Writing well

Responding to popular clamour, splitting off from a series of comments on the 'Language and Power' thread:

booksfallapart ( quoting Orwell)
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

tomcatMurr
Those rules are rubbish, especially 2, 3, 4, 5. They have done more (apart from microsoft word grammar checker, probably) to create the current standards of bad writing in journalism than anything else, and have resulted in the dreadful dumbing down of public discourse.

amaranthic
I really think - OOH!!! OOOOOH!!! Can we start a thread on what it means to "write" well? To "communicate" well? Seriously, I'd LOVE to hear all your thoughts. Been thinking a lot about methods of communication across cultures lately!

If there's any interest - please, someone, do! I am far too shy to start one myself!

Macumbeira
My idea ! these 6 rules are absolutely false. That's why I read Proust and not Orwell. nah !

What is good writing?

(Can I suggest that we limit the discusion to expository prose for the meantime. Making judgements about fiction and poetry are more subjective than anything else.)

euh.... ?

1. Always use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. People will better understand your point. Create variants to keep your readers interested.

2. Always use a long word whenever you get the chance. It will show how smart you are in comparison with that crowd of analphabetes outside.

3. If you can add a word to your sentence, do. Long sentences are more beautiful than short one's. A lot of things look better long than short.

4. Use passive and active whenever you feel like it. You are the artist ! Critics will love spending a life-time to find out why you did it.

5. Always pimp your sentences with a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon. It gives an exotic intelligent edge to your phrase n'est-ce pas. Put it in itallic to make sure everybody sees it.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

>3 Macumbeira: Stunning.You just blew my mind.

I guess I have this special gift ! : )

Hah! Bravo! I especially like the long bits!

Thanks for helping get my laugh on this morning Big Mac.

A lot of things look better long than short.

help, can't breathe, laughing too hard....

I'm with booksfallapart, and Orwell, but in most cases I'd go further:

1. Never use a metaphor or simile. Period.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it's possible to cut a word out, cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or jargon if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. You can of course break these rules when presenting dialogue, since so many people speak egregiously, aka funny.

#9: A life without metaphors or similes would be like a life without the resplendent rays of the sun. We'd all get rickets without them. Verdad.

LOL @ Medellia and Mac!

I'm always very torn about Orwell #1 (No Cliches, You Unoriginal Twat), because in my readings in Chinese, I come across what I personally think of as cliches all the time. I'm sure some of our Chinese speakers can attest to the power of the proverb in Chinese imagination (at least amongst the more traditional generation), even if they don't read characters. Anyway, the first novel I read in Chinese, which was Yu Hua's To Live, used "wanwan ququ de xiao lu," which approx = winding footpath, something like once every chapter. After all, the book was set in the countryside, where there are a lot of winding footpaths! And at first I would get so frustrated: "This book is terrible! This guy can't even learn how to write his own metaphors!!"

But you all know how this story ends.

Since then, I've read more writing in Chinese, and every time I do, I wonder if they're onto something here, with the recasting of cliches as cultural shorthand. Orwell briefly mentions something of a Western equivalent in that essay whoever it was (thanks!) linked, when he talks about phrases like "iron resolution" which he deems all right if they no longer detract from the vividness of the sentence (more subjectivity!). But I wonder whether the most egregious cliches now can be reclaimed as well.

ETA: Of course I'm looking at this from the viewpoint of an outsider, so I can't differentiate between "good" proverbs and "bad" un-originality. Any minute now some Chinese person is gonna come busting in: "You're wrong!! We hate cliches too!!!"

Let us recall that Orwell was afraid of the power of perverted language in the use of propaganda. He could see how the communist left and fellow travellers and the conservative and catholic right were using language in order to cover obvious deficiencies in their arguments.

Orwell did not have a great imagination, hence his inability to understand how plain language may not sometines be sufficient.

Orwell and Proust are both in my small, but closely guarded pantheon - Orwell for his understanding of politics, culture, nature, but emphatically not for his imagination.

Proust for his ability to visit mystical worlds closely aligned to our real world.

Orwell (a heavy user of passives) and many others show that being able to write well is a very different skill from being able to give good advice on writing.

All interesting points, I think. But lyrical writing and turning cliches around to make them breathe anew in new circumstances don't have to rely on metaphors and similes. And it's true that there are metaphors, and then there are metaphors: some emerge from straight-on observation, rather than the tedious (so far as I'm concerned) symbolist meme. And then, of course, as an apology of sorts, who is anyone to tell anyone else how to write? How much less would I enjoy Raymond Chandler, for instance, if he hadn't depicted reality as he so exaggeratedly, and cuttingly, did?

