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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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« SIMIC ON ROTH II | Main | FRIDAY GIVEAWAY: FLYING TO AMERICA »

October 09, 2008

NOBEL PRIZE AWARDED

Americans scramble to figure out who the hell Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio is.

An academy official called him a “citizen of the world”, reflecting a canon of work depicted by the academy as distilled from experience in Mexico, Central America and North Africa and suffused with a quest for lost culture and new spiritual realities.

As expected, the Literary Saloon has the goods.

Posted by TEV at 07:49 AM in Prizes, Prizes and More Prizes |

Comments

will amato

le good grief

Posted by: will amato | October 09, 2008 at 10:33 AM

alice

Have you read him? Is he worthwhile? I'm among those who haven't knowingly even heard of him and I'm considering whether or not I should seek out his books.

Posted by: alice | October 10, 2008 at 02:52 AM

muthu

I agree. For me, as a reader, if I don't notice a repetition then it works, but if it stands out, it doesn't work. Like you, I find myself pointing out repetitions to other writers when I critique their work... along with said bookisms, adverbs etc... There are a lot of things that can jar me from a story! ;)
------------------
Muthu

Sreevysh Corp

Posted by: muthu | October 10, 2008 at 05:03 AM

travis

Kind of a brilliant pick considering the earlier comments about American insularity and ignorance. They picked someone people know in Europe who writes about American Indians and even lives and teaches part-time in the US, but 99% of Americans have never heard of him. Check and mate. I'd love to read the guy's work, sounds like my kind of writer, but I think that means investing in some French lessons.

Posted by: travis | October 17, 2008 at 11:20 AM

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