Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies by Marilyn McEntyre

Caring For Words in Culture of Lies has been on my radar for a couple of years and I was thrilled when a friend gave me her copy. It pushed all the right buttons for me since it's about the necessity of preserving beautiful language - not just flowery words, but words that say precisely what they mean.

I underlined page after page in this book, which reinforced all the reasons why I blog about literature. Reading and writing generate an interior, where an active and sometimes contemplative life goes on, carried out through those essential elements that constitute the modern human being: a memory, a conscience, and a self.(p. 80) Basically, we are what we read. And a steady diet of drivel weakens us.

In an age of information overload, McEntyre says her students have a constant barrage of sound bites thrown at them. They hear so many words so constantly, their capacities to savor words - to pause over them, ponder them, reflect upon them, hear the echoes of ancient cadences, and attune themselves to allusiveness and alliteration - are eroding. (p. 19)

Just as we should be good stewards of natural resources, McEntyre writes that we should also be guardians of another precious resource: words. Like any other life-sustaining resource, language can be depleted, polluted, contaminated, eroded, and filled with artificial stimulants. Like any other resource, it needs the protection of those who recognize its value and commit themselves to good stewardship. (p. 1)

Like food, language has been "industrialized." Words come to us processed like cheese, depleted of nutrients, flattened and packaged, artificially colored and mass marketed. And just as it takes a little extra effort and attention to find, buy, eat, and support the production of healthy foods, it is strenuous business to insist on usable, flexible, precise, enlivening language. (p. 16)

She goes on to say that as usable words are lost, experience becomes cruder and less communicable. And with the loss of the subtlety, clarity, and reliability of language, we become more vulnerable to crude exercises of power. (p. 6) This is one of the chilling themes of Orwell's 1984.

Among her many suggestions and strategies for preserving rich language are 1) deepening and sharpening reading skills, 2) cultivating habits of speaking and listening that foster precision and clarity, 3) sharing stories, 4) indulging in word play and 5) refusing clichés and sound bites that substitute for authentic analysis.

This book is not for everybody, but it's a definite must-read for stewards and lovers of fine language. 

Woe is I by Patricia T. O'Conner

"Most of us don't know a gerund from a gerbil and don't care,

 but we'd like to speak and write as though we did."

Woe is I was written to help those who are intimidated by correct grammar usage. O'Conner (an editor at The New York Times Book Review) does her best to demistify the rules by giving helpful illustrations. In describing punctuation marks, she writes, "A comma acts as a yellow light, a period is a red light, and a semicolon is a flashing red light."

Although the book is meant for novices, it was just as enjoyable to someone like me who knows quite a lot about English. Because I appreciate beautiful, precise language, I enjoy an occasional refresher course in how to use it. I skimmed over the sections on rules I know well, and focused on the ones that give me problems.

And I revelled in grammar trivia like 1) the word "kudos" is singular, 2) "myriad" used to mean ten thousand, and 3) the word "oblivious" is followed by the word "of", and not "to".  It is weird how I get a kick out of stuff like that.

I discovered I've been using parameter interchangebly with perimiter, which is not the same thing. Also, minuscule is spelled with a "u" and not an "i". I am always puzzled by the use of "graduated" without a pronoun, but O'Conner clears up that confusion on p. 110.

This helpful little book, which is written with plenty of tips and writing samples (and a good dose of dry humor), would be excellent for use in a high school, homeschool setting.










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Faith in Literature

After my rant about substandard writing in Christian romances, I thought I'd create a list of classics that skillfully portray the intense Christian beliefs of their central characters without nauseating the reader.

The Warden  by Trollope (my review here)

The Dean's Watch by Goudge (my review here)

Gilead by Robinson (my review here)

Cry, the Beloved Country by Paton (my review here)

Middlemarch by Eliot (my review here)

Jane Eyre  by Brontë (my review here)

Silence by Endo (my review here)

Marvin Olasky (in the June 28 issue of World Magazine) listed his ten favorite Christian fiction authors: Randy Alcorn, Don Brown, Tim Downs, Brian Godawa, Steven James, Ray Keating, John K. Reed, Randy Singer, Dave Swavely and Bret Lott. (I have not read ANY of these guys, but wonder if they lean toward more guy-friendly stories.)

