Style is something I’m trying to figure out. I read two books in the past couple of months that made me think a lot about writing style and voice.
I started reading Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson: it’s a favorite book of a former colleague’s. However, I couldn’t get into it and abandoned it about half way through. The premise of it is interesting and important, but the writing style dry and boring. And long-winded: sheesh! I think the author could have said what he needed to in a book at least half its length. I am a woman in tech and felt while reading Wilson’s chapters that I was in a meeting at Microsoft with a man droning on and on to make himself sound like the smartest person in the room1. The older I get, the less tolerance I have for masculine bluster.
I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.
– Mark Twain
I used to have a rule that I finish every book I started, but life is too short and there are too many good books to read. If I’m struggling to get through a book, I no longer consider it a sin to quit and move on to something else. So I returned Consilience to the library and checked out Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades instead. Wow. What a difference a book makes. I have often leaned toward more experimental prose. Cryptic and enigmatic. I love Maya Angelou and Sam Shepard. Jack Kerouac, too. I like prose that is lyrical and poetic: in that regard, Andreades did not disappoint:
You shall not be an ugly girl. Do not spend hours in the sun, lest your already dark skin grows darker. Be a Lady, with a pretty smile and a pretty face. Look how your hair is limp and dry, your lips chapped, like a ghost! Look at your lipstick with its too-bright shade, how your purse is ratty and frayed. Change your sinful ways and make them pleasing unto me, says the Lord your Mother.
and
[M]ortgages, don’t give a flying fuck that their dads have lost their jobs and haven’t been able to find new ones. They don’t buy groceries, they don’t drive their grandmothers to physical therapy. They don’t remember the sound of their mother’s voice after a shift at the hospital when she says, I’m so tired. They aren’t fazed when we mention our worries at the sight of more MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN signs populating the streets where we grew up. Instead, they stifle a yawn and say, Well. All we can do is move forward.
Versus Wilson’s prose:
It has become fashionable to speak of the Enlightenment as an idiosyncratic construction by European males in a bygone era, one way of thinking among many different constructions generated across time by a legion of other minds in other cultures, each of which deserves careful and respectful attention. To which the only decent response is yes, of course - to a point. Creative thought is forever precious, and all knowledge has value. But what counts most in the long haul of history is seminality, not sentiment. If we ask whose ideas were the seeds of the dominant ethic and shared hopes of contemporary humanity, whose resulted in the most material advancement in history, whose were the first of their kind and today enjoy the most emulation, then in that sense the Enlightenment, despite the erosion of its original vision and despite the shakiness of some of its premises, has been the principal inspiration not just of Western high culture but, increasingly, of the entire world.
For what Wilson was writing, it wouldn’t have been appropriate to write in the style that Andreades did. But for memoir, either writing style could work. For me, a more experimental, lyrical, poetic style is preferable, making the story richer and more interesting.2 Here’s an example from Sam Shepard, out of Motel Chronicles:
He pictured both cities simultaneously, as though they hung on the extended arms of the orange clouds. Suspended. Tiny San Francisco dangling to the north: innocent, rich and a little bit silly. The sprawling, demented snake of L.A. to the south. Its fanged mouth wide open, eyes blazing, paralyzed in a lunge of pure paranoia. This was the place to be, he thought. Right here. In the middle. Smack in the belly of California where he could eyeball both from a distance. He could live inside the intestines of this valley while he spied on the brain and the genitals.
I also love that in Brown Girls, Andreades avoided naming characters specifically, but without sacrificing the story. You got the gist of it but with vivid detail interspersed through other methods in such a way to not risk her relationships with the people she wrote about.
Speaking of style, I started another newsletter to explore something I’m really passionate about: food! Writing in a voice that is closer to how I talk to people, using more sarcasm and humor. Writing memoir and about memoir is heavy and sad. I want my writing about food to be light and jovial. I hope you’ll subscribe there, too.
The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood. I'm most happy to be a writer.
– Maya Angelou
Do you have a favorite writer or writing style?
Things That Nourished My Writing: May 10-31
FILM
Obit.: The New York Times Obituary Writers
FOOD
Peanut Butter Protein Smoothies
The tomato cauliflower soup at Bounty Kitchen.
Walnuts. I have a handful of them every morning.
LITERARY
Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades
Somebody’s Daughter: A Memoir by Ashley C. Ford
MUSIC
PLACES
We went to visit family near the Oregon Coast.
Not to discount the entire body of Edward O. Wilson’s work nor the significance of his ideas and the contributions he made to science. I just didn’t like his writing style in this particular book.
Masterclass has some good tips on developing a personal writing style.