Clear and Simple As the Truth: Writing Classic Prose (Princeton Legacy Library) - Hardcover

Francis-Noel Thomas; Mark Turner

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0691036675 ISBN 13: 9780691036670

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Everyone talks about style, but no one explains it. The authors of this book do; and in doing so, they provoke the reader to consider style, not as an elegant accessory of effective prose, but as its very heart.

At a time when writing skills have virtually disappeared, what can be done? If only people learned the principles of verbal correctness, the essential rules, wouldn't good prose simply fall into place? Thomas and Turner say no. Attending to rules of grammar, sense, and sentence structure will no more lead to effective prose than knowing the mechanics of a golf swing will lead to a hole-in-one. Furthermore, ten-step programs to better writing exacerbate the problem by failing to recognize, as Thomas and Turner point out, that there are many styles with different standards.

In the first half of Clear and Simple, the authors introduce a range of styles--reflexive, practical, plain, contemplative, romantic, prophetic, and others--contrasting them to classic style. Its principles are simple: The writer adopts the pose that the motive is truth, the purpose is presentation, the reader is an intellectual equal, and the occasion is informal. Classic style is at home in everything from business memos to personal letters, from magazine articles to university writing.

The second half of the book is a tour of examples--the exquisite and the execrable--showing what has worked and what hasn't. Classic prose is found everywhere: from Thomas Jefferson to Junichirō Tanizaki, from Mark Twain to the observations of an undergraduate. Here are many fine performances in classic style, each clear and simple as the truth.

Originally published in 1994.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

About this title

About the Author

Francis-Noel Thomas is Professor of Humanities at Truman College in Chicago.

From the Back Cover

"Clear and Simple as the Truth holds the promise of raising the level of the nation's prose.... The book is full of cogency and insight."--Frederick Crews

"A work of great intellectual elegance and power. I have read it with a lot of pleasure, admiring the wisdom and economy of its reflections and the extraordinary range of its citations."--Claude Rawson, Yale University

"A treatment of the classic style that manifests the virtues of the writing it propounds, expounds, and exemplifies in a wealth of fascinating passages, brilliantly analyzed."--M. H. Abrams, Cornell University

"Could well be the most important discussion of style since the great classical rhetoricians."--Wayne C. Booth, University of Chicago

"One of the best discussions of style that I have recently read."--Richard Preston, author ofThe Hot Zone

"Thanks to Thomas and Turner, the cognitive revolution has finally caught up with the analysis of style--brilliantly, learnedly, and, above all, readably."--David Lee Rubin, University of Virginia

"The authors give one of the best discussions of style that I have ever read. Thomas and Turner juxtapose conventionally thought of as disparate, and thereby suggest possible new avenues of interpretation for critics of individual authors.Clear and Simple as the Truth occupies a niche of its own, as a kind of hybrid between books on writing such asThe Elements of Style and The Reader over Your Shoulder, and more theoretical studies of representation, such asMimesis."--Richard Preston, author of American Steel

From the Inside Flap

"Clear and Simple as the Truth holds the promise of raising the level of the nation's prose.... The book is full of cogency and insight."--Frederick Crews

"A work of great intellectual elegance and power. I have read it with a lot of pleasure, admiring the wisdom and economy of its reflections and the extraordinary range of its citations."--Claude Rawson, Yale University

"A treatment of the classic style that manifests the virtues of the writing it propounds, expounds, and exemplifies in a wealth of fascinating passages, brilliantly analyzed."--M. H. Abrams, Cornell University

"Could well be the most important discussion of style since the great classical rhetoricians."--Wayne C. Booth, University of Chicago

"One of the best discussions of style that I have recently read."--Richard Preston, author ofThe Hot Zone

"Thanks to Thomas and Turner, the cognitive revolution has finally caught up with the analysis of style--brilliantly, learnedly, and, above all, readably."--David Lee Rubin, University of Virginia

"The authors give one of the best discussions of style that I have ever read. Thomas and Turner juxtapose conventionally thought of as disparate, and thereby suggest possible new avenues of interpretation for critics of individual authors.Clear and Simple as the Truth occupies a niche of its own, as a kind of hybrid between books on writing such asThe Elements of Style and The Reader over Your Shoulder, and more theoretical studies of representation, such asMimesis."--Richard Preston, author of American Steel

Reviews

Thomas and Turner engagingly delineate the attributes of a classic style of writing. At the outset, they dispute the long-held notion of style as the act of acquiring "mechanical techniques." The idea they put forward is that styles are conceptually based forms of writing, not merely familiar rules or "surface details," such as those found in The Elements of Style (Strunk and White). The authors trace the origins of classic style back to examples of Greek and Latin writing and describe each of the fundamental points of the classic writing mode: truth, presentation, scene, and thought and language. In the second half, Thomas and Turner cite examples of classic style in excerpts from the writing of well-known literary figures. Alice Joyce

Thomas (humanities, Truman Coll.) and Turner (English, Univ. of Maryland) here consider classic prose style, first carefully distinguishing it from the more modern usage of style, i.e., standard presentation formats. The authors explain how to distinguish classic from other styles, defining it as the presentation of truth, the simplicity and clarity of the prose eliminating the need to promote opinion or to contest an idea aggressively. It's the most genteel of styles, difficult to perfect and thus in decline. The first half of this book is explanatory; the second is a collection of short samples with analysis. The samples reach a bit-e.g., Alan Greenspan's report to Congress is acknowledged obfuscation. Whether they can spark a revival in classic writing is uncertain, but Thomas and Turner serve their topic well. A good choice for the serious stylist and those learning the craft.
Robert C. Moore, Information Svcs., Dupont Merck Pharmaceuticals, North Billerica, Mass.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0691036675
• ISBN 13: 9780691036670
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240