Stylized isn't that obsessive
01/25/2010 21:16
Mark Garvey
Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style
2009
Actually, the title promises more than it delivers by way of quirkiness. The book is partly a look at the history of The Elements of Style, partly a glimpse at the interactions of E.B. White with a number of people including William Strunk and the Macmillan editors and managers who made the book possible. The book obsession elements seem like they were inserted at the behest of an editor, to add a little quirkiness to an otherwise pretty straightforward story.
Part of the appeal of Stylized is the glimpse it gives the reader of New York literary culture during the years when White was one of its bright lights. In this sense, it reminds me a bit of One Drop, Bliss Broyard’s book about discovering her father was black. Anatole Broyard was a critic for the New York Times in the seventies and eighties. The difference is, Garvey is right: “few books of any size, have had the impact on American literary culture and thought that The Elements of Style has.” White’s ability to abstract (a little, not obsessively) from writing to life (“it was worse to be irresolute than to be wrong”) probably accounts for much of the appeal of The Elements. That, and the fact it helps people write.
Garvey gives White credit for having “that straightforward prose that was exceptionally polished...without giving the impression of labor.” (33) In one of the professional writers’ comments (I can’t find it -- more about this in a moment), someone makes the point that White creates a “myth” of simple prose and clear thinking. Garvey falls into this myth headfirst, taking several opportunities to attack postmodernism. He disparages theory, and even belittles attempts to make language more gender-inclusive. In drafting Strunk and White into his crusade, he’s probably oversimplifying the positions they would have taken, which would have been both more nuanced and more humorous than Garvey’s pedantic rants.
I couldn’t find the author of the part I just paraphrased, because the book is organized in such a jumble. Garvey apparently had conversations with several authors. They give their opinions on The Elements and reflections on how it has influenced their work. Some of these are interesting, some simply reinforce points Garvey has already made well enough, and pad the pages. The real problem, though, is that Garvey or his editors chose to break these comments up, and intersperse them throughout the text. In some cases, this may hide the fact that people repeated themselves quite a bit. My objection is, many of these short blurbs come, complete with their own little boxes like textbook sidebars, in the middle of the story. They completely break the flow, and I frequently found myself paging back, to see what Garvey had been saying, before he so rudely interrupted himself.
Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style
2009
Actually, the title promises more than it delivers by way of quirkiness. The book is partly a look at the history of The Elements of Style, partly a glimpse at the interactions of E.B. White with a number of people including William Strunk and the Macmillan editors and managers who made the book possible. The book obsession elements seem like they were inserted at the behest of an editor, to add a little quirkiness to an otherwise pretty straightforward story.
Part of the appeal of Stylized is the glimpse it gives the reader of New York literary culture during the years when White was one of its bright lights. In this sense, it reminds me a bit of One Drop, Bliss Broyard’s book about discovering her father was black. Anatole Broyard was a critic for the New York Times in the seventies and eighties. The difference is, Garvey is right: “few books of any size, have had the impact on American literary culture and thought that The Elements of Style has.” White’s ability to abstract (a little, not obsessively) from writing to life (“it was worse to be irresolute than to be wrong”) probably accounts for much of the appeal of The Elements. That, and the fact it helps people write.
Garvey gives White credit for having “that straightforward prose that was exceptionally polished...without giving the impression of labor.” (33) In one of the professional writers’ comments (I can’t find it -- more about this in a moment), someone makes the point that White creates a “myth” of simple prose and clear thinking. Garvey falls into this myth headfirst, taking several opportunities to attack postmodernism. He disparages theory, and even belittles attempts to make language more gender-inclusive. In drafting Strunk and White into his crusade, he’s probably oversimplifying the positions they would have taken, which would have been both more nuanced and more humorous than Garvey’s pedantic rants.
I couldn’t find the author of the part I just paraphrased, because the book is organized in such a jumble. Garvey apparently had conversations with several authors. They give their opinions on The Elements and reflections on how it has influenced their work. Some of these are interesting, some simply reinforce points Garvey has already made well enough, and pad the pages. The real problem, though, is that Garvey or his editors chose to break these comments up, and intersperse them throughout the text. In some cases, this may hide the fact that people repeated themselves quite a bit. My objection is, many of these short blurbs come, complete with their own little boxes like textbook sidebars, in the middle of the story. They completely break the flow, and I frequently found myself paging back, to see what Garvey had been saying, before he so rudely interrupted himself.
