Twitter, Cicero's advice for Obama, language wars, and Patti Smith's "Augustinian" memoir

Twitter isn't something I take interest in, except to review what massive volumes of people are tweeting about in order to take the pulse of trends and news. I have never received one; I have never sent one.

Today's article in Forbes on political oratory, Obama's Afghanistan speech, and the rhetorical genius of Cicero may be the first piece of writing that ever made me interested in Twitter. Author Trevor Butterworth does not praise Twitter's functionality but suggests that, even in the sound-bytten Twitter-age, we can continue to attend to style, arrangement, and diction. Amen.

Butterworth's pulse rises when he chastises journalist and writing guru William Zinnser's claim that the Latin root words of English are the "bad guys" and the Anglo-Saxon ones are the "good guys." Butterworth writes that "This, to use an apt Latinism, is illiterate," and proceeds to school Zinnser in his folly.

As a sidenote, I have not read Zinnser's piece in its entirety yet, but it looks plenty interesting. You can find it here. How can we not pay attention to people picking fights about language? I am expecting that most writing teachers, or college instructors in general, would be plenty curious to read an article titled "Writing Good English" published in The American Scholar, whether they agreed with it or not.

What gem-like properties we may find in this essai in Forbes on what Cicero may teach us about speeches and tweets . . . 118 characters -- my first (imaginary) tweet. Super.

Also, rock-n-roller Patti Smith's memoir of her young adulthood with artist Robert Mapplethorpe looks delicious, as reviewed on the Barnes & Noble website, here. The book is called Just Kids, and, according to reviewer James Parker, describes "two strange Catholic children, quite un-at-home in the world, treating each other with heroic tenderness, heroic generosity."

Smith was interviewed on Terri Gross's show last night, and her description of Mapplethorpe as a young guy was beautiful. Smith's 46 minute interview on Fresh Air and a fetching picture of her are available here.