Do you have any recommendations for novels (new or old) that show faith in God in a positive, convincing way?

(For more suggestions on faith in literature, the list of "100 Authors of Faith" at ImageJournal.org has always intrigued me. I've only read about a dozen of them so far.)

The Problem with Christian Romance Novels

On very rare occasions I grab a Christian romance novel when I want a quick, light read that will be inoffensive. The problem, however, is that bad writing offends me. Honestly, where are the editors of these books!?!? My most recent attempt was a book about a widow who discovers her husband, a medical doctor, had secretely gambled away their wealth.

She starts a new life with God’s help and meets a wonderful widower and lives happily ever after. There was nothing terribly wrong with the story, but it was supposed to take place in Victorian England and all the dialogue sounded one hundred percent American.

Many descriptive (showing) sentences were followed by unnecessary telling sentences such as this: “I wouldn’t mind weavin’ baskets if I could stay home from school all the time.” Obviously he dislikes school, but the author has to hammer that in with the following phrase: Jeremiah often let it be known that the pursuit of education was low on his list of priorities. This kind of disprespect to the intelligence of the reader rankles me.

I am a Christian who appreciates a story in which the protagonist’s actions are governed by his sincere faith, but I thought that the preachiness of the book was over the top. 

In my younger days I was a big fan of Janette Oke and Gilbert Morris books, but I tired of them when they all started sounding the same. And after swearing them off for a time, I just never could get back into them. The best writer by far in the Christian romance category is Jan Karon. Although her books are not strictly romances, she somehow she broke the formulaic barrier and wrote believable, non-syrupy novels about people of faith (with intelligent sentences to boot!)

What are your thoughts about Christian romance novels? 

Mourning the Death of Beautiful Language

        I felt a pang when I read this sentence in my new recipe book: No one disputes the healthful properties of fish.  All those great omega thingies protecting our arteries and keeping strokes and heart attacks at bay.  But fish is also the hurried cook's BFF. (emphases mine)

        Last night I was leafing through a Scholastic Book catalog that arrived at our house.  I remembered how I used to read it as a child, carefully savoring each title and circling the many books I wanted.  But what a sad surprise to see a plethora of titles such as, Underpants Thunderpants!, Cinderalla's Bum, and Me Want Pet! (These may be wonderful books, but the titles would seem to belie that.) Further perusing led me to the book, Wind in the Wallows, a knockoff title from the great children's classic, which is, sad to say, a book about flatulent pigs. What a horrible literary legacy we are giving our young!

        I believe the Bible should be accessible to all people in all places and have no quarrel with recommending translations that are more understandable than the King James Version. At the same time, I deeply regret that many newer versions eradicate all the beauty and majesty of biblical language.

        Psalm 18:18-19 in the New American Standard version reads: They confronted me in the day of my calamity, but the Lord was my stay.  He brought me forth into a broad place; He rescued me, because he delighted in me.  A more modern version reads: They hit me when I was down, but God stuck by me.  He stood me up on a wide-open field; I stood there saved - surprised to be loved!  Am I the only one who thinks that this is distressing? It makes God sound like my BFF, which is certainly belittling to His greatness, power and love.

        I know I will be accused of curmudgeonliness, but I can't help but think that when we translate phrases to their lowest possible difficulty of meaning that we are robbing our children (and ourselves) of one of life's exquisite beauties - words that take us beyond our daily reality and lift us to a higher plain.

        On a more positive note, a second grader was reading to me recently from a book called Chrysanthemum by Kevin Henkes. Most of the book is in simple, childlike language, but occasionally Henkes throws in a word to savor like: "Pish!" or "winsome" or "jaundiced." I loved it that he respected kids enough to trust them with big words.

The Invisible Child by Katherine Paterson

The Invisible Child (subtitled "On Reading and Writing Books For Children") is a collection of speeches and essays written by Katherine Patterson over the course of her career.  I have mixed feelings about some of her books, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one; I was particularly impressed with how integral her faith is to her writing.  All her books are ultimately about characters who are homesick for Eden.

