May 29 2006 05:04 PM
I picked up The Mind of Bill James: How a Complete Outsider Changed Baseball by Scott Gray today. It was rare for me to buy a new baseball book. I really don't know how to resist buying everything, so I decide by picking from among what I can find in used book stores. That is, stores with used books, not used stores with books.
What made me pull the trigger was the following passage, which I find particularly fascinating since I found The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract to be atrociously edited, frustratingly so, particularly since it was such a long-awaited book:
A tangent about tangents: New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell told Rob Neyer in 2003, "Bill James did something which I've never forgotten and which has influenced my writing ever since. He mastered the tangent. He would go off on some seemingly unrelated topic (usually about Amos Otis), which only much later would turn out to be totally on point. I try to do that as well, only I'm not nearly as good at making it all turn out later to be totally on point."Wow.
I know what he means about not making it all turn out, but in the spirit of the Bill James tangent, let me tell you about the tangential philosophical stumper "Who's the bigger jackass?" Around the time I was expecting the Neyer/James manuscript, a friend I'll call Bob was at a crosswalk in Chinatown when a guy on a scooter ran a red light and almost hit him. Bob was standing off the curb, talking on a cell phone, but felt that scooter guy had cut it aggressively close. Bob took off running and caught up at the next light. Scooter guy said, "What are you going to do, hit me?" to which Bob answered, "Yes," and bodypunched him. No injuries, no cops. Later, the story drew a split response from friends and family that came down to the question of who the bigger jackass was.
After the Neyer/James copyediting got under way, I queried Bill about whether we should fix "inconsistencies." He didn't care to discuss specifics, but he e-mailed some thoughts on the general topic:I have a special problem with copy editors, which is that I am very strongly opposed to consistency in the use of language. I understand that this is unusual. I understand that I am a minority, and that most people think (actually most people simply ASSUME, without thinking about it) that consistency in use of the language is preferable to inconsistency. It isn't. Inconsistency is vastly preferable to consistency, for many reasons. This is not a casual observation; it is a strongly held philosophy, central to my career. When confronted with question of "how should I write this," very often I will resolve the issue by simply doing it the opposite of however I did it last time.This had me wondering which of us was the bigger jackass. One co-worker suggested the Lester Bangs perspective — "part of the whole exhilaration of admiring somebody for their artistic accomplishments is resenting 'em 'cause they never live up to your expectations."
I understand that this is unusual; I understand that copy editors are assigned to search out inconsistency and get rid of it. But you need to understand:
1. I have very good reasons for doing things the way I do them.
2. My name is on the book; the copy editor's name isn't.
3. I know vastly more about the effective use of the English language than the copy editor does.
So... I don't want any bleeping policies. OK; you have to have SOME policies. Neyer can have as many policies as he wants on his part of the book; I don't want them. My policy is: I wrote it that way for a reason, leave it alone. And I don't have time to go through the book line by line explaining to some college journalism student why I did everything the way I did it. Leave it alone.
Consistency is boring. Inconsistency is interesting.
Inconsistency challenges the reader.
Inconsistency draws criticism. Criticism is valuable. The more criticism you attract, the more you irritate people, the more you puzzle people, the more successful you will be.