Thursday, August 25, 2016

Turgid Words: How Not to Write

Some writers engage a reader with floral, Waughian descriptions that were becoming unacceptable in literary criticism just as the style was perfected in Brideshead Revisited. Others, Hemingway among them, preferred brief and terse verbiage that allows the reader to imagine setting while the pace of dialogue sets the mood. More recently, Donna Tartt writes down to the precise detail of characters' shoes, the floor arrangement of exhibitions, unsavory activities, and internal thoughts without ever employing an excessive word; Mr. Grump likened her style to a rich chocolate cake: delicious, but only tolerable in measured doses. Floridity and detail need not be sacrificed at the altar of post-modernity, but style has its limits before it irritates the reader.

I recently had the displeasure of reading Bradley Birzer's biography of Russell Kirk, called simply Russell Kirk: American Conservative. The book, a gift I would not have purchased on my own, recalls a quote from a forgotten author, "I have not yet run so dry of ideas to resort to writing biography." Kirk himself wrote biographies of John Randolph and Edmund Burke; his magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, was a series of intellectual biographies and vignettes intent on establishing an Anglo-American conservative political tradition outside of reactionary outcry. On rare occasion biography can be done well, if only economically. If less is more, Birzer does not know when to stop.

Mr. Birzer's 400 page hagiography, flattery, and canonization of the modest Russell Kirk is a textbook on how a person with respectable grammar can improve his style, if only in that it lays out context tendencies to avoid. The book is turgid beyond belief. Every noun is preceded by generally unnecessary and aggrandizing adjectives: "the great Eliot", "the magnificent Stoic", "the Roman Catholic Nicholas Joost". If someone considering a foray into the creation process ever wondered about writing aimless lists, Birzer offers something worth reading; he loves lists, even if they amount to less than Calvin's Institutes. He lists the names of writers who influenced Kirk in long successions for no apparent reason; one can guess Birzer is either attempting to establish a tradition of thought where there is not one or trying to convince the reader that he knows the works of those men in depth. In the span of three pages he lists: "natural law from Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics to Cicero to Richard Hooker to Grotius and Pufendorf to Montesquieu to Burke, Blackstone, and the American Founders"; "Burke, the American Founders, Joseph Story, Orestes Brownson, Irving Babbitt, and C.S. Lewis"; "German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper as well as that of philosophers Alasdair McIntyre and Russell Hittinger"; and "Socrates to Cicero to Christopher Dawson and C.S. Lewis". Perhaps if Birzer spent more time reading these men than dropping their names he would have learned some stylistic lessons?

Blog posts here are rarely planned well enough in advance to warrant anything other than grammatical revision—and even that will slip the Rad Trad's mind in turn—but I would like to think my style is legible. Lord, save us from the turgid words of those who have much to say and little to mean!

11 comments:

  1. I try to go with the principle of simplicity and legibility in writing. I am grateful to my teachers at school who had us write précis versions of texts. The Americans call it "cutting the bullshit". You wouldn't believe some of the stuff by semi-literate French engineers I have to translate into English. They love long sentences with subordinate clauses, run-ons and virtually no punctuation. Spare us from self-important writers!

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    1. This is an anglophonic phenomenon, no? From the several Romance languages I know, long winded sentences seems to be the norm.

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    2. It is a recent norm, and it has reached into the work of authors who are inspired by authors lime Hemingway, at least in fiction. I have a hard time reading French because of all of the subordinate clauses, relative clauses, and the like.

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  2. My style has been all over the place, and I am guilty of writing more than is necessary, so I sympathize with both the critics and the criticized.

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  3. Anyone who has made forays into writing has ended up on at least one extreme end of the "Purple Prose vs. 'Dog Stars' " spectrum. HP Lovecraft wrote purple prose in a fun way, but i have a hard time thinking of any others who did.

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  4. One place, though, I would hate to see prolixity cut back is in the liturgical texts of the Christian East. There's something marvelous about the sheer number of adjectives in play at times:

    Deacon: Let us be attentive. Having partaken of the divine, holy, pure, immortal, heavenly, life giving, and awesome Mysteries of Christ, let us worthily give thanks to the Lord.

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  5. He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day's experience to know it more sensibly,

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    1. While I agree with you generally, Dafoe always comes to mind when I read such claims

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    2. Dear Rad Trad, I very much appreciate the criticisms. I promise to try to be better on the next one. Thank you for taking the time to read the book. Yours, Brad

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  6. [Sorry, placed comment in the wrong spot!]. Dear Rad Trad, I very much appreciate the criticisms. I promise to try to be better on the next one. Thank you for taking the time to read the book. Yours, Brad

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