I am an accomplished composer of letters to the press, as I hope I have demonstrated, and an expert curator of lists, ditto. But the Test was a new departure for me. I came to regard it as in essence fanciful. I had very little experience as a consumer of fancies and none whatsoever as a producer, but that is exactly what seemed to be required. Although my ‘raw material’, as Merle encouraged me to think of it — the phrase never ceased to remind me of meat — had all been culled from published, or at the least, public sources, I was now required to place the elements into entirely new and undeniably imaginary relationships with one another. Imaginary relationships … I was like a man who, never having held a needle between his fingers, is given some mismatched offcuts, a fistful of gauds and ribbons, a few skeins of thread, and commanded to make himself a suit of clothes.
I took my cue from Merle, laying sentences side by side, building up paragraphs incrementally, nudging those into groups or ‘fascicles’, as I called them, allowing the Test to shape itself anyhow. I found that this patchworking obliged me to begin inventing as well. When a sentence wasn’t quite the right shape, I had to lop off a bit here or add on a bit there, cutting my cloth to suit the pattern − not my pattern, but its own. This was fancy, pure and simple, and so antithetical to my usual way of working, which consists of a precise and considered re-establishment of the disturbed order, that I frequently lost my nerve and wished to throw the whole project over. I forged myself a golden rule: the corrigenda themselves, the tesserae that formed the substance of the Test, could not be invented. The plaster (and I did seem to require quite a bit of it) mattered less. I took comfort in the thought that the laws that governed my seemingly random activities were bound to become apparent as I went along. In other words, I trusted that this detour through the thickets of invention would bring me back, wiser and happier, to the manicured lawns of the given.
For quite some time now, I have been inclined, looking back, to think that this is exactly what happened. But just lately, new doubts have beset me. Perhaps I shall never walk in that garden again?
Merle became my inspiration. I tried out sentences on her occasionally, as they took shape, but I always baulked at a paragraph. And naturally the finished material was kept from the others. Mevrouw Bonsma was relieved, I think. Spilkin, on the other hand, was always looking over my shoulder and winking so deliberately you’d have thought he was trying to demonstrate the musculature of the eye. It got to the point where I had to carry my confidential papers with me to the Gentlemen’s room to answer the call of nature.
As the months passed, the Test’s purpose became clearer to me, even if the laws of its composition did not. I began to see it as the centrepiece of an event, a championship if you like. When the Test was finished, and I had no inkling when that might be, it would be administered. There would be entrants, and they would pay a fee, and the one with the best results would receive a prize. A dictionary might be apt; say the seventh edition of the Concise — something newly revised would appeal to the youngsters — paid for out of the entry monies. I would have to decide on the winner myself. Merle’s notion that the Test be allowed to enter the world without correction was indefensible. I would prepare a corrected version, and hold it back until such time as the Test had been administered, so that everyone might have the ‘fun’ that meant so much to them. But then the corrected version would be made available too, as an antidote and an objective corroboration of my adjudication. If the inaugural event had to be delayed, well, so be it. It was essential, at any rate, that I myself adjudicate, that I retain control at least in the beginning. Later on, should the event become too popular for one person to manage, I might consider employing an administrator. Start small, I told myself. But how small was that? How many people would be interested in entering a proofreading competition? It would depend, among other things, on how well it was publicized. Would one advertise in the papers? What if people responded in ‘droves’, as the drudges put it? Who would foot the bill for a venue and for duplicating copies of the Test itself? Then again, if the entry fees were fixed at the right level, the whole undertaking might become profitable and eke out my pension. While these thoughts went round in my head, the Test continued to grow, and with it, my grand plans for the inaugural competition. Think big, I told myself. Instead of a dozen boozy subeditors cooped up in the ping-pong room at the Hillbrow Recreation Centre, why not the cream of the publishing world, possibly a few international figures — hardly celebrities, but prominent people, a Hugh Blythorne, a Dr Kate Babcock (if she was still with us) — all comfortably settled in the Selborne Hall? Competing not for a used copy of Peter Mark Roget’s Thesaurus, but for the Oxford English Dictionary in twenty volumes. The Proofreader of the Year Competition. The Aubrey Tearle Proofreader of the Year Competition. The First Annual etcetera.
I wrote in turn, and at mounting expense, to the Publishers’ Association, the larger publishing houses, the Printers’ Association, the larger printing houses, the smaller publishers and printers, the chains of bookshops, my former employers at Posts and Telecommunications, setting out the details of my project and requesting a meeting to discuss sponsorship. Disgracefully, I had not a single reply. Then I sent an abridged version of my letter to the Star.
17 May 1988
Dear Sir,
The late edition of your newspaper of 10 May asks: ‘How real is the threat of Muslin fundamentalism?’ In my view, it threatens the very fabric of society.
I am a retired proofreader with forty years’ practical experience involving a wide range of publications, notably telephone directories. In the course of my career, I came to believe that a standardized Test of proofreading ability would go a long way towards ensuring that qualified personnel are employed and standards maintained in this all-important but undervalued department.
I have devoted the years of my retirement to devising such a Test, drawing on Records kept during a lifetime of work, and this undertaking is now nearing completion. Besides its obvious value as a means of grading our own abilities, the Test may have wider applications in commerce and entertainment, which would serve to publicize the profession and draw young school-leavers into its ranks.
I am approaching your newspaper first because you fly the blue peter of the profession from your masthead, so to speak, in the Greater Johannesburg area. (Many of my letters, including several on orthographical subjects, have been published in your columns, and so we are not strangers to one another.) I would be happy to discuss the ways in which you might become involved in my venture at your convenience. A representative extract from the Test, an ‘appetizer’, will be forwarded on request.
Yours faithfully, etcetera
Breaking with tradition, I let Merle and Spilkin read the letter before I mailed it. Spilkin had me change ‘practical’ to ‘hands-on’, ‘our own’ to ‘in-house’ and ‘first’ to ‘up-front’. He said this prepositional largesse would show that I was clued up on current usage. Merle had me change ‘at your convenience’ to ‘as soon as possible’ — ‘Or they’ll think you want to meet them in the lavatory.’ I made the changes against my better judgement, which is why I present the original here, without meaning to suggest that it would have provoked a more satisfactory response than the tardy one I duly received.
10 June 1988
Dear Mr Tearl,