Into each life, a little bit of E.B. White should fall. Chances are, a little will grow to be much more, as your interest pays dividends. White wrote the book (Elements of Style) on the craft of writing, for the 20th century, his fans say, and it is also true that White had a knack for children’s stories for kids of all ages (Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little).
don logo house verbs
The Elements of Style, though thin and pinched when compared to the rest of White’s work, is the tip of the spear that White chucks at us, in all high seriousness and glee. Oddly enough, when we get his point, more often than not we are grateful for the prick, so to speak. In the many years since White released Elements, at mid-century, many of us have used that spear to make a point with writers in need of help with the mechanics of writing. It can be no surprise that many readers do not appreciate Elements, perhaps because of small, almost invisible scars in the midsection and across the back at shoulder height.
I stand with those who love the book. I have read and re-read the little book, and I have multiple copies including a Dover edition of the original William Strunk version (1918) that White edited and added to many years later. Strunk taught White at Cornell, and White teaches us — all over, all the time, any place.
However, I am getting ahead of myself, for there is a third group that is larger than the fans and detractors combined, the group known as Other. Most people in need of White’s attentions have not heard of him, I’m guessing.
So.
The Elements of Style, published in 1957, revised a booklet on style for students at Cornell University in the wilds of upstate New York that Prof. William Strunk wrote early in the century. White fondly recalled Strunk when a friend sent him a copy of that little old booklet, decades later. White undertook the job of adding to and taking away from Strunk’s little book.
If reading about grammar and usage is your passion, The Elements of Style will be among the ten books you would not be without should you ever find yourself on a desert island in need of some editing (note the squinting modifier).
White shows writers how to be clear and concise and shows editors how to bring fuzzy writing into focus. If you have not read The Elements of Style, you will benefit from reading it. No doubt about it, and I do not even need to see your stuff to say this.
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If you do not appreciate the tone or approach of Elements, or if you simply enjoy reading from the category that White all but created, for our time, a smallish work of recent birthing that you might enjoy is How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, by Stanley Fish.
Many of you will know of Fish from his work in The New York Times.
I know of Fish from the angle of being an English major at UC Berkeley. Fish, who had just published a book of literary criticism titled Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, visited my senior seminar class on John Milton. It was a stimulating and challenging hour that we spent with this man of many letters, who went on from lit crit to become a professor of law. His little book on sentences is a response to problems that his law students have with their writing.
Fish’s book offers a quote from The New Yorker on the back flap of the dust jacket — “… whether people like Stanley Fish or not, they tend to find him fascinating.”
I would agree.
I never have forgotten the point on that one occasion that I was in his presence when Fish told a guy across the table from me, who had been doing a lot of talking with his hands, “You have a very sloppy mind.”
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In the push to publicize his book, Fish appeared on National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation program. He said that White’s Elements does not attack the question of writing from an assumption of innocence. You must be on your way already to benefit from White’s book, he said.
Well, that is true.
However, Fish’s little book does not do so, either. Fish has written a strong book, but the level of engagement demanded is far beyond what one would want to bring to a first reading of Elements. Truth is, if you can read and write, you can benefit from either of these books.
The question of their relative merits has no charms for me.
I have read both books and am glad that I did.
Fish’s command and recall of literature is awful.
That alone recommends his little book to your attention.
A hint: Words ending in -ful can be seen as saying “full of …” or “… worthy of …”.
Awful, which is nothing like terrible.
On balance, I prefer White to Fish. White does what he sez he will do; Fish sez he will do one thing but does another.
No sloppy, mind you.
Not sloppy at all.
The point is to read early and often from anyone you can find who writes well concerning grammar and usage.
Good mechanics are hard to find.
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