Adam Begley Quote
White encouraged Updike’s equally scrupulous commitment. They bonded over dashes, colons, and commas—most amazingly in an exchange of letters in the last two months of 1954 concerning two poems, The Sunflower and The Clan. She wanted to make his punctuation consistent; he wanted to make his light verse flow in a manner pleasing to the ear and the eye. When he suggested changes to the proof of Sunflower—literally begging for a colon rather than a dash at the end of a particular line (A colon is compact, firm, and balanced: a dash is sprawling, wishy-washy, and gawky. The colon suggests the Bible: the dash letters and memoirs of fashionable ladies)—she replied with a three-page treatise on punctuation and a transcription of the relevant paragraph from H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (the standard reference at The New Yorker, thanks to Harold Ross, who always kept a copy handy). She urged him to try to feel more kindly toward the dash—and closed with characteristic graciousness: I want to add that I am delighted to find anyone who cares as much as this about punctuation and who is as careful as you are about your verse. . . . And I thank you for a very interesting and amusing letter.
White encouraged Updike’s equally scrupulous commitment. They bonded over dashes, colons, and commas—most amazingly in an exchange of letters in the last two months of 1954 concerning two poems, The Sunflower and The Clan. She wanted to make his punctuation consistent; he wanted to make his light verse flow in a manner pleasing to the ear and the eye. When he suggested changes to the proof of Sunflower—literally begging for a colon rather than a dash at the end of a particular line (A colon is compact, firm, and balanced: a dash is sprawling, wishy-washy, and gawky. The colon suggests the Bible: the dash letters and memoirs of fashionable ladies)—she replied with a three-page treatise on punctuation and a transcription of the relevant paragraph from H. W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (the standard reference at The New Yorker, thanks to Harold Ross, who always kept a copy handy). She urged him to try to feel more kindly toward the dash—and closed with characteristic graciousness: I want to add that I am delighted to find anyone who cares as much as this about punctuation and who is as careful as you are about your verse. . . . And I thank you for a very interesting and amusing letter.
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About Adam Begley
Begley is the son of Sally (Higginson) and novelist Louis Begley. He graduated from Harvard College in 1982, and from Stanford University with a Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1989.
His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Spectator, and The Atlantic.
He lives with his wife, Anne Cotton, in Great Gidding, Cambridgeshire. His stepdaughter is the novelist and art critic, Chloë Ashby.
He is the author of biographies of John Updike and the 19th-century French photographer Nadar. His biography of Harry Houdini appeared in the Yale Jewish Lives series. He is a frequent contributor to the Paris Review's Art of Fiction series.
He is currently at work on a book about Harvard College.