Popular writing reminds me of image compression: part eternal truth, part Human Visual System. People enjoy fiction because it connects with them somehow; pop fiction targets the Human Narrative System. Joseph Campbell has the idea of the universal monomyth; Orson Scott Card claims that a writer's best writing happens despite the author. Orson is conceited enough to believe he's not a great writer, just a conduit of man's soul.
A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.) Maybe being restrained was good for him? if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing (including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast.")
Popularity is a tricky measure of technical merit, because it has more to do with what people need than with what you have created. Perhaps the credit for mining that need here really does lie with the publisher, who specified the story.
"... scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." is straightforward.
The 60 words in the sentence preceding that clause, are not:
"A leering tornado of flame from the southwest roared down through a half mile of underbrush upon the town of Haileybury basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore of Lake Temiskaming early Wednesday afternoon, ate its way across the railway tracks and then, fanned by a 60-mile-an-hour gale, ripped its way to the water's edge ..."
In general the phrase "the 60 words in the sentence" and the word "straightforward" are incompatible.
Out of interest, should descriptions in fiction be straightforward?
I can understand why non-fiction should be straight forward but surely one of the joys of fiction is that you fill in the gaps and ambiguities yourself.
Incidentally, I'm not defending the sentence in question which is messy, and "it's terrific blast" may be straightforward but it's also a slightly odd choice of adjective.
Personally, no, I love the shit out of sprawling twisting recursing sentences that end at the beginning and some where new simultaneously. Give me all the ambiguity, vagary and literary wankery that you can muster. Not to say my bookshelf is not equally full of horrible sci-fi that would get me laughed out of an english department for owning, let alone enjoying.
I responded the way I did because it was easy and snarky. The OP claimed to prefer the "straightforward" prose that the article lambasted, and then illustrated it with maybe the worst possible quote (for the purpose) out of the entire article. Combined with:
solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
Led me to feel that 10ren has no idea what solipsistic, narcissitic or straightforward mean and in general no clue. So... I snarked.
> solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
You omitted the beginning of that line, which was "A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - " Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic (BTW you misspelled it)?
The quote I followed it with (if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out.) is from Samuel Johnson; the same basic idea is often expressed more concisely with "kill your darlings." http://everything2.com/title/Kill+your+darlings
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part: including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." Which I still really like, because it draws a metaphor between how humans respond to a fire and the physics of how small particles are pushed by the heated air of a fire. Maybe you disagree, but to me, a clean metaphor is a very straightforward communication.
On HN, if you suspect someone has "in general no clue", it's informative to check their comment history, rather than act on an assumption. It could be that their comment is a one-off, or that you have misinterpreted it.
Normally, I don't bother responding to snark. It's irritating, but being drawn in is just a second injury. And it's rare on HN anyway. But I'm puzzled when people are snarky, as it seems unrelated to the topic. So it's helpful that you have explained your thinking, and so I've taken the trouble to explain my original comment.
If snark comes easily to you, you might be more comfortable on reddit (though snark there is usually purely in fun.)
Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic
No.
Or at least no more so than is inherent in all writing.
As for the good doctor Johnson, I would hesitate to use the inventor of the universal refutation as an authority when arguing against indulging in one's cleverness.
Faulkner is a similarly hypocritical source in a plea for clarity.
"Kill your darlings" isn't terrible advice, but taken alone it's as fatuous "write with verbs." Taken alone the basic idea is don't write anything you personally like, which is exactly the sort of life choice that quickly leads to a bottle.
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part:
One specific part preceded by a mountain of shit. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing doesn't actually work unless his "bad" writing is in fact straightforward, which is a shaky claim when the supporting evidence is a small fraction of a single very bad sentence.
Which as far as I'm concerned just makes your statement worse. Those are some singularly (plurally?) innocuous bits of word play, one of which it should be pointed out comes from his autobiography an excuse to be a little extra self indulgent if there ever was one.
