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.......