OK, being a big fan of the Princess Bride, I had to link to this.
http://menwithpens.ca/princess-bride-guide-to-copywriting

>15 anna_in_pdx: Ha! Excellent! Love the Princess Bride! (and how could one not know who Joss Whedon is?) Have fun storming the castle...

Never follow a list of "rules" about writing.

And, the only "rule" I know to be valid in every case is the following:

"Thou shalt not bore the reader."

To be clear, concise, and imaginative is my goal. I have read thousands of letters to and from Mark Twain, for example, and few come up to his high spots on all three of these ideals--even short little notes to decline an invitation of one sort or another.

I cannot imagine writing without the use of figurative language--how many great authors would be omitted without that? Figurative would, of course, include metaphors (stronger), similies (require a comparison), and even inventive, strong verbs. Like pornography, I cannot fully describe great writing, but I know it when I see it.

After posting the above, I went back to work on my Twain document for 1900, and found this letter from MT to his friend Laurence Hutton. It illustrates Sam's shining use of figurative language in a simple personal letter. What do you think of the metaphors?
---
Dear Larry:

This telegram came yesterday evening. Explain it to me; I have not answered it, as I didn’t know how. If it is political, it is inviting Satan to join the Church—for I am a mugwump.

Of course, at bottom, I smell a jest in it. Sad experience has made me chary of mysterious telegrams; telegrams which do not explain themselves; telegrams which are sparing of details. It is a cold week when I do not get one from somewhere or other. I used to answer them.

Tell me about it. I do not want to offend; but I am a burnt child, & I do not take as many chances as I used to did. (Used to done, I mean.)

Madam’s gone to Baltimore on a visit.

The mice are at play.

Love to you both.
Mark

17> Great commandment! We have six commandments so far. Who's got the Ten Commandments for Writing Well?

Hyperbole helps too, especially in humorous writing that's done well.

Four additional commandants on reading well, to go with the above six on writing well, about which no one apparently agrees:

7. Though shalt not read while texting.
8. Though shalt not read while driving.
9. Though shalt not read while driving and texting.
10. Though shalt not see the movie before first reading the book.

or:

10. Though shalt not read the book before seeing the movie first.

take your pick

>11 amaranthic: Yeah, cliches are so time- and space-bound, right? I got into a whole thing once with my writing prof about GK Chesterton's use of "old as the hills" because to prof it was a sickening dead cliche, and to me, never having heard it before, it was shivery, redolent of woad-covered Celts and dinosaur bones. Became a cliche, fell out of use, resurfaced as powerful for the same reasons it was originally? Marshall McLuhan has an interesting argument in that vein in From Cliche to Archetype. I guess the takeaway for writers is "know your audience and keep your finger on the pulse"? Cliches both!

>17 DavidHFears: I do agree with your first point, of course. For me personally, Orwell's rules were just a big help in reining in my natural exuberance, which I recognized was sometimes cloying but didn't know how to, um, put a sock in.

>21 MeditationesMartini: I once got into a heated argument with some awful people about a poem that had somehow compared a crow in the sky to a pattern on a teacup. I was completely convinced that this poet's particular usage was absolutely a cliche, and nobody would agree with me. Ok, so fine, they weren't awful people and we all had points. I know that you're kinda agreeing with me here (right? maybe?), and I'm not addressing this argument to anyone specifically, but I guess my thought about cliches is, when I see a cliche, will I stop and think, "Is this 'really' a cliche, whatever that means? How is it bound to time and space?" And if I did, would that be a useful reaction if I am trying to conduct analysis?
ETA: On rereading my post, that's kinda a random rant. But this has been on my mind lately! Allow me my irrelevancy!

I like the new rule in 17!

copyedit52 in 14 said, "Lyrical writing and turning cliches around to make them breathe anew in new circumstances don't have to rely on metaphors and similes." I agree with your basic point, but please give me an example of a cliche that does not involve metaphor or simile. Maybe I'm defining "cliche" differently from most people do (very possible, as I've reached most of my conclusions about this sort of thing very organically), but doesn't a cliche necessitate some sort of image or articulated concept? And how can we articulate a concept in a cliched way but through our symbolic dictionary, so to speak?

I am still not sure whether we are talking about fictional writing, or non fictional expository prose. For me this difference matters hugely. (I am very anal today: must be the herring.) Was Orwell specifying which he was referring to in his essay? If not, it puts his 'rules' in even more of an unflattering light, AFAIC.