Some choice quotes:

On good writing: I suppose it would be possible to write a book whose plot jumped all around like a frog on pep pills, but that's not what books are about.  If that's the kind of writing you want to do, I think you should be in a more hectic medium.  Books are meant to be read slowly and digested.  These days people don't pray much or go to services of worship, they don't commune with nature - why, they hardly go to a national park without a TV set, a laptop, and a cell phone.  The book is almost the last refuge of reflection - the final outpost of wisdom.  I want children to have the gifts that books can give, and I don't believe they can get them from a book that attempts to imitate the frantic fragmentation of contemporary life. (p. 55)

On dark themes in children's books: There was no way my parents could have protected me from the world as it is.  I had already seen too much.  What I needed was not an outer guard but an inner strength.  I needed to know that one could endure the loss of Paradise.  "That's what we were put on earth to do," says Margaret Drabble, "to endeavor to face the impossible." This is what reading The Yearling helped me to do - to endeavor to face the impossible. (p. 177)


On classics:  I was always told that I should read the Odyssey.  It popped up in small doses in English and Latin textbooks as I was growing up.  But somehow I never got around to the whole thing until I was forty-six years old. . . . Do you know why the Odyssey has lasted for nearly three thousand years?  Because it is simply a marvelous story.  Why did people keep telling me that I ought to read it so I could be an educated person?  Was it because they had never read it themselves, but had always meant to?  I can't imagine anyone who had ever read it, certainly not Rouse's translation, anyone who had ever really read it, telling someone else to read it because it was good for him.  Read it because it's one of the best stories you'll ever read. . . . (from a 1979 lecture on "Words")

Quote by Anthony Trollope on Writing Books

If indeed a man writes his books badly, or paints his pictures badly, because he can make his money faster in that fashion than by doing them well, and at the same time proclaims them to be the best he can do, - if in fact, he sells shoddy for broadcloth, - he is dishonest, as is any other fraudulent dealer.

- Anthony Trollope from his Autobiography (1883)

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

I am constantly on the lookout for good resources for my Freshman Writing class. A fifty cent copy of The Lively Art of Writing was a great thrift store find and its simple clear advice has been incorporated into my lectures. Bird by Bird was picked up for the same purpose, but turned out to be quite different. Instead of grammar rules, it contains pep talks for would-be writers. The advice is for people who already love to write so I ended up reading it for personal benefit.

Although the book is sprinkled with distracting obscenities, it gives sound principles on how to create believable characters, plots and settings. Solid wisdom can be sifted out from the chaff and I was truly inspired to spend time each day writing down memories that may later be shaped into stories.

Although Lamott encourages her writing students to pursue publication of their work, she contends that their primary reason for writing must be self-satisfaction:

Even if only the people in your writing group read your memoirs or stories or novel, even if you only wrote your story so that one day your children would know what life was like whey you were a child and you knew the name of every dog in town – still, to have written your version is an honorable thing to have done… If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. (p. 235)

Other favorite quotes: There’s no point in writing hopeless novels. We all know we are going to die; what’s important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this. (p. 51)

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you’re conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of. (p.225)

I think this is how are supposed to be in the world – present and in awe. (p.100)

The Lively Art of Writing by Lucile Vaughan Payne

I read The Lively Art of Writing in preparation for a class I teach and liked it so much that I rewrote my syllabus around it. Its emphasis is on writing good essays, but the advice could apply to many kinds of writing. Although the book has not been updated since its 1969 publication (making some of the examples outdated), its information is still fresh and relevant. The Lively Art of Writing is a wonderful book for struggling writers. It clearly explains how to write a thesis, what makes a good thesis, how to write a paragraph, how to connect paragraphs and how to conclude well. Each chapter contains clear instructions as well as assignments for practicing each new writing skill.

Payne’s gentle witticisms reminded me of Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. An example from page 104:

Sally saw the cat. It was a big cat. It was a black cat. It was a big, black cat.

You learned, obediently, what you had to learn: that sentences started with a capital letter and ended with a period, that Sally was a noun, saw was a verb, and big was an adjective. You probably learned, in addition, a few things that weren’t strictly a part of the lesson. You learned to hate Sally. You learned to hate Sally’s cat. And you learned to hate sentences. If sentences were this kind of stuff, who wanted them? You had the uneasy feeling that it was dangerous, even faintly immoral, to put a sentence in writing until you had starched and stiffened and sterilized it beyond any resemblance to natural speech.

