Barthes and bourgeois mythology

Barthes' Mythologies rather charmingly exposes bourgeois society and the myths that frame it. Using a structural or semiotic approach, Barthes is able to dissect and analyze a variety of things (essentially any aspect of popular culture) and find how they function within a mythological framework (and how they effect society or how society uses them).

Barthes' rhetorical approach is centered on oppositions (especially in language), which we see particularly in Soap-powders and Detergents. Barthes shows us how different types of soaps are sold by way of what they signify, for example:

"Chlorinated fluids, for instance, have always been experienced as a sort of liquid fire, the action of which must be carefully estimated, otherwise the object itself would be affected, 'burnt'. The implicit legend of this type of product rests on the idea of a violent, abrasive modification of matter: the connotations are of chemical or mutilating type: the product 'kills' the dirt. Powders, on the contrary, are separating agents: their ideal role is to liberate the object from its circumstantial imperfection: dirt is 'forced out' and no longer killed..." (My own italics)

Soaps, here, have been polarized to their extremes, one as a violent modifying agent, the other as liberating. The relationship of signifier and signified here is important; the chlorinated fluid is the signifier, the violent destruction of dirt is signified (what the soap means). Likewise, the powder is the signifier, and the nonviolent exiling or expulsion of the dirt is signified.

Barthes was certainly being purposefully humorous in his deep analysis of soaps, but then again, he can be no humorous than the fact that such an analysis is possible (and works!) We as consumers are sold things, not necessarily for what they are, but because of their implicit meaning, the invisible mythologies that are literally packaged with (and as) the product itself. Delicate material requires delicate powder to free it from the enmeshed dirt, the tougher grime must be violently removed by a tougher soap. The irony of the oppositions is that in the end, they are of the same source, "A euphoria, incidentally, which must not make us forget that there is one plane on which Persil and Omo are one and the same: the plane of the Anglo-Dutch trust Unilever." Barthes saves his best move for last, and the punch line delivers very effectively. Of course, one must come to expect effective rhetorical gestures from a critic mostly concerned with structures, signs, and rhetoric.

Wine and Milk, similarly, is centered on an opposition:

Bachelard was probably right in seeing water as the opposite of wine: mythically, this is true; sociologically, today at least, less so; economic and historical circumstances have given this part to mil. The latter is now the true anti-wine; and not only because of M. Mendes-France's popularizing efforts (which had a purposefully mythological look as when he used to drink milk during his speeches in the Chamber, as Popeye eats spinach), but also because in the basic mophology of substances milk is the opposite of fire by all the denseness of its molecules, by the creamy, and therefore soothing, nature of its spreading."

Wine and milk are opposites, like different soaps, both rhetorically and mythologically. But Barthes isn't really concerned with milk, rather, he focuses on wine. Wine is no longer signified, but becomes signifier for something else, namely Frenchness, something healthy and high-minded (as opposed to an alcohol like whiskey). But just as in his soap essay, Barthes finishes the wine piece with the sharpest piece of commentary, "And the characteristic of our current alienation is precisely that wine cannot be an unalloyedly blissful substance, except if we wrongfully forget that it is also the product of an expropriation." By the end of the two essays, we know (or should know) that the mythologies surrounding these aspects of domestic culture are exactly innocent, but rather serve as active agents for the bourgeoisie in forming and enforcing values or some other end, making the humor in the essays rather dark in its implications.

islam / europe

Mark Steyn's article "The Future Belongs to Islam" is one of those reactionary responses to Islamic globalization that we've come to expect from conservative pundits, even Canadian pundits. As the title of his article implies, the future of Europe (and probably the rest of the Western world) belongs to a growing Islamic, um, youth. One gets the sense that at the various points where Steyn directly inserts his smugness to say "youth," he really wants to say "threat." Steyn's rhetorical argument rests on the idea that a rapidly changing demographic in Europe, from old European natives to young Muslim immigrants, and this new demographic is reflected in the French riots and various forms of unrest. What is interesting about Steyn's article, however, is that he doesn't seem to be fighting against anything. Generally, conservative pundits try to preserve or conserve or react against a new wave of something (politics, immigrants, etc.), but the battle seems over for Steyn. Demographics will change in different ways in different place, yes, but the influx of Muslim immigrants is unstoppable, and the consequences are irreversable.