Copyedit, can you expand on what it is exactly that you (and Orwell) have against the passive voice?

23: As the essay was mostly about political writing, I would say he was talking about expository writing. He didn't like the passive voice as it's used by political speakers to negate action/actor. I think that while this is sometimes done by means of voice it is done by a variety of ways, for example by means of intransitive verb. And maybe this belongss in the language and power thread. Sorry. Also excuse typos because I am not good at typing on a laptop.

A transitive/intransitive, a study that was done a while ago showed (see, I'm usign passive voice myself) that when newspapers reported on the Arab Israeli conflict they tended to say that Palestinians "died" as if some natural event had made them die as opposed to Israelis who were "killed" definitely by something (a rocket or a suicide bomb or whatever). It's a way of biasing the reader towards a side or making one side sound more victimized than the other.

I am going back to the beginning of the discussion. How can Orwell be against metaphor ? His Animal Farm is one big metaphor ! no ?

> Zeno : how can you say that Orwell was poor on imagination ? 1984 and AF are great imiginative works.

Metaphors are good for wooing or so it seems

In the movie “ Il postino”, the Aunt of beautiful Beatrice rushes to the the village priest when her niece seems to be in love with the simple postman Mario Ruppolo

- Priest : ( concerned ) PIease, sit down.
- The Aunt of Beatrice : No. What I want to say is
too serious to say sitting down…
- Priest : What is it about?
- Aunt :Mario RuoppoIo has been
hanging around my inn….and he has seduced my niece.
- What did he say?
- Metaphors.
- Priest : Well?
Aunt ( shocked )He's heated her up like an oven with his metaphors !

>24 anna_in_pdx: ,well, yes, that much is obvious, so shouldn't these then be rules for writing propaganda, or rules for journalism.

I still think they are pretty stupid even if they are meant to be only rules for political writing.

>murr way up there

Sorry, I diverged into fictive writing in my most recent post. My bad. Up 'til there I was trying to focus on non-fictive non-poetry as well.

ETA: Although my point can still be applicable to many other kinds of writing. My observation on cliches was rooted in example to a piece of fiction, but don't all stripes of writing use cliches of that nature as well?

ETA: WOW I am making no sense right now. I think I need to go to sleep soon. Ignore whatever was here before (that I just deleted).

Going to read/digest your most recent posts now.

Ok, I'm going to take the bait.

"I am still not sure whether we are talking about fictional writing, or non fictional expository prose. For me this difference matters hugely." - Murr in #23; the sentiment is echoed in early posts as well

1) For future reference, what exactly does this difference indicate to you? I think I have a general idea, but I want to see it on the table if at all possible. Might even stir up some more topics of discussion.

2) Just to be clear.... when you say non-fictional expository prose, would you include something like what is (shudder) commonly termed "creative nonfiction?"

I think part of the problem, or at least part of MY problem, is that I'm not satisfied with the terms that are currently widely accepted.

- Fiction
- Non-fiction
- Creative: I believe I'm the only one to use this thus far... although this is clearly pan into fire, to use ANOTHER cliche
- Analytical, which I don't think anyone here has used yet
- Expository
kai ta loipa

When you use these words, I know what you mean, due to our common cultural/literary background, but there's a certain level of ambiguity. And I'm not sure I'm even happy with the current definitions to begin with (although that's probably a discussion for another time). So, I would like Murr to clarify if possible what he means when he says that the difference is "huge" to him, even though his point may seem really obvious and non-controversial to some. Thank you.

A perfectly reasonable request and one that I will do my best to answer. Although in thinking this over, I realise that close definition of the categories results in their dissolution, somewhat…

However let us not be daunted! (This is going to be long, so turn on the TV or something and have a break if it gets too much.)

I divide writing into two broad types: fiction (defined as creating lies) and non-fiction (defined as an absence of lies). (Although it is salutary to remember Jean Cocteau’s remark, which we can apply to really great fiction: Je suis le mensonge qui dit toujours la verite. I am the lie that always speaks the truth.)

In the first category I put all novels, tales, stories, poetry and drama; into the second I put expository prose of any kind which is not fictional: reportage, academic prose, historiography, writing on the hard and social sciences, technical writing, manuals and how-to stuff, biography, literary criticism, theory, philosophy, etc.

Yes?

