Counter-Currents
Leonid Pasternak, The Passion of Creation (1892)
2,009 words
Recently I took part in a discussion of writing and how to do it on Counter-Currents. This being a topic of some importance to me, I decided to throw together a few thoughts in a form more coherent that I could do in a podcast. A danger in doing this is that readers will joyfully point out instances in which I have failed to follow my own suggestions. To these sins I confess in advance. Anyway:
This is not a golden age of writing. For one thing, few today have the grasp of English grammar that long ago we had learned by the fifth grade, or any idea why it might be important. Nor, I suspect, have many read much in the best authors in English, and so have not acquired an ingrained feel for what is good and what isn’t. I may be wrong. I hope so.
For another, good writing is elitist, and must be. Elitism means a preference for the better to the worse. In an intellectual climate resembling that of an urban bus station, in which the lower cultural orders seek to drag standards to the bottom, few will prefer good writing to bad, or know the difference.
Further, when people are in constant communication via telephones, garbling and semi-literacy are less important than they were when poor communication demanded clarity. In the following we will pretend that it is 1955 and that I am speaking to young people who want to write well.
To begin, my advice to the aspiring writer is to forget “creativity.” Writing is first a craft, involving rules and principles and things to which the student should learn to pay attention. Later, perhaps, writing is an art. You have to learn the notes before playing a concerto. Accepting this is important.
Also important, crucial I would say, is the habit of paying attention to language itself, not just its content. By this I mean the structure of sentences, choice of words, turn of phrase. If you read a piece and think it good, read it again and ask why it is good. If an analytical piece, is the analysis clear and compelling? The phrasing fresh and devoid of cliché? The vocabulary extensive and correct in use?
To again use a comparison to music, the listener doesn’t have to know music theory, but the musician does.
Here are some brief notes on grammar, a maligned field. Pardon me if I am didactic, but these things are worth knowing.
A language consists of its grammar and vocabulary. Grammar is the structure that allows words to convey meaning with respect to each other. Americans imbibe with their mother’s milk a close approximation of the structure of English, but a writer needs better.
All European languages of which I am aware (Basque is a mystery to me) have similar structures. Knowing English grammar has benefits beyond being able to write well. If you know the six-part present-tense structure of an English verb, first-person singular and plural, second-person, etc., then learning Spanish verbs is just a matter of plugging new words into a familiar pattern. Otherwise, you have problems. My wife Violeta, Mexican, who for years made her living teaching Spanish to gringos, despaired of students who did not grasp the structure of their own language. They were essentially unteachable.
So, to the aspiring writer I would say: If you don’t know English grammar, learn it. It can be daunting. Tenses, compound tenses, indicative voice, subjunctive mood, appositives, participles, gerunds, linking verbs, prepositions, dependent clauses, and so on. If we could do it by the fifth grade, certainly you can do it. If nothing else, it will inculcate an awareness of the mechanics of English.
Why? Knowledge gives you an entirely different understanding of things. (You saw it here first.) I can watch a soccer game and get a kick out of all the players running in all directions. Violeta, being a Mexican, whose national game it is, sees strategy, tactics, calculated moves, and the goal is not the random result of randomly kicking the ball but the product of cooperating players who know exactly what they are doing. So with writing. People who know what is going on see a different game.
Let us consider some rules of composition which, in conjunction, make all the difference. They can be broken to good effect at times, but these times should be few. I have not invented them. A half-century ago, they were known to all competent writers.
Follow a long, complex sentence with a short, crispy one. Long sentences following long sentences tire the reader, who is likely to decide to read something else.
Omit unnecessary words. Don’t say “adverse weather conditions.” Say “bad weather.” Don’t say that an airplane “has the capability to fly long distances.” Say that it “can fly long distances,” or that it has a long range. Especially bad is “the process,” as in “the repair process.” Just say “repair.”
A useful exercise is to go through newspaper stories and see how many words can be crossed out without loss. or how many of the foregoing rules have been infelicitously broken.
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Don’t use the same word too near itself. Why this reads badly I don’t know, but it does.
The verb agrees with the subject of the sentence, not the object of the nearest preposition. Wrong: “The statues in the house, near the big bay window, was the clue that gave John away.”
Avoid clichés as you would a rabid dog. They make the sensitive reader want to get a drink, or play tennis, or do anything but keep reading. Never, ever say “the tip of the iceberg.” Or, please, please, “the American dream,” or “the American people.” Or “the love of my life.” Or “the beginning of the end.” Certain words amount to clichés by overuse. “Incredibly” is one. The inexperienced writer uses it with abandon in an attempt to give force to a sentence that doesn’t have any.
