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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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May 05, 2008

CRACE ARCHIVES TO AUSTIN

The archives of Jim Crace - author of TEV favorite Being Dead - have been acquired by The Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

The archive contains all of Crace's manuscripts, not just of his novels but of stories, plays and essays. The collection also includes notes and outlines for works, reviews, trade journals, radio plays, art work, recordings, press clippings, juvenilia, correspondence and a proposal for two novels, "The Finalist" and "Archipelago."

The juvenilia bit is especially interesting just now as we've been considering a garage purge and are agonizing over what to keep.  How many writers, we wonder, keep everything?  Are you hoarder or a streamliner?  Advice and perspectives welcome.

Posted by TEV at 11:55 AM in Litlinks |

Comments

Being a special collections librarian--who is particularly fond of correspondence--KEEP EVERYTHING writers! Especially the embarrassing materials, well, including these items. Literary students and scholars will appreciate you into eternity if you retain all materials relevant to your work and self. One can always place restrictions on when or how the materials can be used when placing your archives in a special collections.

Posted by: Jim Carmin | May 05, 2008 at 12:15 PM

I keep every stray thought, every idea scribbled down on a napkin (contained in a file folder labeled IDEAS), every conceivable false start and crappy writing. 70% of it is meticulously organized. 30% of it is a mess. (This This is not vanity. One never knows just when might jump off of something or when one might revisit some take on the same idea ten years previously in a better effort to understand where one is in the present. But more often than not, this is usually never the case. I suppose I could throw it all away. But much like books, which I likewise horde and part with sweet sorrow, I never know when I might need something. Better to have everything in a safe and readily accessible place.

Posted by: ed | May 05, 2008 at 01:47 PM

And pardon the syntactic errors in that comment. I received a phone call and accidentally hit the POST button!

Posted by: ed | May 05, 2008 at 01:52 PM

After all, Saroyan kept his fingernail clippings and used kleenex and insisted it ALL go into his archive. I think Berkeley nixed the deal but Fresno bit.

Posted by: John Shannon | May 05, 2008 at 02:41 PM

Thing is, I have been a hoarder for years, and a few weekends ago spent some time perusing what I had hoarded and, well, much was embarrassing. I couldn't imagine finding anything useful in it, and was tempted to chuck it. But then I, too, had that "you know, I MIGHT need this one day" moment and so it stayed on. For now.

Posted by: TEV | May 05, 2008 at 04:21 PM

Nothing like leaving a house after 20 years to get you to chuck stuff in the bin.

Posted by: John Shannon | May 05, 2008 at 04:48 PM

I hoard my writing, but only save books I will go back to or are written by my friends. My old writing helps me realize how much I've grown.

Posted by: Sabra | May 06, 2008 at 06:57 AM

I'm a former librarian, so my advice to writers is also to keep everything.

The real question should be how much did UT pay for the archives of Crace? Libraries do pay authors for those collections, so don't give it away.

And perhaps you can find another university that offers a better deal. In this case, one might argue that the more material in your collection then the more valuable. And, the archives would be extremely pleased, if your material is somewhat organized.

Posted by: Jeff | May 10, 2008 at 09:23 AM

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