Now, why this matters to me is that for the first category (fiction), any rules or guides are simply out. Literary artists must have perfect theoretical and practical freedom to do what they want and to make their own compromises between their vision and their circumstances.
This is like a mantra for me and I believe it passionately.
Great artists go beyond merely finding a balance between form, expression and content to a place where they can create entirely new forms, in a new language. (Switching into essay mode here, in for the long straight stretch.) Even if the artist fails, or has only mediocre aspirations and tools, they still must have the freedom that is the first prerequisite of art and the creative process.

For the second category (non-fiction), first, I find a certain irony in the fact that Orwell –champion of the truth and freedom everywhere- uses only negatives to impose restrictions on writers, offering only Thou Shalt Not rather than Can Do Statements.
Secondly, if it is necessary to impose guidelines on non-fictional writing (a position I am perfectly open to accepting), then Orwell’s rules are simply far too simplistic. They are not precise enough, both in terms of advice they give about language and in their language of expression; they do not have a theoretical model underpinning them; they are not based on empirical research into discourse genre analysis and information processing.

(I think I might be going a bit mad now…break for more vodka and a Sobranie Cocktail).

I see I have not yet answered your question about creative non-fiction. I also have more to say about writing guidelines, which is my main area of publication, research and teaching.

However, I need to go out on my scooter and have dinner with friends. I've been writing all day (Nabokov on Pushkin) and need to get away from the screen for a bit.

I think DavidHfears in >17 DavidHFears: hit the nail on the head in his post, BTW: Thou shalt not bore the reader.

I think this has excellent possibilities for covering all the criticisms I mentioned in my previous post.

one more thing while I remember, I do think there should be standards and rules in non-fictional writing. I think this would help in the dissemination of truth and accuracy; and I agree with and support Orwell's impulse, just not in the actual way he put it out there.

Just wanted to make that clear.

Not of much help, as usual: Divers writers of anything write diversely . . . For though it be written homely, yet it is not (as I trust) written untruly. And in anything the chief thing that is to be desired is truth. Wherefore, if thou find that in it, I beseech thee, wink at small faults, or at the least, let the consideration of my well meaning drown them.

#25 Mac, Orwell does not have the imaginative power of a Kafka, Proust or Musil in my opinion (I use these examples because they stand with Orwell in my list of the greats). Orwell's fictions are all based on what he saw in the world, all speak out to varing degrees against the inherent dangers he foresaw. But 1984 and AF were not great leaps into different worlds or to different ways of seeing the world. They were projections of the trends he saw in the current world.

fair enough. i am thinking of writing a story of a German guy who turns into a beetle when he nibbles at a Madeleine : )

>22 amaranthic:. amaranthic: ".. please give me an example of a cliche that does not involve metaphor or simile."

Good point. I can't offhand. On making metaphors breathe anew, I had in mind using them in ways you don't expect, so the reader is compelled to actually read them instead of just gliding past; which I think is the problem with cliches that are just dropped onto the page--they deaden the prose. If done right, the "refreshed" metaphor can be powerful, and often humorous, since the reader recognizes the (old) metaphor as he or she is discovering how the "new" one serves as description.

>25 Macumbeira:. Macumbeira: Animal Farm as an extended metaphor doesn't bother me (and a lot of what's being said here, if not all of it, merely comes down to taste, after all) perhaps because it is so extended. Soon enough you're seeing the animals as people without thinking about the fact that they're animals; though perhaps in Orwell's day readers saw Stalin, Trotsky, etc., in this animal character or that. (When beleaguered by work, I sometimes think of myself as the poor horse.) What puts me off about most metaphors, and similes, is that they basically say "this is like that." And I prefer writing that doesn't rely on distancing itself from its subject.

Mac - look forward to reading that. Preferable if it is several thousand words long and still unfinished at your death.

The passive voice is very useful when there is either a) no need to refer to the actor, such as in, "school was let out today," or b) when it is not desirable to disclose the actor, as in, "He'd been murdered for sure; it had been made to look like a suicide."

To NEVER use passive is silly, but such are the "rules for fools" often passed around in creative writing workshops.

>22 amaranthic: "An apple a day keeps the doctor away"? Or "many hands make light labour"? On some level you can argue that those are metaphors or metonymies (the apple standing in for a healthy lifestyle; the hands representing the work they can perform), but I always took these an platitudes like them as literal (eat that apple!) in a way that your "old as the hills" doesn't. Oh! What about "It was a dark and stormy night"? And actually, tonnes of stock descriptions of character traits and physical appearances are non-metaphorical--"lank-haired", for instance, which I'd always avoid in favour of "straight", because "lank" killed itself with clicheness and now sounds archaic (at least to me). Or "bright eyes", where the eyes, of course, could be construed as metaphorically bright in that they metaphorically give off light, but I always thought it referred to eyes literally reflecting light because they were big and/or full of tears.

