OR: THE FIRST PUNK PRESIDENT?
(photo c/o zobiedotcom)
Donald Trump’s letter to Japan about tariffs is generating scorn from his critics and embarrassed silence from his fans. Is it written in diplomatic language? Obviously not! But the writing style reflects Trump’s decades as a P.T. Barnum-style promoter and his over-the-top personality. I call it Ballyhoo Style, where the purpose of the many capitalizations and blunt, sometimes grammatically incorrect language is to grab the reader’s attention.
It reminds me of punk flyers of the 1980’s, or zine missives of the 1990’s. When handling promotion for the Underground Literary Alliance in the 2000’s, I wrote and distributed many one-page broadsides written in a similar style– but they included large hand-written magic marker titles to further emphasize the point.
Appropriate for a President of the United States? One thing positive we can say about it is it’s not composed by AI!
The decorum of the Office has been long ago shattered– blown apart– by the man. My concern is decorum in today’s literary world, and whether or not we should continue to cling to it.
Will Shaksper aka William Shakespeare, who lived in a more creative time, never worried overmuch about proper grammar and spelling. But he wasn’t the only one. Take a glance at the text of the Declaration of Independence and you’ll find more than a few capitalizations as well. (Do ya think they were trying to grab the reader’s attention?)
THE PROBLEM with now is we live in a constipated, overregulated time where rules are all– especially in the literary field; these rules pounded into us through every level of schooling. CONFORM! is the underlying message. The rule of technocracy. For writers, it often means a lack of freedom, energy, verve– and an inability to grab the attention of most readers and would-be readers. Donald Trump has too many problems to list, and may indeed be on his way toward destroying this democracy and possibly civilization itself. But let us at least acknowledge he didn’t gain popularity with masses of Americans by not knowing how to communicate to them!
-Karl Wenclas for New Pop Lit NEWS
