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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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« Speaking of Cheever.... | Main | In Praise of Directness in Fiction »

November 12, 2007

Cheever and Cliche

Cheever once said that he never used three words in a row that he'd seen used in a row before, which was why he described a bruise as "blue and black" instead of "black and blue." This is a motto I try to live by. You must always do something original with language. The first time someone said "like a fish out of water," you saw the fish, but no one can tell me now that when they hear that phrase they see the fish.

Posted by joshua henkin at 11:05 AM in Guest Bloggers |

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