If you go outside the directly linguistic realm this gets much easier. Cliche situations: "we're not really brother and sister and now we can get married?!" Cliche characters, of whom I'm sure you can think of a mllion. Visual cliches, like, um, "The Barn on the Fells", a famous landscape by John Constable that I just made up.

32> Allow me to expand a bit on that rule about never boring the reader: this assumes the writer has a particular reader in mind. Clearly, an essay on climate change for a high school audience must not use the same style and technique, word selection, etc., as one for an association of nuclear physicists.

Knowing your audience is essential for many writers, even fiction writers, who may "picture" their "ideal reader" or have a general impression of their collective readership, etc. Would John Updike's vision of his audience vary from, say, Danielle Steele's? I hope to kiss a pig they would, yet in terms of sales, etc. success answers for each.

>39 DavidHFears: I don't disagree about the creative writing workshops, but I take "never use the passive where you can use the active" to mean "never use the passive where the active will do"; like, it can be interpreted in a way to allow "school was let out" but stigmatize "to the best of my recollection, my fraud began in the early 1990s". (I mean, I know Madoff's statement is not actually in the passive, but it seems like that's the kind of weaselly/potentially abusive obscuring of agency that Orwell was trying to prevent. Maybe we can forget the prohibition against the passive and to "don't be boring" add "don't be a dick".)

I'm just posting to acknowledge >31 tomcatMurr:-33 Murr (still mulling this over)

and >22 amaranthic: Sfalla (yes, I agree)

and to remind myself to reread the last ten posts later (as I shall forget otherwise, now that I've made the posts "read" instead of "unread"). And now off again to dreary drudgery.

NEVER AGAIN WOULD BIRDS' SONG BE THE SAME

HE would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.

Robert Frost
from A WITNESS TREE
1942

From the theatre director Peter Brook. It helps us when thinking about writing, it seems to me.

I HAVE NEVER believed in a single truth. Neither my own, nor those of others. I believe in all schools, all theories can be useful in some place, at some time. But I have discovered that one can only live by a passionate, and absolute, identification with a point of view.
However, as time goes by, as we change, as the world changes, targets alter and the viewpoint shifts. Looking back over many years of essays written, ideas spoken in many places on so many varied occasions, one thing strikes me as being consistent. For a point of view to be of any use at all, one must commit oneself totally to it, one must defend it to the very death. Yet, at the same time, there is an inner voice that murmurs: "Don't take it too seriously. Hold on tightly, let go lightly."

Hold on tightly, let go lightly.

Nice one.

Yes. Well put, Porius, or Peter Brook.

I had a writing teacher who speaks of "received text" rather than cliche, the idea being that these are ways of packaging experience that have come to us via others, and do not communicate our direct experience in the way our own awkward fumbling after words would do.

#48

Reminds me of the approach to the study of classical Chinese and Japanese literature (for instance), how a slight allusion or reference would convey a wealth of meaning embodied in or explicated by some (older) text. I'd say most of the footnotes in The tale of Genji pertain to deciphering these literary allusions; the characters could have whole conversations basically "speaking poetry".

But I wonder if we ever communicate anything "directly". Even expressions of emotions are learned, to a degree at least, how one "presents" pain, joy etc.

>48 solla:, 49 Yeah, it seems true of many premodern cultures: the elaborate, conventionalized forms of address in 1001 Nights, the web of allusions to Biblical and folk symbology in the medieval romance, the "wine-dark seas" and "grey-eyed Athenas" of Homer. I wonder how much of it in e.g. the Chinese and Japanese traditions can be chalked up to the demands of poetic form?

I also just read in Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Turkish Embassy Letters about an Ottoman tradition of love letters consisting of a box or chest full of different objects--a stone, a feather, a scroll--each with a set meaning and meant to be interpreted in a certain order. Romantic!

>48 solla: Oh, and Lola, you're so right re learned expressions of emotion. Here is a great article related to that very topic: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10psyche-t.html

Walter Kauffman in Tragedy and Philosophy says:

Writing is thinking in slow motion.

I think this is correct. Good writers make it easy to follow their thought, their thought is exceptionally clear and their writing reproduces that thought in the mind of the reader.

