Salutations, bibliophiles.
Today, I’m very excited to bring you
.Bruce writes
, where he explores the armies that are, the armies that were, and the armies that might have been. If you’re a fan of history and/or strategy, you’ll love Bruce’s writing.Here, Bruce shares a delightful essay on the oft maligned magazine that taught him the power of simple language. Enjoy!
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In the early 1950s, when my mother worked in the Office of Public Information at the headquarters of the United Nations, the journalists in her department liked to poke fun at the Reader’s Digest. In particular, whenever one of these cosmopolitans complained of the high cost of living in New York, another would inevitably say something like “If you need money, you can always write something for the Reader’s Digest.”
My mother, who hailed from the smallest town in Manitoba, was far too rich in wheat-belt wisdom to embrace the faux sophistication of those too exalted to write for the world’s most popular magazine. Thus, in the house in which she raised her sons (all three of whom would become United States Marines), she filled many shelves with works, both periodical and permanent, published by the Reader’s Digest.
The resulting cornucopia of good things to read cannot claim credit for my enduring love of the printed page. That grand romance began well before I devoured the first of my Best Loved Books for Young Readers. What my extended encounter with artifacts of the Reader’s Digest franchise did give me, however, was a desire to write works accessible to people from a wide variety of countries, cultures, and walks of life.
The aforesaid ambition provided a powerful complement to the great gift that my father shared with me, his love of well-wrought words. Indeed, the happiest memories of my high school years bring to mind the pre-dawn recitation, over cereal and toast, of old Icelandic rhymes. Það sagði mér, hún amma mín. “Thus said to me, my grand-mama.”
These poems drew me to a different place, one rich in rhythm, alliteration, and mention of things already obscure a thousand years ago. Indeed, were it not for the counterweight created by long exposure to the Reader’s Digest, these rhymes might have made me a poor man’s Tolkien, a scholar obsessed with sagas and runes who devoted his life to learned speculations on the origins of the Jutes, the Geats, the Gepids, and the Goths.
So, with the music of my father’s people in my heart, and the power of good plain English in my head, I went out into the world. There I found myself working for school-formed folk who might well have been described, avant la lettre, as “word processors.” Though adept at the manipulation of pre-existing blocks of shop-worn text, they recoiled in horror at the sight of blank sheets of paper.
Thus, whatever the formal description of the billet I was filling, I often played the role of the street-corner scriveners I remembered from my childhood in Karachi. (Aficionados of Kipling’s Kim will recognize these humble men of letters, squatting before their ancient manual typewriters as they composed epistles for their clients, as kith and kin of the scribe-for-hire from the out-of-bounds bazaar near Saint Xavier’s School.)
When doing this work, I made use the things I had learned while reading the Reader’s Digest. I employed active verbs. I kept my sentences short. Most of all, however, I refrained from using the sesquipedalia I had acquired from the monthly feature I loved best, It Pays to Increase Your Word Power. (My one failure to follow that policy earned me, for a month or so, the moniker of “Lieutenant Pernicious.”)
About the Author: Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson writes three Substacks. The Tactical Notebook tells tales of armies that are, armies that were, and armies that might have been. Extra Muros serves people intent upon educating themselves “beyond the walls” of our dying universities. A Wealth of Nations offers thoughts on the making, and breaking, of peoples, places, and polities.
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Curious, curious mixture. I'm grateful for having learned the titular new word, but I'm slightly peeved there wasn't much, much more to this essay. Thanks anyway, Bruce!
You forgot that all important humor in uniform feature!