Don't knock your sci-fi books. I have an ex-g/f with a PhD in English Literature (more precisely Dickens) who read Star Trek novels to unwind. Different books for different times.
nah, don't get me wrong I was raised on a steady diet of sci-fi and love it to death, when I say I own a lot of terrible sci-fi I mean it in the best possible sense.
1. That piece does nothing to imply that the style is straightforward, nor does it actually talk about using long sentences with many clauses to create momentum, unless you considered "consciousness and longing" to be momentum-ous.
2. No it really doesn't create a sense of momentum, growing or not, especially when you talk about a town "basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore." A vaguely alliterative load of Ss does not make for an exciting sentence.
3. "mostly short anglo-saxon words and the long sentence, broken into multiple clauses" is rather in specific compared to my statement of in general anyway.
4. Tornadoes don't leer, and one would assume it was already traveling at 60 miles an hour so the momentum shouldn't be growing anyway.
And I believe that it was good that the boys are never described much (contrary to Weingarten's disappointment at the discovery of that). It's not a bug but a feature -- it allows the readers to identify with the boys more not less!
I've read a bunch of Perry Mason books as I was very young and I remember that none of the main characters was described much. I believed even then that it's good so. I was able to imagine them as I'd like them to look like.
He might get carried away with his writing, but I liked this little gem quoted in the article: "If you have never seen a blonde society editor kicked in the ass by a flaming wastebasket, you have missed one of the rare experiences of journalism."
Comments
Popular writing reminds me of image compression: part eternal truth, part Human Visual System. People enjoy fiction because it connects with them somehow; pop fiction targets the Human Narrative System. Joseph Campbell has the idea of the universal monomyth; Orson Scott Card claims that a writer's best writing happens despite the author. Orson is conceited enough to believe he's not a great writer, just a conduit of man's soul.
A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.) Maybe being restrained was good for him? if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing (including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast.")
Popularity is a tricky measure of technical merit, because it has more to do with what people need than with what you have created. Perhaps the credit for mining that need here really does lie with the publisher, who specified the story.
"... scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." is straightforward.
The 60 words in the sentence preceding that clause, are not:
"A leering tornado of flame from the southwest roared down through a half mile of underbrush upon the town of Haileybury basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore of Lake Temiskaming early Wednesday afternoon, ate its way across the railway tracks and then, fanned by a 60-mile-an-hour gale, ripped its way to the water's edge ..."
In general the phrase "the 60 words in the sentence" and the word "straightforward" are incompatible.
Out of interest, should descriptions in fiction be straightforward?
I can understand why non-fiction should be straight forward but surely one of the joys of fiction is that you fill in the gaps and ambiguities yourself.
Incidentally, I'm not defending the sentence in question which is messy, and "it's terrific blast" may be straightforward but it's also a slightly odd choice of adjective.
Personally, no, I love the shit out of sprawling twisting recursing sentences that end at the beginning and some where new simultaneously. Give me all the ambiguity, vagary and literary wankery that you can muster. Not to say my bookshelf is not equally full of horrible sci-fi that would get me laughed out of an english department for owning, let alone enjoying.
I responded the way I did because it was easy and snarky. The OP claimed to prefer the "straightforward" prose that the article lambasted, and then illustrated it with maybe the worst possible quote (for the purpose) out of the entire article. Combined with:
solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
Led me to feel that 10ren has no idea what solipsistic, narcissitic or straightforward mean and in general no clue. So... I snarked.
> solipsistic, narcissistic - such as those quoted in the submission (the elimination pun; the parallel of temper and years.)
You omitted the beginning of that line, which was "A clever writer can easily get carried away with himself - " Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic (BTW you misspelled it)?
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/solipsistic http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/narcissistic
The quote I followed it with (if you come across a passage you think particularly fine, strike it out.) is from Samuel Johnson; the same basic idea is often expressed more concisely with "kill your darlings." http://everything2.com/title/Kill+your+darlings
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part: including this image: "scattering the town's 4,000 inhabitants before its terrific blast." Which I still really like, because it draws a metaphor between how humans respond to a fire and the physics of how small particles are pushed by the heated air of a fire. Maybe you disagree, but to me, a clean metaphor is a very straightforward communication.