Steyn's style (to call it that) is surprisingly informal and conversational in tone, for example:

Actually, I don't think everything's about jihad. But I do think, as I said, that a good 90 per cent of everything's about demography. Take that media characterization of those French rioters: "youths." What's the salient point about youths? They're youthful. Very few octogenarians want to go torching Renaults every night. It's not easy lobbing a Molotov cocktail into a police station and then hobbling back with your walker across the street before the searing heat of the explosion melts your hip replacement. Civil disobedience is a young man's game.

There is an element of sarcasm here with the quip about the octogenarian, and the short, rough sentences like "They're youthful," and "Civil disobedience is a young man's game." This is like a tired, angry, old man saying "I've had enough with you kids and your baggy pants." But what is Steyn's point? We know Europe is changing forever, and that a Europe of countries filled with white, bourgeois nationalists is dead. The new Europe is a blend, the old Europe making way for an Islamafied Europe. Steyn's article, then, seems to be functioning as a warning of what is to come (and not of what can be prevented). Indeed, his article ends with the quote,

"Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours."

Stephen Holmes' article is also about Islam in Europe, but with a much more liberal-minded (but no less annoying) perspective. The tone is different from the Steyn article in that, if it serves as a warning at all, the message is moral and the problem itself is still on the horizon (whereas for Steyn it seems all hope is lost). Steyn seems to be implying that the Muslim immigrants are forcing the old Europeans out of their places, but Holmes seems to be saying that Europe needs to accomodate: the momentum is held on opposite sides (Islam or Europe) for the writers.

Style-wise, Holmes' article seems to be more in line with we'd expect from a politcal journalist, i. e. long-ish paragraphs, suspensive sentences, and hypotaxis. Steyn's article tries to appeal to a more basic, "common sense" perspective to the issue, thus not probing very deeply or inquisitively into his topic. Holmes, on the other hand, has passages like this:

Perhaps the most important difference between Hirsi Ali and Buruma lies in the latter's belief, following the French political scientist Olivier Roy, that the only way forward is for Islam to be fully accepted as a European religion. Buruma is noncommittal about the claim of some moderate members of the Dutch Muslim community that "only properly organized religion will stop young men from downloading extremism from the Internet," but he wants to avoid making Islam itself responsible for the disappointments of Muslim integration in Europe, because the majority of Europe's Muslims are not going to follow Hirsi Ali into outright atheism. This is what leads Buruma to conclude: "Attacking religion cannot be the answer, for the real threat to a mixed society will come when the mainstream of non-revolutionary Muslims has lost all hope of feeling at home."

Here, we have a pretty classic example of the "thesis - evidence - conclusion" paragraph structure, one which reads with a logical progression from point to point, including quotes, etc. We don't really see this with Steyn, but with Steyn, we don't need to be convinced that a real person wrote the article, but with Holmes, we may need some convincing that the article wasn't produced by a card-board suit.

It seems to me that the differences in style and political persuasion go hand-in-hand. Holmes, the "liberal," is giving his reader a "view" (as opposed to an argument), one which doesn't necessarily come to any real conclusion, but nonetheless, expects its reader to be educated enough to come to their own conclusion on a complex, morally grey area. Steyn, the "conservative," gives us his argument in a very argumentative, confrontational, but also conversational way. He's not giving us complex arguments complete with thesis, evidence, etc. Rather, he is asserting his points and then defending them, relying on a more visceral, "gut-instinct" reaction from the reader, as does so much conservative commentary. In short, the liberal article tries to focus in on two sides of a complex issue, ask some questions, leave most unanswered, and let the reader decided, based on their own intelligence, what is really happening and what should be happening. The conservative article, however, is a reaction to what has and still is happening. He takes a side, stays there, and expects us to either follow him or reject him (although it seems to not matter considering the battle is already lost).

james' Paste

James' Paste is one of those old timey bourgeois prose narratives that concerns itself with middle-class white people dealing with money and/or other valuable or sentimental objects. We encounter the same kind of story with D H Lawrence's Rocking Horse Winner, where the issue was luck and money and the young boy's Oedipal struggle to acquire wealth for his mother. In James' story, the object in question is the pearl necklace, and whether or not it is "paste" (fake pearls). This type of story would be familiar to anybody who has already read Nathaniel Hawthorne, especially how certain objects are given value not as things in themselves but as what they might mean or what they mean metaphysically. For example,

