'The Sense of Style' argues for writing that is direct, economical, and precise
The Sense of Style, the new book by the neuroscientist and linguist Steven Pinker, is the latest blossoming of a perennial: the mid-career writer鈥檚 advice for writing well. From grammar guides to usage primers, from Strunk and White to "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," these books, at their most significant, become mainstays of high school curricula and quiet but powerful influences on how whole generations learn to write. In their highest form, such as in Orwell鈥檚 much-anthologized "Politics and the English Language," they become significant works of literary criticism. Orwell鈥檚 essay doesn鈥檛 offer much guidance for improving one鈥檚 prose. But it remains a keen lesson in bullshit detection, in learning when highfalutin language conceals pernicious ideology. That, in itself, may steer many young writers away from the hazards of abstraction and euphemism.
Conscious of this history, Pinker鈥檚 entry comes freighted with some anxiety of influence. He compliments his forebears as much as he points out their deficiencies. Claiming his place on the dais, Pinker rejects 鈥渢he graybeard sensibilities of the style mavens.鈥� Even the 鈥渃lassic鈥� style manuals were 鈥渨ritten by starchy Englishmen and rock-ribbed Yankees,鈥� who, he says, managed to drain the humor and joy out of writing. This is slightly misleading. E.B. White, whose name has become one half of a shorthand for the eponymous style guide he developed with William Strunk, is now remembered as a storyteller as well as a fine essayist and humorist. His writing is synonymous with the urbane, witty, middlebrow style that flourished under New Yorker editor William Shawn.
Perhaps it makes sense, then, that Pinker鈥檚 conception of good writing isn鈥檛 very new but is instead a refined version of an old standard. He is a partisan of what Francis-No毛l Thomas and Mark Turner called the 鈥渃lassic鈥� style. Classic prose is direct, economical, and precise. It treats the reader with intelligence and 鈥渋s confident about its own voice.鈥� This kind of writing is comfortable in varying registers and directs the viewer鈥檚 gaze, almost like a cinematographer, toward what鈥檚 important. It鈥檚 adaptable, too, capable of being used for a corporate memo or an academic鈥檚 monograph. This versatility is key: one detects a populist air in Pinker鈥檚 argument, a sense that he wants everyone to learn how to write and think better.
Pivoting from linguistic theory to practical examples of everyday challenges, Pinker tells readers how to detect good prose and what makes some writers 鈥渋ncomprehensible.鈥� He shows how to create a 鈥渢ree of phrases鈥� 鈥� his version of diagramming a sentence, exposing its constituent parts. He demonstrates a talent for quotation, drawing from Thomas and Turner, the authors of "Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose," the lesson that 鈥渁ccuracy becomes pedantry if it is indulged for its own sake.鈥� To craft an argument, Pinker says, apply sentences like layers of lacquer, building towards a cumulative effect. Work first from what is known. 鈥淕iven always precedes new,鈥� he writes, aphoristically.
Other pieces of Pinkerian advice tend to be commonsensical: eliminate needless words; show your work to trusted readers; read your prose aloud to gauge style, pacing, and flow; avoid 鈥渢he curse of knowledge.鈥� This last bit might also be called the solipsism of expertise. Still yet another term for it might be a lack of empathy, of failing to imagine what your reader knows and doesn鈥檛 know and instead 鈥渇alling back on parochial jargon and private abstractions.鈥�
But here I am committing one of Pinker鈥檚 sins. Too many writers, he laments, are guilty of 鈥渁 pernicious kind of synonymomania鈥� 鈥� that is, redescribing the same thing in different terms, so that, for instance, a 鈥渂ook鈥� in one paragraph becomes a 鈥渢ome鈥� in the next and a 鈥渧olume鈥� after that. This habit 鈥� which, as Pinker notes, is endemic in journalism 鈥� can leave some readers confused. Others may smart at a low-grade pretentiousness that mistakes variety or verbosity for creativity. Usually, it鈥檚 sufficient to say it once and plainly. In the preface to an updated edition of "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," George Saunders complained about a similar phenomenon, which he called the 鈥渓iterary triple descriptor: 鈥楾odd sat at the black table, the ebony plane, the dark-hued bearer of various glasses and plates, whose white, disk-shaped, saucer-like presences mocking his futility, his impotence, his inability to act.鈥欌��
Despite Pinker鈥檚 obvious appreciation for good writing, his interest seems more utilitarian than aesthetic. There is little discussion in the book of literature, poetry, or literary journalism, although he does quote from the work of his wife, the philosopher and novelist Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. The qualities that Pinker admires in classic prose 鈥� clarity, elegance, economy of style, vivid, precise imagery 鈥� describe any number of fiction writers, from Hemingway to Beckett to Hempel. But there is not much room in Pinker鈥檚 linguistic imagination for art. The longtime academic isn鈥檛 self-serious; he cracks jokes, he refuses to be prescriptivist. He believes that language is mutable and defined by how we use it 鈥� a key departure from the cultural conservatism of past style guides. Analyzing a passage from a book of cosmology, he displays a profound, even spiritual, regard for the majesty and sheer improbability of being alive.
Yet the refusal to look at literature as anything other than a knowledge-delivery system prevents "The Sense of Style" from transcending what it is: a solid guide to writing competently. Graceful but inoffensive, convincing but undramatic, the book is the prosodic equivalent of a shooting guard cruising his way to 20 points without shedding a drop of sweat.
At the same time, its political awareness doesn鈥檛 reach far beyond a consideration of a fantastically convoluted quote from Bob Dole about President Bill Clinton鈥檚 bombing of Serbia. In this era of undeclared wars and secret interpretations of law 鈥� a clandestine literary criticism with existential implications 鈥撀� we could use some Orwell to cut through the deception. But to paraphrase Michael Jordan, Republicans buy books, too.
Jacob Silverman鈥檚 book, "Terms of Service: Social Media, Surveillance, and the Price of Constant Connection," will be published in March by HarperCollins.
