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I’ve read several articles and reveiws in the past few days that caused me to think about writing as art, as a high craft at the very least. I believe there are enough authors here who believe erotica can be ‘more’ than porn or smut (though that is not what I want to discuss here). We’ve had threads and various discussions about how to write for Lit., or how to write for publication, for a certain reader, for competition, etc. I think most regular AH people know that I am not a “short and plain” type stylist; I advocate for extraordinary regard in the phrasing of a sentence, let alone a whole story.
About a week ago a couple posts criticized (again) an excerpt/sample posted on an (yet another) ‘adjective help’ thread; basically they felt the sample description of a woman’s arse was “too long”. I didn’t bother posting cos I’ve said the same thing so often, and about the same writer(s). I’ve been called academic, snobby, what-have-you, and made to feel like an outsider at times because I do not care for the Hemingway way of writing, or the style that better meets a general public reading level.
I’m not silly enough to think I’ll get anyone to change their reading or writing habits, but when I read something like what I quote below, I feel that author is speaking for me, and others, and I cannot help but call attention to them. So here is a review of a book on the particulars of Jacobean history and culture with regards to the creation of the King Jame’s Bible. I’ve edited it only for brevity (it’s quite brief altogether, the url is at the bottom of this post), and emphasized what resonates for me and my own love of English and writing.
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In love with the word —by Nicholas Lezard, April 24, 2004 - The Guardian
Power and Glory, by Adam Nicolson
… The translation may be deliberately archaic, riddled with errors, be called the Authorised Version with no surviving document authorising its use; yet the King James Bible is, quite simply, our favourite book—and one of its beauties is that you don't even have to believe in God to love it. As Philip Hensher has put it, "there is no English writer subsequently who can be trusted not to lapse into those characteristic rhythms at elevated moments".
Compare, as Nicolson does, the language of the New English Bible—which is what you'll get if you go to church these days—with that of its illustrious predecessor. You may, as did TS Eliot, find the modern version somewhat lacking in sonority. (The translation, said Eliot, "astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic".)
Nicolson is withering about the style: "The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning. Language which is not taut with a sense of its own significance, which is apologetic in its desire to be acceptable to a modern consciousness ... is no longer a language which can carry the freight the Bible requires. It has, in short, lost all authority ... [It] is a form of language which has died." And about the modern translators: "Wanting timelessness, they achieved the language of the memo." url
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For those still interested, this url leads to a review in the NYTs about the bestselling Brit book on grammar (Eats, Shoots & Leaves). I haven't any opinion of the book though it was recommended on a thread recently, but this review was delicious reading to me—its own language, style, content. I cannot imagine the book reads half as well (but that's a pre-judgement I know.) Punctuation and Its Discontents
O, crap. I must quote this:
"The greatest stylists -- those who ''hear'' as they write -- punctuate sparingly and subtly. Truss errs in saying that P. G. Wodehouse eschews the semicolon, but I can see why she thinks so. He uses it, on average, once a page, usually in a long sentence of mounting funniness, so that its luftpause, that tiny intake of breath, will puff the subsequent comma clauses along, until the last of them lands with thistledown grace. By then you're laughing so much, you're not even aware of the art behind the art.
Even ''incorrect'' punctuation, Truss admits, can enhance literary expression in the right hands. Evelyn Waugh cut commas to convey the clipped dispatch of upper-class speech: ''You see I wasn't so much asking you to agree to anything as explaining what our side propose to do.'' (Note, too, the pluralization of ''side,'' so cozily snobbish.) Indeed, there is hardly any shibboleth of style that can't be blasphemed against. Ban the comma splice, then along comes Beckett with his jagged, haunting arrhythmia. Mandate periods after every sentence, and Joyce will show you how to end a book with no stops whatever. Rail against the exclamation point, but don't expect Tom Wolfe to listen. Frown on the ellipsis, and A. G. Mojtabai will use it to express an old man's dementia in a way that clutches your heart.
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That's what I love about good writing, to see and feel those effects of mere punctuation marks.
ta, Perdita
About a week ago a couple posts criticized (again) an excerpt/sample posted on an (yet another) ‘adjective help’ thread; basically they felt the sample description of a woman’s arse was “too long”. I didn’t bother posting cos I’ve said the same thing so often, and about the same writer(s). I’ve been called academic, snobby, what-have-you, and made to feel like an outsider at times because I do not care for the Hemingway way of writing, or the style that better meets a general public reading level.
I’m not silly enough to think I’ll get anyone to change their reading or writing habits, but when I read something like what I quote below, I feel that author is speaking for me, and others, and I cannot help but call attention to them. So here is a review of a book on the particulars of Jacobean history and culture with regards to the creation of the King Jame’s Bible. I’ve edited it only for brevity (it’s quite brief altogether, the url is at the bottom of this post), and emphasized what resonates for me and my own love of English and writing.
--------------------------------------
In love with the word —by Nicholas Lezard, April 24, 2004 - The Guardian
Power and Glory, by Adam Nicolson
… The translation may be deliberately archaic, riddled with errors, be called the Authorised Version with no surviving document authorising its use; yet the King James Bible is, quite simply, our favourite book—and one of its beauties is that you don't even have to believe in God to love it. As Philip Hensher has put it, "there is no English writer subsequently who can be trusted not to lapse into those characteristic rhythms at elevated moments".
Compare, as Nicolson does, the language of the New English Bible—which is what you'll get if you go to church these days—with that of its illustrious predecessor. You may, as did TS Eliot, find the modern version somewhat lacking in sonority. (The translation, said Eliot, "astonishes in its combination of the vulgar, the trivial and the pedantic".)
Nicolson is withering about the style: "The flattening of language is a flattening of meaning. Language which is not taut with a sense of its own significance, which is apologetic in its desire to be acceptable to a modern consciousness ... is no longer a language which can carry the freight the Bible requires. It has, in short, lost all authority ... [It] is a form of language which has died." And about the modern translators: "Wanting timelessness, they achieved the language of the memo." url
--------------------------
For those still interested, this url leads to a review in the NYTs about the bestselling Brit book on grammar (Eats, Shoots & Leaves). I haven't any opinion of the book though it was recommended on a thread recently, but this review was delicious reading to me—its own language, style, content. I cannot imagine the book reads half as well (but that's a pre-judgement I know.) Punctuation and Its Discontents
O, crap. I must quote this:
"The greatest stylists -- those who ''hear'' as they write -- punctuate sparingly and subtly. Truss errs in saying that P. G. Wodehouse eschews the semicolon, but I can see why she thinks so. He uses it, on average, once a page, usually in a long sentence of mounting funniness, so that its luftpause, that tiny intake of breath, will puff the subsequent comma clauses along, until the last of them lands with thistledown grace. By then you're laughing so much, you're not even aware of the art behind the art.
Even ''incorrect'' punctuation, Truss admits, can enhance literary expression in the right hands. Evelyn Waugh cut commas to convey the clipped dispatch of upper-class speech: ''You see I wasn't so much asking you to agree to anything as explaining what our side propose to do.'' (Note, too, the pluralization of ''side,'' so cozily snobbish.) Indeed, there is hardly any shibboleth of style that can't be blasphemed against. Ban the comma splice, then along comes Beckett with his jagged, haunting arrhythmia. Mandate periods after every sentence, and Joyce will show you how to end a book with no stops whatever. Rail against the exclamation point, but don't expect Tom Wolfe to listen. Frown on the ellipsis, and A. G. Mojtabai will use it to express an old man's dementia in a way that clutches your heart.
------------------
That's what I love about good writing, to see and feel those effects of mere punctuation marks.
ta, Perdita