The pearls had quite taken their place as a revelation. She might have received them for nothing - admit that; but she couldn't have kept them so long and so unprofitably hidden, couldn't have enjoyed them only in secret, for nothing; and she had mixed them, in her reliquary, with false things... (96)

The pearls are almost an abstraction, and through Charlotte's relationship with the pearls, we can better see her realationship with other people (via pearls). This, of course, is the psychological aspect of James' writing so characteristically ascribed to him. The pearls don't mean anything, necessarily, as objects, but as something which effects characters psyches. The psychological states of the characters are shown not necessarily in the dialogue, but in the gaps in the dialogue, as if what is elliptical or parenthetical or even totally absent is more important than what really is said. Throughout the story, a character's speech is cut off, either by the other character or by themselves, but if one quickly glosses the story, one will find many lines ending with "-", with the rest of the line intuited or already understood by the receiver of the speech. In this way James is able to portray the complex psychological states of his characters under the superficial surface of apprehensive dialogue and questionable motives. And as it turns out, the pearls, which are of real value, end up going to the only person who actually knew what their worth was; Mrs Guy.

Montaigne

Emerson is probably Montaigne's best critic when he rightly says, "Cut these words, and they would bleed; they are vascular and alive." Montaigne's writing really is alive, because it is about life itself. Montaigne comes in that great tradition of secularized wisdom writing, a group including Freud, Nietzsche, Proust, Emerson, etc. His topic is life, and more specifically himself, even if his essays have titles like "Upon Some Verses of Virgil." He talks about Virgil, but Virgil is only important insofar as Montaigne is able to extract himself from Virgil (and other writing), for instance, "

The more respectful, more timorous, more coy, and secret love of the Spaniards and Italians pleases me. I know not who of old wished his throat as long as that of a crane, that he might the longer taste what he swallowed: it had been better wished as to this quick and precipitous pleasure, especially in such natures as mine that have the fault of being too prompt. To stay its flight and delay it with preambles; all things- a glance, a bow, a word, a sign, stand for favor and recompense between them. Were it not an excellent piece of thrift in him who could dine on the steam of the roast? `Tis a passion that mixes with very little solid essence, far more vanity and feverish raving; and we should serve and pay it accordingly. Let us teach the ladies to set a better value and esteem upon themselves, to amuse and fool us: we give the last charge at the first onset; the French impetuosity will still show itself; by spinning out their favors, and exposing them in small parcels, even miserable old age itself will find some little share of reward, according to its worth and merit. He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps and degrees there are, so much higher and more honorable is the uppermost seat; we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings.

This seems to me to be perfect experiential criticism, the kind we'll later see in Ruskin and Pater. But who really cares what Virgil said (in context of Montaigne)? One could have no context for this quote and still find in it insights which are near-universal, and this is Montaigne's strength; he is able to isolate the most basic human qualities from nearly any source (Virgil in this case) and give us his splendid commentary. His prose is very much high-style, but is never political and never deceptive. Montaigne is not advancing some aim, he is simply finding, discovering, and exploring himself (and us too).

A classic Montaigne sentence is (from this passage), "He who has no fruition but in fruition, who wins nothing unless he sweeps the stakes, who takes no pleasure in the chase but in the quarry, ought not to introduce himself in our school: the more steps and degrees there are, so much higher and more honorable is the uppermost seat; we should take a pleasure in being conducted to it, as in magnificent palaces, by various porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings. "

One could not be blamed for hearing a voice similar to Marx's, especially with the front-loaded, noun heavy style, and the impression that we are being spoken to from a pulpit, but Montaigne's pulpit is decidedly educational rather than political or religious, and the sight is the human and not the church. Montaigne teaches us ethics and style while marvelously leading us through "porticoes and passages, long and pleasant galleries, and many windings." These porticoes and passages and windings are just like Montaigne's writing itself. There is no over-determined structure, rather, he is writing as he feels it, and is able to translate his thought to prose beautifully. His writing is in this sense mimetic, the form is totally compatible with his content, free from boundaries and open to possibility (wherever Montaigne decides to take it).

