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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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February 17, 2005

KICKING IT UP A NOTCH

The Tournament of Books heats up this morning as we move into Round Two and Maud weighs in on the respective merits of The Plot Against America versus The Inner Circle. 

Speaking of the Tournament of Books, we join the lovely Ms. Newton among those name-checked in today's coverage of the tourney in the New York Times.  We're not exactly sure when we got promoted (or is it demoted?) to "critic," but since critics we are, we should point out (without wishing to seem ungrateful):

1) The Rope Eater did not, in fact, advance.  It was defeated by Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

2) No doubt the long-time employees of Powells Books in Portland, OR have been startled to learn that they worked for an "online bookstore."  That big building at 10th and Burnside's just there to fool the venture capitalists ...

Still, raving egomaniacs that we are, we never tire of seeing our name in print.  And we're on deck for tomorrow, to come in and decide, at last, between Cynthia Ozick and Susanna Clarke.  So stay tuned.

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM |

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