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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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April 21, 2008

WHAT WE'RE READING

Two extraordinarily good reviews for you to spend some quality time with today:  First up, Daniel Mendelsohn takes on The Landmark Herodotus (which we have been dying to crack open) for the New Yorker:

A major theme of the Histories is the way in which time can effect surprising changes in the fortunes and reputations of empires, cities, and men; all the more appropriate, then, that Herodotus’ reputation has once again been riding very high. In the academy, his technique, once derided as haphazard, has earned newfound respect, while his popularity among ordinary readers will likely get a boost from the publication of perhaps the most densely annotated, richly illustrated, and user-friendly edition of his Histories ever to appear: “The Landmark Herodotus” (Pantheon; $45), edited by Robert B. Strassler and bristling with appendices, by a phalanx of experts, on everything from the design of Athenian warships to ancient units of liquid measure. (Readers interested in throwing a wine tasting à la grecque will be grateful to know that one amphora was equal to a hundred and forty-four kotyles.)

Elsewhere, now that some of the heat has burned away, Ruth Franklin takes a predictably thoughtful look at Beautiful Children, and comes away deeply impressed.

As a writer, Bock is still a little rough. His characters' dramatic monologues sometimes run away from them, and certain anachronisms in the plot (particularly its heavy emphasis on videotapes) betray the eleven years he reportedly spent on the book. But these are minor complaints about a hugely ambitious novel that succeeds in ways that other recent (and hugely hyped) novels of similar ambition have failed. Beautiful Children manages to feel completely of its moment while remaining calmly unaffected by literary trends. It makes only the faintest nod toward magical realism. It is free of typographical gimmicks and other antics of style. And it demonstrates a deep, almost classical understanding of the way the novel form ought to work--the patterning, the layers of meaning, the motif casually tossed into the beginning pages that is picked up again later with an altogether different spin--that so often is missing in even the most lauded contemporary novels.

Posted by TEV at 03:11 PM in Litlinks |

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