My personal favorite aspect of Montaigne's writing is that by the end of the essay, we will have learned worlds more about Montaigne than whatever it was he was writing about, as exemplified from his great last passage:

I say that males and females are cast in the same mold, and that, education and usage excepted, the difference is not great. Plato indifferently invites both the one and the other to the society of all studies, exercises, and vocations, both military and civil, in his commonwealth; and the philosopher Antisthenes rejected all distinction between their virtue and ours. It is much more easy to accuse one sex than to excuse the other; `tis according to the saying "The Pot and the Kettle."

Was this not an essay about Virgil? But where is Virgil at the end? He is nowhere, and Montaigne is everywhere, and we are better off for it. This last passage could've been about Shakespeare, or really any writer, but Montaigne is able to use any material he finds useful and give us his wisdom, which for us becomes a kind of received wisdom, a secular revelation or epiphany of sorts, what Pater would call a "privileged moment."

marx/hemingway

Marx's writing is constructed in such a manner as to rewrite history in a radically polemical manner, setting class opposites as brutalized oppositions - bourgeoisie vs proletariat, capitalist vs socialist, good vs bad, rich vs poor, etc. Constructing history as a dialectical system of binaries\opposites, Marx is able to exploit injustice, reminding us always, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." We as readers are brought into this very struggle, as each and everyone of us is apart of a particular class and situation. Marx is so effective because he appeals to the victim in each of us, the wronged "little guy" being exploited by the evil big-wig capitalist or oppressor. His rhetoric is built in this manner, as a call to the masses to get up and act, and Marx is very much an exhorter, especially in the ever famous, "Workers of the world, unite!" Marx is anything but subtle, but in this manner, Orwell would probably approve. Marx's rhetoric is grand itself, but his explicit message is never concealed; we know Marx's aims and his writing is genuinely transparent, much in the same way as Marx's polar opposite Ayn Rand.

In a jarring change of focus, I go to Hemingway's very short story, "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." A story with only 6 words is necessarily somewhat of a novelty out of sheer brevity, but it does seem to work like any other Hemingway short story. What could the possible context be? We the readers are left to brood on this grim situation, obviously where a baby is absent (died? never born? given away?) but with the shoes still there. In fact, this story is hard to talk about precisely because of its brevity. Is there beginning, middle end? No, because we have to imagine the structure. The immense void (of meaning) surrounding the story is what gives it its meaning, like an iceberg with only a small portion visible to the eye but a huge portion totally concealed. We imagine what the rest of the iceberg is like based on how we take in the visible portion of the iceberg, and so it is with Hemingway's brief story. What is so intriguing is that Hemingway seems to be showing us his secrets of writing, laying bare his fundamental stylistic mechanics, without us necessarily being able to say precisely what it is he's doing with any accuracy. In this manner, Hemingway, while appearing transparent, is ultimately, in forced contrast with Marx, is opaque. Hemingway is very much relying upon pathos in his story as opposed to whatever it is Marx is doing, which also seems to me a crucial distinction between political and imaginative writing; fiction has the unique ability (and responsibility) to lie, but Marx and others like him either have to be genuine (telling the "truth") or at least act like they are.

anderson

Sherwood Anderson's Winesberg, Ohio is rather strange in that it is comprised of such brief short stories but is really a loosely structured novel. We see something close to this with Hemingway's "Nick Adams" stories or Joyce's Dubliners, but Hemingway and Joyce are altogether different from Anderson, especially concerning prose style.

"The Book of the Grotesque" and "Paper Pills" both read something like an odd mixture of Poe and HP Lovecraft, where everyone in the world (or at least in the community at hand) is somehow evil or bad or crippled (physically or mentally) or "grotesque" in some way. Winesberg sounds more like hell than a midwestern community, although Ohio has always been closer to hell than the midwest. Notably, we don't get real or fully developed characters at all, only small clips. Even in the "Nick Adams" stories we actually know Nick Adams a little better after each story, but not in Anderson's case.