While I’ll always be partial to the genius of Strunk and White, I thought that Payne did a more thorough job of explaining the mechanics of writing. This is a great book for those who would like to improve their writing.

If You Can Talk, You Can Write by Joel Saltzman

I picked up If You Can Talk You Can Write as a resource for my College Writing Class after reading rave reviews at Amazon. Saltszman contends that anyone who can put two sentences together in conversation can do the same in writing and encourages his readers to get over any writer’s block they may be experiencing. “Unleashing the writer within you” is the book’s basic theme and since I have very little trouble scribbling out my thoughts, I didn’t find it particularly inspiring.

Usually I write off lightweight books such as this one, but, frankly, it was on target for a college freshman audience. Slightly quirky and profane, (and, at times, aggravatingly simple) these short chapters were just right for getting class discussions started. Saltzman’s mantra to shoot for “progress rather than perfection” was something I repeated often to my would-be writers.

If you’re looking for brilliance, try C.S. Lewis, but if you want pithy, uncomplicated instructions on how to start writing, this book may be for you.

The Golden Book on Writing by David Lambuth

I recently found The Golden Book on Writing  in my father-in-law's book case and wondered how it would measure up to Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. Both books were authored by college professors as guide books for their students. Elements was published by William Strunk in 1919 at Cornell while Golden Book was published in 1923 at Dartmouth. The booklets (neither is more than 80 pages long) were intended for use within their respective college campuses. What sets them apart is that E.B. White revised Elements for the general public in 1959. And he did it with such precision and wit that it quickly came to be considered an essential guide to good writing.

Frankly, I expected Golden Book to be inferior, but it really can't be compared to Elements. Although both books emphasize economy of language - i.e., the removal of all unnecessary words, Lambuth's main point is to use common sense when writing, even when it occasionally breaks the rules.

Here are some gems from the book:

Good writing - as I have remarked - comes only from clear thinking, set down in simple and natural speech, and afterwards revised in accordance with good usage... After all, good writing is like good social skills. It is learned by constant association with those who practice it, and it must be instinctive and un-selfconscious before it is of the slightest value. That is why you can learn how to write only be reading well. The man who writes with one eye on the textbook of rhetoric, or one half of his brain trying to remember the rules, is like the man who can't tell whether to take off his hat or to use his fork or his spoon until he has remembered what was said on page 74 or 135 of some so-called "Book of Etiquette." Gentleman do not act by rules nor learn how to conduct themselves out of textbooks. Neither do good writers. Therefore: Read...read...and still read. (p. 4)

Ill-chosen words, words that are vague or misleading, give away the fact that you have been too lazy to think clearly what you are trying to say or else that you don't know what words mean. The only satisfactory way to enlarge a poverty-stricken vocabulary is to read widely. (p. 27)

William Strunk Quotes on Writing

Quotes from William Strunk, Jr.. on good writing:

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

An example of “too wordy”: The Taming of the Shrew is rather weak in spots. Shakespeare does not portray Katharine as a very admirable character, nor does Bianca remain long in the memory as an important character in Shakespeare’s works.

His solution: The women in The Taming of the Shrew are unattractive. Katharine is disagreeable, Bianca insignificant.

He continues, “Note, in the examples, that when a sentence is made stronger, it usually becomes shorter. Thus, brevity is a byproduct of vigor.”

The Elements of Style by Strunk and White

I’m embarrassed to say that I have had the definitive book on the fundamentals of writing on my shelves for many years without opening it. After spending four weeks reading The Count of Monte Cristo, I was looking for something less hefty and was attracted to this little book for its simplicity and brevity. Though not as hilarious as Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss, The Elements of Style is wryly humorous and a pleasure to read.

Originally published in 1935 and revised in 1959, Elements is the essential grammar handbook. As E.B. White writes in the intro, "The Elements of Style was Will Strunk’s attempt to cut the vast tangle of English rhetoric down to size and write its rules on the head of a pin."

In just over 70 pages he does the job well. The first part of the book reviews specific grammar rules. The second part highlights popular mistakes and the last pages deal with a writer’s specific style. Strunk argues that good writing is concise and that sentences should contain no unnecessary words. This does not mean that sentences must be short or lack detail, but that every word should count. I loved his common sense approach to writing and have used many of his suggestions to clarify my own writing. This is a book to read and re-read. Highly recommended!