Subject: Re: Fowl Proscriptions
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 25 2000 - 14:41:21 EST
On Tue, Jan 25, 2000 at 01:03:54PM -0600, Matt Kozusko wrote:
> A problem with Fowler is that he is comfortably blind to his own
> pompous posturing, yet anxious and able to adjudicate everyone
> else's. And of course the wonderful colors of his own writing would
> not be so rich without the constant creative recombinations of
> meaning, idiom, dialect, meaning, etc.
It's funny that EVERY book on writing seems to come under attack in this
way; even Strunk & White got lambasted in Salon a few months ago, and
that wasn't the first time I saw such treatment of S&W. White himself
was also heavily criticized in Salon for HERE IS NEW YORK, the short
book he wrote as a piece for Holiday magazine in the late 1940s. It was
as if the daggers were out for EBW in Salon at the time. (I'm a big fan
of HERE IS NEW YORK, which is out in a fresh edition with an
introduction by White's stepson, Roger Angell.)
I have been told that the 3rd edition of Fowler's (this year's version;
I use the 1965 one) rejects the "thou shalt" approach to being
descriptive of language rather than prescriptive. I think that's one
reason I haven't bothered to buy it yet. I'm not interested in the kind
of looseness I've heard about (though I'll decide for myself, after
looking at it, whether it's something I should have).
William Zinsser's ON WRITING WELL is also something that has been
mentioned here before, but always deserves a good plug.
--tim
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