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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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« THE FAULT LIES NOT IN RIVERHEAD BUT IN OURSELVES | Main | TUESDAY MARGINALIA - DELUXE EDITION »

March 10, 2008

BANVILLE IN NEW YORK

Word just reaches us that John Banville is coming to New York to read from The Silver Swan, his latest Benjamin Black novel, on March 16.  (Second item)

Posted by TEV at 02:40 PM in Readings |

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And Edna O'Brien, too!

Posted by: Jim | March 10, 2008 at 04:07 PM

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