Learn to handle the subjunctive. “It is important that you not smoke” and “It is important that you don’t smoke” mean different things.
Fresh similes and metaphors may require an imagination that not everyone has, but are worth seeking. Readers of Raymond Chandler probably remember his phraseology after they have forgotten the plots of his books. “He had a nose like a straphanger’s elbow.” Or, “She was a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
In fiction, avoid sex scenes. You can’t compete with PornHub. In more puritanical times, such described couplings may have been titillating. Today they are just embarrassing.
Bad language, both obscenity and profanity, have their place but should be used with exceeding infrequency, as they quickly become merely crass. They are more admissible in the dialog of characters of coarse background, but even here restraint is advisable.
Avoid mixed metaphors. They are often ridiculous and jar the sensitive reader, making him wonder what and whether the writer was thinking. “The octopus of Nazism has sung its swan song.”
Use the words “very” and “significant” sparingly. These are used by poor or inexperienced writers attempting to give force to statements. They usually do the opposite. Of the two, “significant” is the more discardable. “The stock market rose significantly.” If it rose insignificantly, the reader will think, why would you tell him about it?
Be careful not to confuse similar words. As was said in newspapering, a “burro” is an ass. A “burrow” is a hole in the ground. A writer should know the difference. “Sensuous” means “appealing to the senses,” as in, “The queen wore a sensuous green dress.” “Sensual” means “pertaining to the sexual.” “His thoughts were sensual as he approached the naked cheerleader doing her pole dance.” “Bellicose” means “aggressive, inclined to fight.” “Belligerent,” from the Latin gerund, means, “engaged in fighting.” “The bellicosity of the Japanese led to war, in which they and the Chinese were the chief belligerents.” These latter two are now often used interchangeably, diminishing the clarity of language.
Pay attention to what words actually mean. Few today do, in universities or anywhere else, but to literate readers, they matter. For example, “impact” means a physical blow. It is not a verb. Such horrors as “losing the game impacted very significantly on his self-worth” probably justify hanging. Psychobabble like “self-worth” should be strenuously avoided.
Here we come to the vexed matter of grammatical gender. In the past, the masculine “he” included women: “If a traveler comes to New York, he will marvel at the tall buildings.” In ages in which men were more dominant than they now are, this sort of thing was tolerable, or at least tolerated. This is not uniquely a difficulty in English. In Spanish, niños, literally “little boys,” is used to mean children of both sexes.
This has led to both awkwardness and absurdity. “If someone comes into the gym, tell him or her to put his or her dress in his or her locker.” Or, If someone comes into the women’s gym, tell them to put on their sports bra.” The workaround embedding itself in the culture is to use “them,” “they,” and “their” as indefinite pronouns. This is I think necessary, though objectionable, and one day will cease to jar the literate, if there be any. Today they just sound uneducated.
Having written your short story or magazine piece, read it aloud to yourself. Does it sound natural? Don’t say, “Mary said to the cop, ‘I saw Jane ascending the stairs with her cold dark eyes full of hatred and her hand running along the elaborately carved French Revival banister with the brass ornamentation.” Nobody talks that way. It is called exposition in dialog. You should have the detective who is the narrative voice in your story do the describing. Exposition in dialog is bad because it gives the story, or book, a phoniness that the reader may not be able to shake.
Now a few thoughts on the management of editors, the assumption here being that you want to write political commentary.
First, you should adopt some point on the Left-Right political spectrum, it doesn’t matter which, and never, ever stray from it. Neither readers nor editors are forgiving. If you are the most flaming liberal, slanted to the point of being vertical, and then write a column in favor of gun rights, it may be your last. If you are the most thunderous conservative, way out on the Right wing where the feathers grow thin and giddy space beckons, and then you write in favor of reparations to blacks, you will need another job.
Second, from columnists most editors want predictability, not thought or originality. A newspaper editor does not want to wake up mornings and think, “Oh God, what has Fred written now, and how many advertisers will jump ship?” They want slot columnists: the black male conservative, the housebroken white conservative, the moderate male liberal, and so on. These never make waves, never do anything unexpected, so the editor can worry instead about the many other things that worry editors.
