Strunk and The Elements of Style

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

It is very hard to add any information about “the little book” — a widely known reference — without writing both too much and too little. Too much because Strunk —a man with “self-confidence” according to the famous American essayist E.B. White — warns prophetically: “omit needless words” and also “make definite assertions”; and when he says it, we feel compelled to obey. It is not only about making it short, but about making it count: conciseness is also a rhetorical weapon. Too little, because the book is invaluable and tempts us to go against its very advice and dedicate some prolix poetical lines about its saving power: it does save one from the “dark wood” —wild, rough and stubborn— in which the straight way is lost, in the middle of the journey of our writing life. Strunk is no Virgil, though. He is no poet. But you can approach his book with hope, and, even though quite “old,” it is still a precious resource of guidance to which one returns again and again.

Paglia, Madonna and feminism

"Madonna is the true feminist. She exposes the puritanism and suffocating ideology of American feminism, which is stuck in an adolescent whining mode. Madonna has taught young women to be fully female and sexual while still exercising control over their lives. She shows girls how to be attractive, sensual, energetic, ambitious, aggressive, and funny—all at the same time"

You cannot ignore these two Italian-American women. Camille Paglia, notorious contemporary American cultural critic, declares herself a “dyed-in-the-wool, true blue Madonna fan” and included two short articles on the pop singer in Sex, Art and American Culture, a collection that still feels fresh and alive even though it now dates more than twenty years. There, Madonna comes across as much more than a narcissistic, attention seeking mass culture product, as some could depict her; the dancer-business-woman-actress-singer is rather portrayed as a strong female who has found intelligent solutions to contemporary aesthetic, sexual, moral and practical issues, incorporating perennial feminine values into her public persona, representing even an effective role model for today’s girls, who otherwise would fall prey to the man-hating whining swirling pool of mainstream feminism.

Our social thinker, professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia since 1984, is, like her pop idol, polemic, hated and loved — she is fast, smart, down-to-earth, she knows how to take care of herself and “cut to the chase”. Her adjective enthusiasm does hold power enough to make one see a pop phenomenon, otherwise intellectually irrelevant, in a different light. If popular culture is an “eruption of the never defeated paganism of the West,” the corollary is that Madonna is a present-day pagan priestess.

It is easy to see what gets on the nerves of Paglia’s political or cultural adversaries: defining herself politically as libertarian, she nourishes nevertheless a curious sympathy towards past cultural institutions, specially the one of masculinity. In her rejection of the “castrative” feminism which aims to eradicate the “male energy” from society, she is unhesitating to stand sometimes aligned with so called reactionary postures — at times she openly praises the good aspects of patriarchy, traditional family and religion. She invites women to accept independence with responsibility instead of resorting to “shameful” pleas for state interference in issues rather workable in a personal level. I disagree in so many points with her, but she is definitely a refreshing reading. I hope to be able to check her more consistent works in the future. To my humble opinion and taste, Madonna is much more appealing through Paglia’s lenses than in real life.

Allain de Botton and status anxiety

What makes a non-fiction best-seller? Ask Allain de Botton.

“To be shown love is to feel ourselves the object of concern: our presence is noted, our name is registered, our views are listened to, our failings are treated with indulgence and our needs are ministered to. And under such care, we flourish.”

The term “status anxiety” first came to my notice a couple of years ago in a short documentary on Brazilian TV. Recently, coming across the book by the same title, I decided (why not?) to skim over it, ending up going cover to cover. The Swiss author’s writing is enjoyable, straightforward and even somewhat informative. So it is not so surprising that this guy has been best-selling quite often. He plays the role of this wise and trustworthy friend whom you would call at night to share your problems. By simple, numbered, illustrative paragraphs, he drives you smoothly, almost nonchalantly, to visualize his point and introduce some ready-made solutions extracted from the varied Western cultural reservoir, which is, realistically speaking, largely unknown to most of non-specialists.

De Botton has a point: it might not even be a perfectly diagnosed sociological phenomenon, but his descriptions manage to convey what he intends, and the reader feels easily inclined to buy that something really happened in the big picture that caused their own anxiety. Yes: in our urban post-modern world the odd relation between means of production (and reproduction) and cultural identity seem to create singular psychological conditions—that is reasonable enough. I would even risk stating that most of these conditions are identity issues: modern individuals base their sense of self-esteem, belonging, and honor on completely artificial factors like fandom, libido, hobbies, entertainment or a vague sense of status deriving from consumerism, normally having publicity standards as reference. This is actually pretty obvious; it is , after all, common sense. De Botton is no brilliant mind; he is not a fantastic writer either. Posing everyday questions and tackling them with aphoristic drops of quasi wisdom added with a pinch of frank friend-to-friend salt—that’s our man.

If there are indeed reasons to undervalue De Botton’s philosophical relevance: his “pharmacological” view of philosophy, his over-simplistic approach to rather complex issues—”He wants to put people back to sleep!” some grumpy retired fighter sitting in the corner could shout—, on the other hand our Alpine London-based essayist is also steeped in an existing philosophical, or at least literary tradition; not the one of Boetius—from whom he borrows the title “Consolation of Philosophy” to one of his best-sellers (which I did not read)—, but rather a “philosophy of consolation” of late Greek and Roman kind, or of the French aristocratic moralists. All things considered, his practical merit as a popular writer is really having transposed therapeutic, aphoristic, essayistic, philosophical formulae to the wider appreciation of mainstream urban middle class avid readers.

The innocent man

“Degraded and alone: 

And some men curse, and some men weep, 

And some men make no moan: 

But God’s eternal Laws are kind 

And break the heart of stone.” 

(Oscar Wilde) 

“The innocent man,” by Pamella Colloff, is a vigorous piece of narrative journalism (the so called long-form). Originally published in the Texas Monthly Magazine and selected to The Best American Magazine Writing 2013, the article profiles Michael Morton and his drama in the hands of the justice system: wrongly imprisoned by the murder of his wife, he spent many years in jail to eventually be acquitted by a formerly disregarded piece of material evidence—a slightly bloodstained bandanna collected in the surroundings of the crime scene. The advent of DNA tests shedded a new light on the case, saving Morton and ultimately revealing the track of the true culprit, a serial killer with many other victims.

The human drama depicted is touching—Morton’s imprisonment left his small kid in custody of his wife’s relatives. Coming home from work one evening to find one’s spouse brutally murdered and after a few weeks to be charged and convicted, lose one’s freedom, one’s son, public respect (practically no one believed in his innocence) was too cruel a strike of fate. After the lengthy period in prison, Morton faced yet a second challenge: re-adapting to normal routine and trying to fix a lifetime of misunderstandings and broken family bonds.

His notable fortitude before injustice is intriguing—how did he find emotional tools to persevere alone year after year? He apparently bore the whole process with heroic stoicism—, according to Colloff, it was this very undisturbed posture that initially testified against him before the jury, who mistook it as a sign of heartlessness. A very good reading. After having finished it, I caught myself feeling a silent, genuine but impotent human solidarity with the suffering of this unknown fellow.

Exercises in Free Word

Hi, welcome.

My name is Giuliano. I work with them, words, mostly as a modest blue-collar-like “worder” making the beginnings and ends meet, through not so mystagogical bridges, linking international English and my dear South American Portuguese. Quite often, I am even paid for that. This basically so a place for my musings, reviews and indications. It is a blog about writing, self-development, psychology, culture, history and the 'art of living' in general.