until its narrator, a nameless prototype of Bukowski’ stalwart alter ego, Henry Chinaski, pays a visit co a pre- cious, modestly successful writer: His writing was mostly a tutology of the popular ‘mode, though sometimes he worked with abstraction, and because the others vent doing i, it did give his stories a clean, fresh ring, ring, [thought sometimes a litde coo valiant with experimental pageantry: But what the devil, he wns ering. We hear Holden Canlfield criticizing Laurence Olivier for being a show-off. The praise is clearly disin- genuous: Bukowski is lampooning the vocabulary and sub-Jamesian sentence structure of the sort of writing, he dislikes—stiff, ornate, self-satisfied, Words and the meanings should be open and straightforward, not hid den behind polysyllabic clutter or fussy syntax ‘Once the perspective returns to the narrator its style normalizes: “Say, where's the bathroom?” Back to the writer, however, and the language is re-empurpled: “He came back with his high, white bow! of fourscore pretzels and set them before me. [ obliged and sipped at my cof fee!” From here, the narrative style bifurcates: plain for the ‘main character, flowery and highfalutin for the artiste. ‘To Bukowski cars, grandiloquence is not beaut fil; it tries too hard to please. A lofty style speaks for a writing workshop or for the author's own vanity, but not for the hardscrabble realities of life—which is what the work demands. This makes "Cacoethes” a neat ‘miicrocosm for—and the first example of —Bukowski’s preoccupation with the human face and what it reveals about character, in fiction as in life. Early in the story, the narrator describes the writer: a huge man, large-boned, tall, wide, somehow fortified. T glanced at his face and didn’t find it particularly strik~ nz” The writer has his own thoughts about appearance: “thought you were a younger man’"I'm twenty-five; Danswered, “but I've led a hard life” ‘There a strikingly similar scene in Ham on Rye, Bu: Kowskis tragicomic memoir-as-bildungstoman, where a [EBstodian accosts Chinaski for skulking in a school hall- {Bey on prom night without a date or a tuxedo: “Get (Peer a out of here before I call the cops!’ ‘What for? This is the Senior Prom and I'm a senior: “Bullshit!” he said. “You're at least 22 years old!” In “Cacoethes” the first-person perspective is unsur- get, Bukowski’ face and body ‘were promiscuous with giant boils,and the California girls wanted nothing to do with him. Ugly faces, Chinaski re= peatedly argues, are more honest, and therefore more beau tif than the assembly-line perfection of Ken and Barbie. This story makes thie prising, When he was at se that writers should operate ac~ cording to the same principles, avoid ostentation because ofits inherent falsity A pretty face and a well-manicured sentence might appear perfect, but Bukowski would argue that cheir enhanced features—enhanced by plastic surgery or by highbrow vocabulary—are fiaudulent and ugly. The blunt Anglo-Saxon phrase, like a gap tooth, s beaurifal in its stark inelegance. Andrew Madigan U.S. CENSUS OF 2010 BY THE U.S. CENSUS BUREAU Cextnar Question: [What ca population counting teach ms about American style? Primary font of the 2010 census ‘Goth, Steondary fone Aut, Cos oF ‘the census Supot How! commercial in 2M $2 Say loany wage of Si Femara censseter a 20108 $2 15 tetional panage (Arse I, Section 2) ‘hal be me wk ean fr Fs Metin oft Corso Be United Steed wii ery asia Ter fs Yan otc Maer hy sl by Lae es: eat Taegan "A pln fc ala earine peta fa Sistem etaprie™ 1940). Most ispirang slogan inserted ato Teme cools “Pt dom ot cht nd el a Cas 2510, Nusbor of questions on 2010 census Un, Namber on 1930 cena: thi: Number on 1790 cons: far he US. census is an enterprise so dul that the sheer size and scope of the dullness are exhilarating. Just processing the data from the census of 2010 will take until che end of 2013. Amid the deluge of numbers andslick visualizations, the language of the project will be Targely forgotten, which is for the best in the case of the survey questions themselves. The use of the word Negro fn question 9, the awkward designations for persons of “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin” in question 8, and the lack of options for transgender individuals in ques tion 6 all sparked predictable