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  • The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
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July 09, 2004

Rent Girl

The coolest book I saw at the BEA was Rent Girl, by Michelle Tea and Laurenn McCubbin. Michelle is one of my favorite authors so I was going to like this book no matter what. But what's particularly impressive about Rent Girl is its marriage of text and illustration. It's not an illustrated novel and it's not a graphic novel or a comic book. The text and art work so well together and are so even that neither dominate the narrative. Simply put it's the most interesting and innovative book I've seen since I don't know when.

Posted by Stephen Elliott at 01:35 PM |

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C.J.

Who gave Stephen Elliott the keys to the palace for the day? That guy is mad whack.
[Live, from British Columbia, where global warming is melting the glacier but downhill mountain biking is in full-force nevertheless]

Posted by: C.J. | July 09, 2004 at 02:05 PM

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