The stories are being told to us, almost like campfire stories (one can imagine a sinister voice and a flash-light for facial illumination). Also notable is the running style narrative voice, the theatrical yet "spontaneous" performance / account of the story: "He was like a pregnant woman, only that the thing inside him was not a baby but a youth. No, it wasn't a youth, it was a woman, young, and wearing a coat of mail like a knight. It is absurd, you see, to try to tell what was inside the old writer as he lay on his high bed and listened to the fluttering of his heart." This is a rather odd passage, something we may expect from a demented Twilight Zone episode or a Robert Browning poem. Further down, we get a whole rant on truth and truths and their large variety and how people stick to one truth against all other truths, etc. These truths make people grotesque, or rather, these truths make them particular to Sherwood Anderson. But what are these truths (also mentioned in "Paper Pills")? We don't really know, they're only some vague concept Anderson has thrown at us, akin to a symbol in French Symbolist poetry or some weird moral from a Poe tale. Indeed, we probably finish one of these stories with far more questions than answers, at least I have. What happens to these people? Why? Does the story length change throughout the book? Do the characters keep coming back? Unfortunately, as is the case with a short selection, we can't find out, although based on the selections given, I'm not sure I'll be investigation Anderson any further.

Faulkner - Dry September

Perhaps the most obvious, yet most successfully executed aspect of Faulkner's short story is the perspective, or more accurately, the shifting or fluid perspective. The problem with a static perspective is that the reader only sees one side of the story (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), but certain situations are more complex and multi-dimensional than can be conveyed through only one character or perspective, etc. Faulkner, a preternaturally strong writer, is able to exploit this "problem" of perspective and gives us instead an array of views, much like in his novel "As I Lay Dying", especially the early sequence of scenes with sound of the saw being heard by various characters at various physical locations, each perceiving their environment in crucially different ways. In this we may also recognize Melville's "Moby Dick", with Ishmael as the main perspective for much of the story, later fading into anonymity and giving way to the voices of most other members of the Pequod.

Faulkner's story is dealing with the largest social burden of the American South, which is to say, black and white relations. A story like this could only be told through various perspectives, so the reader sees how the situation effects different groups of people in various levels of society, and perhaps more importantly, so the reader isn't able to come to any real conclusions. The only two people in the story who really know what happened are Will Mayes and Aunt Minnie, and by the end of the story, one will be dead, thus silencing that half of the truth forever. But Faulkner wouldn't let us have the truth anyway, even if Mayes wasn't killed. The two most significant roles (Mayes, Minnie) are also the most silent; we never get to hear what they have to say. Faulkner is getting at something big here, which is that people don't have to know the facts in order to come to drastic conclusions. A man dies for something he may or may have not done, which is Faulkner's grim portrayal of mob-justice, and we would do well to look ourselves in the mirror.

What seems to me the most interesting aspect of the story, however, is the barber character. In the barber we have the prototype for Atticus Finch, the white southerner who is generally righteous in his intentions but all the same a victim of the racist, white, conservative socio-political structure. The barber and Atticus Finch are certainly to be admired in at least some regard, if for nothing else than for standing up to their racist compatriots. Doubtless the south is a different place now, and probably always had well-meaning whites with no real disdain for blacks and no accusatory sentiments, but this is one of the sad points of both Faulkner's and Lee's stories; the individual, no matter how right or well-meaning, generally doesn't stand a chance against a group with hate and not truth or reason at its core. Ultimately, it is the mob's perspective that proves overpowering not only for poor Mayes but also for the hapless barber.

Stylistically speaking, we have a stereotypical narrative voice, or what I would call a "story teller". For instance, if one looks at the beginning of every section in the story, the scene is always being set before any character action takes place, e. g. "The barber went swiftly...", "As she dressed...", etc. Faulkner's word choice, much like some of his earlier novels, seems to come from the desire to make the reader physically uncomfortable, almost as if they were in a dusty, hot, heavy southern environment. We have "...bloody September twilight, aftermath of sixty-two rainless days...", "The air was flat and dead. It had a metallic taste at the base of the tongue," etc. Anybody who has spent time in the south at this time of year knows precisely what this metallic taste in the mouth is and how the air has a weight to it, but a dead weight. There is almost a natural violence that can be felt in the air, and by making us literally feel this sensation, Faulkner all the more effectively orients the reader in his story. We cannot know what happened between Minnie and Will, but we know what it felt like whenever it happened, whatever happened, if anything happened at all.

