So I was catching up on my forwarded-across-the-ocean New Yorkers today, reading and enjoying last month’s article by Ian Frazier, “Utopia, the Bronx” about a Bronx housing co-op and its history, present, and future (unfortunately not available online - very inconvenient for my purposes here). Well-written article, kinda formal, kinda casual, typical NYer style, funny, not sure what “Cool is grace in secular form” has to do with anything, but okay, still interesting, etc.
Then something stylistically caught my eye, having to do with first and last name usage, although different from last time when I was ranting about gender-related practices. Even though the name in question is a woman’s, I don’t necessarily think that’s the reason Frazier uses her full name four times in two paragraphs. But what is the reason? I’ll take one for the team and type out the snippets in question, because luckily I am a fast typist, and you need context:
Today, the president of Co-op City’s board of directors is a short, energetic first-grade teacher named Leticia Morales. She holds an M.S. in bilingual education and has a daughter, two sons, and two granddaughters. She divides her time between job, family, and her duties as president (an unpaid position) of a co-op with an annual budget of a hundred and sixty-five million dollars. Her temperament is that of the ideal jury forewoman - calm, consensus-minded, sweet-voiced, fair. She just won reelection, and what she wants to do during the next year or two is grand. For complicated reasons involving Abe Kazan’s nephew and a grudge against Con Ed, Kazan built an entire power plant as part of the original Co-op City complex, and for even more complicated reasons it has never generated one watt of electrical power. Leticia Morales says that when the startup process is complete, in 2008, the power plant will be working, finally; she says that it will save the co-op millions a year in energy bills, and more when it begins to sell some of the power back to Con Ed.
Also, Metro North trains that run along the shore to places like Dariena nd Norwalk go right by Co-op City. Leticia Morales is in talks to persuade Metro North to stop there; she points out that her community has a larger population than many commuter towns. A station would need to be built. From it the trip would be about thirty minutes to midtown. Also, Co-op City has a lot of kids with nothing to do after school. Crime has gone down in the project since 2001, but there is still a crime problem. In December, policee and federal agents arrested fourteen young men for selling handguns and other weapons on Co-op City grounds. Leticia Morales would love to open a youth center in one of several locations she has in mind in or near Co-op City. And, as part of the co-op’s never-ending cycle of repairs, she also will begin replacing most of its windows, of which there are about a hundred and thirty-five thousand, along with about six thousand terrace doors.
“This is just a beautiful place to live,” she told me. “We have people from everywhere…”
After a few more sentences of that quote, Morales isn’t mentioned again in the article.
I understand using a full name again after you haven’t been talking about someone for a while, so you can go back to using last name only for the time being. People’s attention spans are short, and they probably need reminding. But this takes place in a very short span of text and where almost no other names are used. WHY use her full name in every single reference? Is it because hers is not a famous name, so he thinks we won’t remember it after its first use? (Note that there is no other Morales in the story.) Is she about to run for office and he wants to burn her name into our memories? IS it subconsciously because she’s a she?
Skimming the rest of the article for names, I found that he uses Al Shapiro twice in one paragraph, in two different places (like with Morales, it’s never just Shapiro). He often refers to Anne Hutchinson as simply Anne. He refers to Ken Migliorelli twice but Migliorelli once in a single paragraph. Robert Moses then Moses in consecutive clauses. Arthur Taub is repeatedly referred to by his full name. Louis Nizer is called Nizer in same paragraph; same with Alanson Skinner. Charlie Rosen and Abe Kazan are referred to often by both names but just as often by last name only, depending on when the last time we heard about them was. Lee Goodwin always both names but in references set paragraphs apart. Mario Cuomo is used only once and afterwards only Cuomo.
So the names that are repeatedly used in their entirety and in close proximity from reference to reference are Al Shapiro (retired Post Office facilities engineer), Arthur Taub (retired healthcare consultant for the United Federation of Teachers), and Leticia Morales (first-grade teacher). I really don’t see any commonality here; socioeconomically, other people in the article are equivalent to these subjects. Their names don’t share any ethnic-sounding hints, and though they are all Co-op residents (or were at some point), so were many other people discussed. They’re not famous, but neither is Ken Migliorelli. At any rate, the Morales example struck me as the most concentrated use of the full name (admittedly maybe because it’s a woman), and it had an impact on how I thought of or felt about the person I was reading about. Frankly, I conceived of her as a “nobody” trying to be a “somebody,” as someone who was supposed to be so unfamiliar to me that I needed a constant reminder of who she was, but who was also trying to make some kind of name for herself. Or the author was trying to make a name for her.
Perhaps it just draws the subject out more in the story, makes it seem like they are doing or saying more, rather than just being *in* the story. I don’t know. Compare this paragraph:
According to Lauren Squires, who sometimes blogs about language use, the conventions of reference in Ian Frazier’s article are rather strange. It is common for writers to use full names with the first reference to a person, and thereafter to refer to them by simply the last name. But Lauren Squires says that Ian Frazier uses both first and last names quite often, and in unpredictable patterns. She cites instances of names being repeated in toto within the same paragraph, which seems unnecessary for the audience to simply remember who the referent is. “His style of reference seems almost unintentional or haphazard, but it does make a difference in the way you read the actions of the characters in his story,” Lauren Squires says.
with this one:
According to Lauren Squires, who sometimes blogs about language use, the conventions of reference in Ian Frazier’s article are rather strange. It is common for writers to use full names with the first reference to a person, and thereafter to refer to them by simply the last name. But Squires says that Frazier uses both first and last names quite often, and in unpredictable patterns. She cites instances of names being repeated in toto within the same paragraph, which seems unnecessary for the audience to simply remember who the referent is. “His style of reference seems almost unintentional or haphazard, but it does make a difference in the way you read the actions of the characters in his story,” Squires says.
Different, yes? Yet I still can’t quite place my finger on how. Lauren Squires is confused.
