Ars Memoranda
Nollson, John
ARS MEMORANDA by John Nollson Readers of the better literary journals know that although the novel is dead and poetry is in extremis, there is still one literary genre which remains strong and...
...Ransom's memorandum was criticized by Ernest Hemingway for being too wordy, and Hemingway refused to participate...
...As we know, government has been functioning in these parts for nigh-unto four centuries and Americans have long struggled to find an authentic American voice that can sing through the prose-even in triplicate...
...Yet, as one Would expect, the American national style is rooted in a John Nollson's book, Washington in Pieces (Doubleday), has been well received in Macon, Chattanooga, and Winston-Salem...
...to: Jack from: Papa subject: experience Your memo caught up with me at Harry's...
...it was an important precursor of the Declaration of Independence, which, itself, was originally drafted as a memorandum...
...The famous Epstein memoranda, which became the basis for the reconstruction of the bath houses at Brighton Beach, is the American analogue of Weimar, the quest for sun and surf, so much the hallmark of the Lost Generation...
...memo I've hooked...
...It is too soon to say whether this will be the hallmark of post-modernist memoranda...
...Papers recently discovered in the library of Vanderbilt University reveal that the project began with a memorandum from John Crowe Ransom to several of his colleagues: to: List from:JCR subject: need for position papers on modern life I have received a time-urgent request from our publisher suggesting that we get ourselves configured into a stand-taking mode...
...In the blizzard of initials and numbers, we nonetheless perceive how a whole generation became accustomed to eating dry breakfast cereals, cornflakes especially...
...But now that the New York Times has announced the appointment of its first full-time memorandum critic, the status of the memorandum in the literary world is at long last, fully secure...
...As the Times observed in a rare critical notice: The Columbia edition marks a milestone in our understanding of twentieth century literature...
...Fortunately, these fights among native-born memoranda writers were cooled by the arrival of a new group of writers, descendants, in the main, of East Europeans...
...Similarly, we have gained new insights into the social transformations caused by the internal disruptions of World War II...
...ARS MEMORANDA by John Nollson Readers of the better literary journals know that although the novel is dead and poetry is in extremis, there is still one literary genre which remains strong and vital-the memorandum...
...The roots of that distinctive American style originate in the Great Awakening...
...In his classic study Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on the democratic reform of listing the recipient first...
...Indeed, one of the untold tales of the conflict was the organization of a vast armada of vessels, whose main function was the shipment of bananas from Central America to the European Theater of Operations-there to be sliced and placed atop the cornflakes...
...Here, within the seemingly narrow confines of the to-from format, there emerges not merely that traditional Jewish sense of irony and sensuality, but a larger appreciation of the tensions and ambiguities of post World War I culture...
...Whether they will be con tent to operate within the confines of the older forms remains to be seen...
...But it has taken courage at every stage...
...It is, in short, an exciting time.is, in short, an exciting time...
...By now, all of us are familiar with at least three generations of Jewish-American memoranda-writers...
...For this, we are indebted to Columbia University which has brought out an annotated, eleven-volume edition of representative memoranda from the archives of the New York City government, all works by Jewish-Americans...
...The trend is furthest advanced in the Foreign Ministry...
...Indeed, the creative achievement inherent in the modern memorandum has long been recognized...
...Hawthorne, Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville all sent memoranda to each other...
...Any hope for the reconstruction of the language now rests with the Department of Housing and Urban Development...
...I've got to feel the salt spray as I try to land that 148 pp...
...This was more than a stylistic innovation...
...For this, we are indebted to the United States Naval Academy for its 34-volume edition of the internal memoranda of the Office of Naval Logistics...
...In fact, it is not too soon to begin speaking of a post-modernist phase in memoranda-writing...
...Predictably, deconstructionism in government method has become embodied in the language of government itself...
...I can't write memos...
...There was, on the other hand, a Southern approach that was rather different, and it found its ultimate expression in the preparations for that seminal anthology of Southern agrarianism, I'll Take My Stand...
...It was characteristic of European feudalism and solipsism to begin the memorandum with from: rather than to:- except in the Germanic states, where the memorandum began with subject...
...In those days, the sender signed his full name and only gradually did the first stirrings of industrial transformation in Lowell lead to the more efficient practice of initialing...
...It's the fight, not the form, that counts...
...I've got to live them...
...A whole new generation is on the scene, and the 51-year-old memoranda-writer cannot be com pared to recent graduates of the better law schools, all in their midtwenties...
...prior regionalism...
...As everyone knows, the leading deconstruc-tionist is David Stockman, who is prepared to deconstruct almost anything...
...We are now able to skip over the bloated and wasteful memoranda of the Great Society era and move directly to the dominant theme of contemporary Republican memoranda-deconstructionism...
...This first breakthrough cannot be overemphasized...
Vol. 14 • August 1981 • No. 8