Joan Didion

First of all, who is Joan Didion? Is this Candice Bushnell's depressed alter-ego? There isn't much in Didion's style that strikes me as particularly skillful or unique, nothing that makes me think, "I haven't read anything quite like this before." In fact, thats the problem. Didion's writing is so immensely overshadowed by other writers of greater talent that her writing fades into mere suggestions of other writers, for example, "the wastes of Queens..." as an obvious reference to the Ashlands in "The Great Gatsby", or Xanadu tothe Coleridge poem. Its not the direct allusions that bother me, its that they lead to nowhere of any value. My only response is that I'd rather be reading the real Fitzgerald or Coleridge, but instead I am continuously reminded that I am not in fact reading them but Didion.

Again, the problem is that Didion's writing fails to stand on its own and apart from other writing. It is fitting that the Didion piece comes right after the Plath piece, so great is Didion's debt to Plath or other "confessional" writers (of talent). The story seems to be generalized away, sanded down into stock TV/trash-lit cliche. One could imagine Didion's narrator in a happier setting, only her name would have to be Carrie Bradshaw. The typical "move to New York, coming of age" convention is very much present here, as is the almost pedantic conversational tone of the narrator. We may feel as though we are being "talked at" rather than "spoken to" (despite the subdued/gentle tone). We know nothing of any real importance about our narrator (the marriage explanation is lacking, to say the least), everything seems superficial (externally) and overwrought (internally/psychologically). After reading this, I feel like I now know what "chick lit" is, and I am all the worse off for it.

DH Lawrence

Good ol' DH Lawrence. Nothing like a little Oedipal repression to get a story started, huh?

Lawrence's story, rather curiously, reads like a Hemingway story, at least on stylistic terms. Lawrence quite overwhelmingly uses short sentences, and when his sentences get longer, they are often composed of short clauses and commas galore: "It came whispering from the springs of the still-swaying rocking-horse, and even the horse, bending his wooden, champing head, heard it." There is clearly a lyrical element in Lawrence's prose that is absent in most other writers (except Hemingway), which isn't surprising considering Lawrence was also a fantastic poet. The repetition of the S sounds (springs, still-swaying) and H sounds (rocking-horse, horse, head, heard) here create a tension between the different sounds, and so gives the sentence a swaying rhythm, much like the rocking-horse itself.

The dialogue also has a similar feeling as that of Hemingway, by which I mean that we could imagine people actually speaking in this way, "'It's like this, you see, sir,' Basset said, 'Master Paul would get me talking about racing events, spinning yarns, you know, sir...'

Perhaps in this manner, Mr Orwell would be pleased. Words are chosen carefully, and rarely if ever is the meaning of the writing in question. Indeed, Lawrence's diction is anything but pretentious, and dead metaphors aren't found.

Lawrence is quite unlike Hemingway in another area, however, which is narrative perspective. Hemingway's narratives are generally third-person limited. We get very little in the way of a psychological profile of the characters, and the meaning is left to be inferred by the reader. Lawrence, on the other hand, is third-person (semi)omniscient, where we get relevant background information and and we also get certain character's thoughts. In fact, the story is psychological to the degree that action itself is largely neglected (which isn't a bad thing). Nothing of much substance actually happens as a palpable event (aside from the winning of the money), rather, the story progresses through dialogue, for example the conversation between Uncle Oscar and Paul in the car, and also through psychological events, namely the riding of the rocking-horse. The riding of the horse itself isn't significant aside from the fact that Paul is actually riding the horse, rather, what is significant is what Paul wants or thinks will come of his act of riding on the horse. But elliptically, much in the mode of Hemingway, the reader must infer much of the meaning. Hemingway and Lawrence, then, share much in the way of style (sentence structure, rhythm, dialogue) and overall effect (the reader infers the ultimate meaning), but where they differ markedly is in how the story is given to us.

Orwell's "Politics and the English Language"

Orwell, never an amiable curmudgeon, here takes on the role of linguistic dictator. This essay isn't exactly a list of recommendations or suggestions, nor is it a set of instructions, rather, it is Orwell's own set of commandments: "Follow these rules, or else!" Or else what? If we fail to follow Orwell's example, at best we run the risk of sounding like literally every other professional hack writer around, at worst, we have Orwell's disapproval to deal with... Oh well.

