The Elegant Variation: MEANWHILE, WE'RE STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO KEEP THE DAMN WIRELESS SIGNAL FROM DROPPING

TEV DEFINED

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."

November 16, 2006

MEANWHILE, WE'RE STILL TRYING TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO KEEP THE DAMN WIRELESS SIGNAL FROM DROPPING

Richard Powers has won the National Book Award for The Echo Makers. Wired Magazine talks to him, and learns that he wrote the bulk of The Echo Makers on a tablet PC running voice recognition software.

You wrote most of The Echo Maker on a tablet PC running voice recognition software. How did you arrive at that method of composition?
I’ve always wanted the freedom to be completely disembodied when I’m writing, to feel as if I’m in a pure compositional state. Typing is a highly unnatural activity, and your writing style ends up reflecting the cognitive shackles. When I started to use the tablet, things that are extremely difficult to do on a word processor opened up to me. I could also make drawings to see what a character looked like, and these sketches would be integrated into my research. Part of the mystery of The Echo Maker hinges upon what happened on a certain stretch of road on the night of the accident. I figured that out visually by drawing the scene over and over and seeing how all the elements moved in relationship to one another.

UPDATES: James Marcus reprints his 1998 interview with Powers; Ed, whose 2-2 NBA record makes up for his 0-2 Booker record, provides copious Powers resources; and Galleycat reports in detail on the scene at the adwards banquet.

Posted by TEV at 12:20 AM in Prizes, Prizes and More Prizes | Permalink

Comments

Dang! You have wireless???

Posted by: Pete | November 16, 2006 at 11:15 AM

Well, to be clear it's not two wins, two losses, but 2 FOR 2. :)

Posted by: ed | November 16, 2006 at 11:52 AM

Does anybody know the brand of voice recognition software Powers used? Do they have it for Apple?

Posted by: Joe | January 09, 2007 at 11:42 AM

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November 16, 2006