Good Prose - A Review
There is a certain amount of learning how to write that comes through osmosis, first by reading widely and second by simply writing. At some point, however, the amount that one can discover by blundering about copying better writing and dissecting one’s resulting prose is exhausted. Professional help is needed.
For those in academic settings, getting help with writing is much easier than for those outside the ivory tower. There is a writing center, a critical mass of people all trying to write better, and even classes that one can audit if time allows. For others, especially those who practice their writing largely in isolation, external helps are needed, often in the form of books about writing.
Good Prose is such a book. It is co-written by Tracy Kidder, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, and his long-time editor, Richard Todd. The relationship they share is an unlikely situation in our contemporary setting. Most authors flit around between publications trying to scrape out a meager existence between online and print articles. Editors seem to change allegiances nearly as quickly, especially as the ability to edit seems to be much less significant to many people than the willingness to acquiesce to whatever the trendy political flavor of the day is. Kidder and Todd worked at The Atlantic together for decades. They collaborated on stories, articles, and even books. Some of those books took years to write.
The result of the partnership between Kidder and Todd was more than a large literary output and a Pulitzer Prize. A friendship is evident that helped shape the way each other thought and the way the words were formed on the page. The actual writing advice in Good Prose at some points is less visible than the story of the relationship between an editor and a writer. That is to say, this is the sort of book that someone who had very little interest in writing or editing well could be enthralled by.
The chapters flow as one might expect from a less narratival approach to teaching writing: discussions of narratives, memoirs, essays, the importance of facts (and the ability to negotiate them), issues of style and commercial viability, and the balance between conformity to standard usage and bending the rules. This isn’t Strunk and White’s twenty-five rules, though. One gets a strict list of applications and speed limits from that slim volume. Good Prose offers guidance, but more importantly, it offers a vision of what the writing life can be in the best of circumstances.
On my first pass through the volume, I barely noticed the technical advice that authors provided in their collaboration. As I was reviewing the book to write this review the actual writing instruction became more apparent. What stuck out during my careful reading of the volume is the encouragement of a friendship around communicating to the world through the written word.
If you are struggling with grammar, this may not be the book for you. (In fact, they point you toward a book they recommend on the topic.) However, if you are looking for encouragement in your own quest to continue writing, in your willingness to be edited, and in the hope that you can improve over time, then this is a book that delivers.
The way we talk about humans also has moral implications, which are more significant than how we treat our pets. In his 2011 book, Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, David Livingstone Smith explores how language changes culture and leads to the justification of extreme violence against others, especially when they become perceived as less than human.