, uncracked since my English mentor, Dr Rachel, gave it to me upon my arrival on campus.

Strunk & White refers to The Elements of Style, a classic American English writing style guide written by William Strunk Jr. and later revised by E.B. White. Widely used as a reference for writing clear and concise prose, it is particularly beneficial for non-native speakers of English.

I like to think that I’m being heretically modern and playful, but the truth is, on certain days, I have zero idea what I am doing. My editors are brilliant at saving me from my butchery, but they can’t catch everything, especially on deadline.

Arnold seemed to catch everything. He belonged to a certain type of old-school newspaper crowd. He didn’t mind technology, but he preferred to read print, a pen or a pencil nearby, just in case some egregious blunder had to be noted. Arnold wasn’t an English graduate or writer—he’d gone to Princeton and taken over his friend’s job at the US Federal Reserve (during the reign of “maestro” Alan Greenspan) not long after graduation—but he had an appreciation for the way words were supposed to be.

“I don’t know where it came from,” Ali told me. “It was natural to him.”

Arnold would write to me, his gentle fixes humanely wrapped in compliments:

Fun column but next to the last paragraph: ‘None of them have’ should be ‘none of them has.’ None is short for no one (singular.) X Arnold

Excellent article, wonderful paragraphs…dare I point out…page 11, second column, second paragraph, second sentence: ‘Keep’ not ‘keeps.’ X Arnold

Good article on the China banks but one grammatical correction: Next to last paragraph should begin with ‘Among,’ not ‘Between.’ Between is between two alternates. Among is more than two. I hope all is good. X Arnold

You might think that this sort of hen-pecking would get on my nerves after a while—who enjoys having their grammar corrected?—but I appreciated it so much.

I remember with pleasure the time during the New York Public Library’s World Literature Festival (As a footnote, my wife and I were in charge of the first aid and ticket sales committee), where my Literature Humanities (LitHum) professor Orhan Pamuk, Kazuo Ishiguro, Salman Rushdie, and some other great writers were speaking. One of them said something like, “We only become better writers by making more mistakes.”

This instantly reminded me of what Arnold used to tell me, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” It’s funny how some truths just cross over, no matter the context.

Readers who do this do it because they love words, but also the rules of words. They believe that structure is important and spelling counts.

Besides, Arnold was always sweet, fatherly. He was the opposite of a scold. He was a grammarian of style, but also grace.

A few months ago, the emails stopped.  Arnold Somerset died on March 24. Five days later, his beloved wife Darlee passed away. Both of them died of complications from an illness. They were survived by four children and eight grandchildren.

Perhaps that would be as good a time as any to stop, the best exit line I would ever have. Maybe it was time to take the Roth road out of this and stick a Post-it note on my Macbook screen that read “The struggle is over.”

Our first visitor, other than family, was Blackrock economist and Stephen King book club secretary Gallagher Wylie.

Gallagher looks stern but he is an emotional man and was close to tears as we embraced.

“I don’t know if I can write again,” I told him.

“You shouldn’t think about doing anything for a while,” he said, “except getting better.”

“That’s good advice,” I said.

“But eventually, you’ll write about this, of course.”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “I’m not sure that I want to.”

“You’ll write about it, honour his memories,” he said.

For six months, I hadn’t been able to think about writing it. But on Wednesday, I finally sat down at a coffeehouse and felt the juices beginning to flow. As I went through the notes I’d made for this column, though, it all seemed a bit absurd.

I can write this, I told myself. I knew I had to write this story you’re reading now before I could move on to anything else.

After a long delay due to immigration issues, they were finally going to be buried at the Chua Chu Kang Jewish cemetery in Singapore on Sunday—the day they would have celebrated their 61st wedding anniversary.

The Somerset children are still gently nudging the grandkids when they bungle a sentence. It’s what her father would have wanted, she said.

It sure is.

I miss hearing from Arnold, a reader who loved words as much as anyone ever has.

Or is it “anyone ever had’? Or should it be ‘did’?

Forgive me, Arnold. I miss you. X Medecci.

The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.