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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 26, 2009

MUNRO WINS MAN BOOKER INTERNATIONAL

Another worthy intrusion - Alice Munro has won the Man Booker Internation Prize.

Judge Jane Smiley, the Pulitzer prize-winning American novelist, admitted that selecting a winner from the 14 longlisted authors – who are assessed on their bodies of work and the contribution they have made to "fiction on the world stage" – had been a challenge, but that Munro "just won us over".

"Her work is practically perfect. Any writer has to gawk when reading her because her work is very subtle and precise," said Smiley. "Her thoughtfulness about every subject is so concentrated."

Posted by at 07:22 PM in Prizes, Prizes and More Prizes |

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