On HN, if you suspect someone has "in general no clue", it's informative to check their comment history, rather than act on an assumption. It could be that their comment is a one-off, or that you have misinterpreted it.
Normally, I don't bother responding to snark. It's irritating, but being drawn in is just a second injury. And it's rare on HN anyway. But I'm puzzled when people are snarky, as it seems unrelated to the topic. So it's helpful that you have explained your thinking, and so I've taken the trouble to explain my original comment.
If snark comes easily to you, you might be more comfortable on reddit (though snark there is usually purely in fun.)
Is not clever wordplay disconnected from the external world? Is not indulging in one's cleverness narcissistic
No.
Or at least no more so than is inherent in all writing.
As for the good doctor Johnson, I would hesitate to use the inventor of the universal refutation as an authority when arguing against indulging in one's cleverness.
Faulkner is a similarly hypocritical source in a plea for clarity.
"Kill your darlings" isn't terrible advice, but taken alone it's as fatuous "write with verbs." Taken alone the basic idea is don't write anything you personally like, which is exactly the sort of life choice that quickly leads to a bottle.
Just to be clear: I didn't illustrate straightforwardness with that entire passage, but with one specific part:
One specific part preceded by a mountain of shit. I actually enjoy the straightfowardness of his "bad" writing doesn't actually work unless his "bad" writing is in fact straightforward, which is a shaky claim when the supporting evidence is a small fraction of a single very bad sentence.
You have a point about the passage as a whole.
And also, yes, clever wordplay intended to amuse the reader is not narcissistic.
For your reference, the other examples I gave were:
the elimination pun: [He passed maths] by a process of elimination, like a tapeworm
the parallel of temper and years: an elderly, crotchety lady of certain temper and uncertain years
Which as far as I'm concerned just makes your statement worse. Those are some singularly (plurally?) innocuous bits of word play, one of which it should be pointed out comes from his autobiography an excuse to be a little extra self indulgent if there ever was one.
Don't knock your sci-fi books. I have an ex-g/f with a PhD in English Literature (more precisely Dickens) who read Star Trek novels to unwind. Different books for different times.
nah, don't get me wrong I was raised on a steady diet of sci-fi and love it to death, when I say I own a lot of terrible sci-fi I mean it in the best possible sense.
60 mostly short anglo-saxon words and the long sentence, broken into multiple clauses, creates a sense of growing momentum that evokes the fire.
Good piece on this particular subject: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/bookclub/2009/08/long-...
1. That piece does nothing to imply that the style is straightforward, nor does it actually talk about using long sentences with many clauses to create momentum, unless you considered "consciousness and longing" to be momentum-ous.
2. No it really doesn't create a sense of momentum, growing or not, especially when you talk about a town "basking sleepily in the September sunlight on the shore." A vaguely alliterative load of Ss does not make for an exciting sentence.
3. "mostly short anglo-saxon words and the long sentence, broken into multiple clauses" is rather in specific compared to my statement of in general anyway.
4. Tornadoes don't leer, and one would assume it was already traveling at 60 miles an hour so the momentum shouldn't be growing anyway.
5. That sentence is straight up crap.
Maybe so, but the content of those words is mostly clumsy and overwrought.
And I believe that it was good that the boys are never described much (contrary to Weingarten's disappointment at the discovery of that). It's not a bug but a feature -- it allows the readers to identify with the boys more not less!
I've read a bunch of Perry Mason books as I was very young and I remember that none of the main characters was described much. I believed even then that it's good so. I was able to imagine them as I'd like them to look like.
I agree--that bit was clearly intentional.
He might get carried away with his writing, but I liked this little gem quoted in the article: "If you have never seen a blonde society editor kicked in the ass by a flaming wastebasket, you have missed one of the rare experiences of journalism."