Of course, this isn't to say I find nothing valuable in this essay at all, but I do think Orwell has built his podium a bit high for his own stature. We must remember that Orwell is first and foremost a political writer with political aims, as is clear in 1984 and Animal Farm. While Orwell's writing (and this essay in particular) does demonstrate the virtues of clear, concise prose, a reader would want so much more in actual literary writing. What if Faulkner or Joyce or Proust had decided to do away with rambling, gnarled, expansive sentences for their pygmy relatives (in this case, a dwarf sentences)? Their writing would cease to breath, the blood would quit flowing through sentences, leaving their paragraphs with clogged arteries and congested passages. Orwell cannot write like Faulkner, but then again Orwell doesn't need to write like Faulkner, for Orwell is more a political pamphleteer than a writer with political concerns (there is a difference).

Still, some parts of the essay prove rather illuminating (even more so in our time of mass-media consumption and political skullduggery). One need not look far for "dying metaphors" or "pretentious diction", a quick glance at the Sunday Times book review, style section, or travel section will do the trick. It is quite humorous then, when Orwell makes precisely the same mistakes, i.e. "sheer humbug", etc. This is hardly an actual mistake, but by Orwell's standards, it falls into a forbidden zone.

It is clear by the end of the essay that Orwell really has no interest in what would be considered a "good prose style", also evident in his fiction writing. Instead, Orwell's writing is politically mimetic, by which I mean that Orwell's prose style (concise, bare, transparent, sincere) moves toward the same goals as his political views do. Politics (for Orwell) needs to be cleaner, more concise, more sincere, and overall less deceitful, less violent, less opaque. If our writing (at least in the non-literary sense) exemplifies these virtues, so will our politics. All the worse for imaginative fiction, then. One only needs to recall Oscar Wilde's comment that all bad poetry is sincere. I fear to think what poetry written by Orwell would be like.

Clinton's Inaugural Address

Bill Clinton's first inaugural address seems a fitting example of the "periodic style" (as opposed to "running style") as defined by Lanham. Lanham says of the periodic style, "The mind shows itself after it has reasoned on an event; after it has sorted by concept and categorized by size...works with balance, antithesis, parallelism and careful patterns of repetition; all of these dramatize a mind which has dominated experience and reworked it to its liking" (49). Clinton's address contains virtually every element expounded by Lanham, from its organization (concept / size), its balance (both on the whole and within single sentences), and its special use of repetition, especially the words "we", "America", "change" and "world" (to name a few).

After reading Clinton's speech (and watching it), it makes sense to use the "periodic" style in a political situation such as a leader addressing their nation. The President speech must be focused, it must move in an orderly manner from topic to topic, concept to concept, idea to idea. Perhaps most importantly, the President must achieve a certain rhythm in their speech lest the audience's minds wander; people need to keep listening, and a "running style" does not necessarily equal attention (in this event, anyway). Clinton must show his decisiveness, his mental agility and his capacity to clarify issues and make conclusions. The running style would be more of a debate or an attempt to work something through (maybe Proust), but by using the periodic style, Clinton is able to make his points quickly and without much gray room (room for misunderstanding).

The word repetition Clinton uses serves two purposes; he can use words like "we" and "America(ns)" over and over to remind the people he is one of them, and that it is America they are working for together, but aside from this rhetorical purpose, the repetition pounds the point home like the rhythm section in a jazz band; Clinton's ideas are the showcase (soloist) but the supporting cast is featured in the repetitious refrains.

Meanwhile, his specific vocabulary highlights what Americans care about (or should care about), like mentioning technology, "...technology is almost magical", change, the economy, etc. Interestingly, Clinton's speech featured many of the buzzwords that Obama still uses today, which perhaps shows that political rhetoric and discourse are always focusing on the exact same issues (although we now have 2 wars in the works).