I have always thought the best way to learn good writing is to read good writers. Some of the best writers of expository prose imo are: (weighted towards lit crit, phil and history, coz that's mostly what non fiction I read)

Collingwood (probably the best)
Iris Murdoch
W.H. Auden
H.A.L Fisher
Andrjez Walicki
Fernand Braudel
James Wood
George Steiner (a bit heavy handed at times.....)
James Billington...

Who are your models?

So hard!

Um:

Montaigne
Beerbohm
my girlfriend
Montaigne
Montaigne
Orwell (caveats explored at great length above and all around)
Laurie Lee (great with wist)
Terry Eagleton for sure
Zizek (I like his mix of high and low registers. There are, however, many topics on which writing like Zizek would be an abomination)
Nick Currie
Herodotus
no French theorists
the dude in the Economist who referred to "the braying City boys and the high-fiving swells of Wall Street"

I also want to give honourable mention to Honore(able) de Balzac.

Good at expository writing?

William Zinsser
Noam Chomsky
John McPhee
Lewis Thomas
Primo Levi (does this count as expository?)
John Locke
Richard Mitchell the Underground Grammarian
Arundhati Roy (not that I have read that much of her political writing but what I have read is clear, compelling and convincing)

Seconding others mentioned above:
Orwell
Auden
Herodotus
Montaigne! Yes! I remember he writes well! Thank you Martin!

Another vote for Montaigne, and one for his confrere, William Hazlitt.

yummy lists !

>55 copyedit52: Were they budz? That's not, like, historically possible, is it?

No, books. It's been a long day, with an errant computer. Just being glib, confrering them as essayists.

of course Montaigne. I forgot le mec.

no French theorists?
well, almost, except Barthes who writes fabulously well. but Derrida and Macheray? I agree, Rubbish! Bah!

I also want to include Oscar Wilde, while I remember. his essays and criticism are brilliantly written. And of course I forgot to mention Kauffman himself, who also writes splendidly.

Anna, I'm intrigued about the underground grammarian you mentioned in 54. can you tell me more?

>58 copyedit52: right eight. I am sometimes slow.

>50 MeditationesMartini: OH YEAH BARTHES! I know the existentialists aren't really usually conflated with the poststructural "theorists", but I also want to include Sartre.

Just heard on Literary Snobs that Howard Zinn died. Damn. I should have added him to my list yesterday.

59: Richard Mitchell, the "Underground Grammarian" wrote newsletters at his university making fun of academic jargon mostly. They spanned the mid-70s to about 1990. He died in 2002.

As time went on, his writings became more thoughtful. They were also collected into books, a couple of which are Less than Words can Say and The Gift of Fire. One of my favorite of his essays is one about going to a Mensa convention and meeting Prometheus.

A fan of his has collected all of his stuff on line, including every single one of his newsletters. I have read them all but I like to go there and re-read them sometimes.

http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/

His disclaimer about plagiarism is really classic:

"WE are often asked permission to reprint or duplicate or in some other way to circulate the pieces that appear in The Underground Grammarian. It always seems to us a good idea, and we always grant such permission. In fact, you may take this little notice as prior written permission to do likewise in any fashion that seems good to you. We neither ask nor expect any form of payment, but we would like to be cited as the source. But if admitting that you read this sheet will get you into hot water, we will be the first to understand.

"One reader wrote recently to apologize for plagiarism, since he had woven some of our stuff into a speech he had given and made no attribution. Since then we have also had word of a man who wrote, to the editor of some newspaper, a letter that was, in fact, made entirely of our words. The paper caught him, chastised him, and barred him from their letters column forever. Somehow, we feel that something only sort of like justice has been served here. So now we have to add a new rule. Plagiarism is also permitted. Go ahead. Make our day."

Howard Zinn:(

And JD Salinger:(:(:(

Thank you anna for introducing this to me. Richard Mitchell is a man after my own heart.
Super links.

Seymour Hersh (sp) does excellent political essays for the New Yorker. In general their non-fiction (apart from reviews) has been and remains excellent. IIRC John McPhee got his start writing for the NYorker - i THINK that's where i first read levels of the game and, for that matter, Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem and ...(less sure) Silent Spring.

Other current sources of good expository popular writing are featured in Vanity Fair and Esquire quite frequently. Sometimes in New Scientist.

For myself - all i can say is that the thesis and the book couldn't help me a bit when UNC press asked me to turn my phud into a book. Good topics, good information, wretched academic prose.