controversies last year. ‘Worth saluting, by contrast, is the bizarrely compel- Ting thetoric surrounding the decennial questionnaire. Nowhere is the beauty of the banal so apparent as in the slogans, mailings, and brochures of the US. Census Bureau. The taglines churned out by its public-relations program—ffom YOU CAN KNOW YOUR COUNTRY ONLY IF YouR counTRy kNows vou (1940) t0 IT COUNTS FoR MORE THAN YOU THINK (1990)—tepresent each decade's best effort to say nothing, offend nobody, and motivate everyone. Literally. The goal is to reach all 300 million people living in the United States, and motivation is key ‘because for every 1 percent increase in participation, the government saves $85 million. Phat makes census slogan ering some of the highest-stakes wordsmithing around, ‘The sentences coined in this crucible have come to follow identifiable conventions. Their diction is almost universally simple: contractions, colloguialisms, mono syllables, and puns are the norm, as in ANSWER THE CEN~ sus! WE'RE COUNTING ON YOU! (1980). The address tends to be first- or second-person, and, in the longer examples, inverted and parallel constructions are com- ‘mon, Consider the YoU CaN KNOW mantra from 1940— technically an antimetabole—or 20108 WE MOVE FOR- WARD WHEN YOU SEND IT BACK. Nearly all of the 2010 taglines were typical in their compliance with these rules, but they were exceptional for the charm of their hypnotic bureaucratese, and for what they reveal about how we number ourselves. Br COUNTED IN 2010, This command, masked as an invitation, neatly captures the two-sidedness of popula tion counting in general. When groups allow themselves to be tallied, they undergo a process of fruitful objectifi- cation: they submit to the labeling process in return for the ability to make demands and receive compensation. ‘This four-word phrase reflects that balance of flattening and empowerment because it sounds deceptively like an offer. It also embodies the tricky legal ground on which the census rests. Technically, according to Title 13, you have no choice but to respond; avoiding or falsifying Census Bureau surveys comes with a fine of between ‘one hundred and ten thousand dollars, depending on which clause you're prosecuted under. For political and logistical reasons, however, the fine has very rarely been enforced. Be counted—a passive construction that’s also an imperative—expresses that bind with eerie precision. Neither the enumerating agent of the U.S. government nor the you being enumerated is present in the words themselves, but the power relations are clear. YOUR ANSWERS WILL ONLY BE USED FOR STATIST CAL PURPOSES, AND NO OTHER PURPOSE. This elegantly vacuous reassurance is a classic. It appeared in clunk- ier forms in previous decades, and the new streamlined model adorned a series of notices sent from the direc~ tor of the Census Bureau to American homes last spring. ‘The repetition of purpose, which snaps shut each of the sentence’ two clauses, eviscerates the word staristzal, de- priving it of any discernible meaning. The result is both a truthful balm for those concerned about privacy— individual data is indeed heavily protected—and a bald faced lie: your answers are used for the purpose of decid ing how federal and state legislatures are reapportioned and how over $400 billion in resources is distributed. W'S IN OUR HANDS. The central tagline of the cen- sus of 2010 is a triumph of the idiom. Hands, the sole conerete noun, alludes to the tradition of calling roll and raising hands. The unanchored pronoun it couples the paper questionnaire to the process of tabulation self.And our represents a shift away from the accusatory second-person language of, say, the warning from 2000 that THIS 18 YOUR FUTURE, DON’T LEAVE IT BLANK. ‘We and our, in fact, have traditionally been used chiefly for census marketing in communities of color, The 2000 motto morphed into THs 1s OUR FUTURE in Affican ‘American neighborhoods and £8 NUESTRO FUTURO in Latino ones. In 2008, 11's 1N OUR HANDS was tested in focus groups featuring undercounted populations, where it beat out more mystical and more prosaic alternatives like THE POTENTIAL OF We and 11's TIME TO MAKE YOUR Manx. Niftily then, the nationwide slogan for 2010 was chosen in large part by the least enfianchised. Jeremy Schmidt