Bellow's A SILVER DISH

"And that fine Swedish immigrant Aase (Osie, they pronounced it), who had been the Skoglunds’ cook and married the eldest son to become his rich, religious widow—she supported the Reverend Doctor. In her time she must have been built like a chorus girl. And women seem to have lost the secret of putting up their hair in the high basketry fence of braid she wore. Aase took Woody under her special protection and paid his tuition at the seminary. And Pop said . . . But on this Sunday, at peace as soon as the bells stopped banging, this velvet autumn day when the grass was finest and thickest, silky green: before the first frost, and the blood in your lungs is redder than summer air can make it and smarts with oxygen, as if the iron in your system was hungry for it, and the chill was sticking it to you in every breath—Pop, six feet under, would never feel this blissful sting again. The last of the bells still had the bright air streaming with vibrations."

In this particular passage from Bellow's story, we see several stylistic elements come into play to make the passage read almost like prose-poetry akin to something from Virginia Woolf in The Waves or any novel by Nabakov. The passage, like so many others in Bellow's story, is episodic and digressive, almost conversational, and Bellow's particular choice of words allows a rhythm that otherwise wouldn't be possible, for example, " And women seem to have lost the secret of putting up their hair in the high basketry fence of braid she wore." The combination of the words in "hair in the high basketry fence of braid she wore" sounds almost Shakespearian, invoking not only a funny image of an outmoded hair-style, but bringing a special baroque vocabulary to fit the situation, specifically, "basketry fence of braid".

At the middle point of the paragraph, an important shift in tone occurs when the narrative is taken off of its digression and forwarded through time to the present, where we remember, along with the narrative itself, that Pop is dead, "And Pop said . . . But on this Sunday, at peace as soon as the bells stopped banging..." The narrative at many points gets off of the main focus, but at certain points (this being one of them), the story totally regains focus with this realization of Pop's absence.

Bellow's conversational/diversionary/ digressive narrative style is very much reminds me of earlier Philip Roth, particularly Portnoy's Complaint and The Breast, which is to say, the "narrative voice" (whatever that is) is more playful or at least more limber and flexible than a writer like Hemingway (to use an extreme). Hemingway hides things from us, whereas Roth and Bellow are telling us all about whatever it is they're talking about, and so elements often seen as peripheral in stories (episodic, digressive, etc.) really come together to give the story meaning and pace, much like Moby Dick which was itself widely varied in different stylistic elements, making it (like Bellow, Roth, Faulkner, et al) an experience that couldn't be achieved in totally orthodox modes of storytelling, i.e. linear structure, concrete conclusions, etc.

Newspaper Articles - Noun and Verb Styles

My article comes from The Economist, concerning eBay's prospective sale of its popular Skype service. Not surprisingly, the article moves from style to style, some paragraphs showing noun style, others showing verb. I say not surprisingly because the Economist is a Brisitsh publication, and so the way they use the language varies greatly from a paper like the New York Times.

The article's last paragraph:

EBay’s turnaround will take time, at least another 18 months, according to Mr Donahoe. He will face pressure to sell off PayPal as well. Eventually the firm will find the right balance between being an online flea market and a more conventional internet-shopping mall. But the shine that once made eBay stand out has faded. This should be a warning for today’s fast-growing internet firms. Sending messages via Twitter or updating one’s Facebook page may be exciting now, just like online bidding was back then. But at some point, when the excitement wears off, users could well turn back to more traditional modes of communication.

This paragraph is noun style to my understanding, since the use of nouns is what drives forward the message. We see nouns like "turnaround", "right balance", "flea market and a more conventional internet shopping mall", and "traditional modes of communication". There is essentially no action here, and the paragraph's meaning comes from The Economist's noun-heavy description.

Earlier in the article, however, we see a more verb style paragraph:

So the spin-off is good for Skype, but where does it leave eBay? Given the price that the firm extracted for the majority stake in Skype, the original investment no longer looks that bad. And eBay now has some cash for what it must hope will be more successful acquisitions (in April it bought Gmarket, South Korea’s leading e-commerce site, for $1.2 billion).

This paragraph is driven by verbs, namely "Extracted", "has some cash", "hope", and "bought".

Obviously the article comes off dry since it is about business aquisitions (not exactly fun stuff), but the article shows (in a very British way), different ways the language is used to make the meaning, especially in this case, where no real actiopn has even taken place yet.

Imitate

I admire Pynchon and Delillo greatly, but I would rather emulate a Faulkner... Paranoia apparently does not help one get a nobel prize, but southern genius on the otherhand.......