Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Francis-Nöel Thomas is professor emeritus of humanities at Truman College, City Colleges of Chicago. Mark Turner is Institute Professor and professor of cognitive science at Case Western Reserve University.

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Praise for the first edition: "[Clear and Simple as the Truth] has changed the way that I write and think about writing."--Paul Bloom, Yale University

Praise for the first edition: "Far and away the best how-to-write book I've ever read. It puts Strunk and White and everyone else in the shade."--John E. Talbott, University of California, Santa Barbara

Praise for the first edition: "Thanks to Thomas and Turner, the cognitive revolution has finally caught up with the analysis of style--brilliantly, learnedly, and, above all, readably."--David Lee Rubin, University of Virginia

Praise for the first edition: "Clear and Simple as the Truth holds the promise of raising the level of the nation's prose.... The book is full of cogency and insight."--Frederick Crews

Praise for the first edition: "A work of great intellectual elegance and power. I have read it with a lot of pleasure, admiring the wisdom and economy of its reflections and the extraordinary range of its citations."--Claude Rawson, Yale University

Praise for the first edition: "A treatment of the classic style that manifests the virtues of the writing it propounds, expounds, and exemplifies in a wealth of fascinating passages, brilliantly analyzed."--M. H. Abrams, Cornell University

Praise for the first edition: "Could well be the most important discussion of style since the great classical rhetoricians."--Wayne C. Booth, University of Chicago

Praise for the first edition: "One of the best discussions of style that I have recently read."--Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

Praise for the first edition: "The authors give one of the best discussions of style that I have ever read. Thomas and Turner juxtapose conventionally thought of as disparate, and thereby suggest possible new avenues of interpretation for critics of individual authors. Clear and Simple as the Truth occupies a niche of its own, as a kind of hybrid between books on writing such as The Elements of Style and The Reader over Your Shoulder, and more theoretical studies of representation, such as Mimesis."--Richard Preston, author of American Steel

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Clear and Simple as the Truth

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments.............................................viiClear and Simple as the Truth...............................1ONE Principles of Classic Style............................5TWO The Museum.............................................107THREE The Studio...........................................187FOUR Further Readings in Classic Prose.....................229Notes.......................................................239Index.......................................................253

Chapter One

* The Concept of Style

"Style" is a word everybody uses, but almost no one can explain what it means. It is often understood as the inessential or even disreputable member of a two-term set: style and substance. This set of terms is elastic but in all its many applications, style is the subordinate term and, in the traditional American idiom, there is a persistent suggestion that we would be better off without it. Style is, at best, a harmless if unnecessary bit of window dressing. At worst, it is a polite name for fraud. There used to be a cigar company whose motto was "All Quality. No Style."

When style is considered the opposite of substance, it seems optional and incidental, even when it is admired. In this way of framing things, substantive thought and meaning can be prior to style and completely separable from it. The identical thought or the identical meaning, it is suggested, can be expressed in many styles—or even in none at all, as when just plain integrity or the unvarnished truth is offered as an alternative to the adornments of style. Style, conceived this way, is something fancy that distracts us from what is essential; it is the varnish that makes the truth at least a little harder to see.

The notion that style is something completely separate from substance, so that substance can be offered "straight," lies behind both the motto of the cigar company and William Butler yeats's description of Bernard Shaw's writing, but in the second case the poet puts a high value on style and views writing in no style, while possible, to be something monstrously mechanical. Yeats apparently thought of his own characteristic poetic voice as "style." it was a voice so compelling that attempts to imitate it have ruined quite a number of aspiring poets. Shaw's voice was not poetic in yeats's sense, so yeats considered Shaw to be a writer "without style." Because he held the view that style is optional, yeats could simultaneously view Shaw as "the most formidable man in modern letters," able to write "with great effect," and yet view Shaw's writing as "without music, without style, either good or bad." He described Shaw as a nightmare sewing machine that clicked, shone, and smiled, "smiled perpetually."

Whether style is viewed as spiritual, fraudulent, or something in between, any concept of style that treats it as optional is inadequate not only to writing but to any human action. Nothing we do can be done "simply" and in no style, because style is something inherent in action, not something added to it. In this respect, style is like the typeface in which a text is printed. We may overlook it, and frequently do, but it is always there. The styles we acquire unconsciously remain invisible to us as a rule, and routine actions can seem to be done in no style at all, even though their styles are obvious to experienced observers. A printer, a proofreader, or a type designer cannot fail to notice the type in which a text is printed, but for most of us, that typeface will have to be laid down beside a contrasting face before we even notice it exists. We thought we were looking at words pure and simple and did not notice that they are printed in a specific typeface.

When we do something in a default style acquired unconsciously, we do not notice the style of our activity. In such cases, we have an abstract concept of action that leaves style out of account. We can have a concept of lying without being aware—as a good investigative reporter is—that, in practice, we must have a style of lying. We can have a concept of quarreling without being aware— as a good marriage counselor is—that, in practice, we must have a style of quarreling.

Despite a lifetime of speaking, we can remain unaware of having a style of speaking. Yankees in Maine or Good Ol' Boys in Louisiana think that people from Brooklyn talk funny. WASPS in the Chicago suburbs think that Poles or Lithuanians in Chicago speak English with an accent, as if the suburban WASPS, the Yankees, and the Good Ol' Boys speak just plain American English with no accent. coastal Californians think—just as the ancient Greeks did—that everybody else sounds barbarous. A moment's reflection will convince anyone that it is impossible to speak without an accent. But people who feel they set the local tone do not consider their own accents to be accents. It is hard to think of a child who is just learning to speak wanting to learn a style of speaking. The style is folded into the activity as it is learned: we think that we have learned to speak a language, not that we have learned a regional dialect. Children in Maine do not think they are learning to speak English with a Yankee accent; they think they are learning to speak English.

Although there are certainly a lot of English accents to be heard, even if we restrict the field to America, only a few people consciously choose theirs. Professional broadcasters, of course, do; sometimes people interested in acting careers do. Many politicians with degrees from prestigious universities have learned to speak with one accent in the capitals where they make laws and policy and quite a different one back home where they campaign for office. Senator Fulbright was a Rhodes scholar with an Oxford education. Before he went to the Senate, he had been the dean of a law school and the president of a university. His background was perfectly congruent with what he sounded like in action as chairman of the Senate Foreign relations committee conducting hearings on the Vietnam War, but when he campaigned in rural Arkansas, where he got his votes, there was no hint of oxford, or even Fayetteville. on the stump, he sounded completely down home. After the election, that sound dissipated with every mile he got closer to Washington until he was sworn in for a new term and reassumed both the seat of power and the music of policy.

Senator Fulbright could maintain two dramatically distinct styles of speech in his personal repertory because he was aware of both as styles and consequently did not mistake either of them for just plain English. His awareness of his own styles allowed him to switch back and forth between them and fit them to circumstances. Everyone does this to some extent, but not everyone is aware of doing so. Speakers who are not consciously aware of their styles run into problems when none of their habitual styles fits a particular circumstance very well. We are trapped by our unconscious styles if we cannot recognize them as styles. When all of our styles are effectively default styles, we choose without knowing we are choosing and so cannot recognize the practical possibility of alternative styles.

People who unconsciously have acquired a full complement of routine...