Third, your job as a columnist is to tell your readers what they already believe in engaging prose. They want confirmation, not information. The farther to the Right or Left they are, the less they will tolerate any disturbance to the tranquil certainties they espouse.
They do like seeing the infidels smashed. Years back I read of a columnist, I forget where, I think in the Thirties, who was wildly liberal to the point of being goofy. He apparently overdid it, because another writer, far to the Right, began attacking him savagely. For years the controversy raged, until it was discovered that they were the same guy. Outrage erupted. Was this not unprincipled?
No, the guy responded. He said his job was to affirm the beliefs, or delusions, of his readers, and he was doing so in both cases. What was the problem?
Them’s my thoughts, for whatever they may be worth.
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28 comments
Great piece. I’m an editor. Reading awful prose from leftist academics, as I unfortunately must do to put food on the table, is the bane of my existence.
The only mistake I noticed in your piece was capitalizing “thirties,” by the way. Your writing is excellent. Whatever a person’s ideological inclination, he should read Orwell’s famous essay, “Politics and the English Language.”
‘Elitism’ is preferring ‘the better’ to ‘the worse’?
I always thought it was just another word for ‘Looking down your nose a people because they don’t conform to your own limitations.’
Whodah thunk?
Hi Fred,
Great piece. Thanks for the English lesson. A very enjoyable read. Now I know why I’m not a professional writer.
Happy New Year.
I have enjoyed what you write, and how you write it, for over twenty years. Part of that enjoyment comes from your mastery of our uniquely beautiful language. Vanishingly few modern writers possess this talent.
The reason? Proper English grammar and structure have not been taught in school for decades. While appalling, it is not surprising. The vast number of American teachers are barely literate. This is by design. Gramsci’s long march through the institutions has succeeded beyond his most fervent hopes. Curse that hunchbacked Marxist rat ba$+ard.
Homeschooling or relentless involvement with your child’s schoolwork are the only ways to stem this tide. Make them write well. Given them copies of “The Elements of Style” by Strunk and White, avoiding anything after the 4th edition. Buy yourself a copy and use it.
Decimate is my favorite bugaboo.
Too true! Ain’t it irritatin’!
Regarding prohibited words such as “nigger,” their function has been changed. These words, and neologisms and phrases that use these words, prohibit those that the antiwhite establishment does not allow to use such words from quoting the author and arguing with him in his own words, and they advertise that the author has the right to use such words and is politically dangerous to argue against. Blacks and other DEI-entitled persons know this and sometimes use it to shut down potential opposition.
I don’t know what the answer to this is, but pretending that you don’t know how the game is played is not the answer.
I just looked in my old English-Russian dictionary of 1990, and there is written that the word “nigger” is insulting and obsolete, but the word “negro” is totally OK, and there is nothing wrong or bad about it. The word Afro-American is simply absent. The book is only 33 years old.
If everybody would just stop using “potential(ly)” and “possible” in every sentence, I’d be greatly relieved.
The injured man was taken to the hospital with a possible broken arm.
What??
The damage was caused by a possible tornado.
Would it have been different if it had been an impossible tornado?
We are grateful for Mrs Gotrocks for making this evening possible.
Is the woman a goddess or something?
This could potentially be dangerous.
Beam me up!
often replaced with alleged.
Yep. Which brings to mind the total substitution of “rhetoric” for “bombast” and, which may be even more annoying, of “healthy” for “healthful.”
I once landed the job as writing coach for a daily newspaper by explaining to the managing editor that if something higher than you on the food chain kills, cooks, and eats you, then you can no longer be described as “healthy.” Not accurately, anyway.
“There is,” I archly told her, “no such thing as ‘healthy food’.”
She laughed out loud and hired me on the spot.
Pretty blonde thing she was, too!
Similar sounding words can confuse even native speakers, such as: “discreet” and “discrete,” and “compliment” and “complement.” I remember learning in school that Hemingway would write five pages first thing in the morning and pare it down to a single page by the end of the day; a marvelous exercise. One editor in the 70s suggested that a writer should write as he speaks, but given the current atmosphere, I’m not sure that would communicate well.
Basque is a mystery to me
Basque is not an European language by origin, and really nobody knows where it has come from. A medieval story said, that only the devil tried to learn the Basque, in thirty years he learned three words, and even those he knew wrong. There was one very popular novel in Georgia/Sakartvelo, where the Georgian author Alexander Kiknadze argued, that the Basque language is related to the Georgian language, and the Basques and Georgians are cousins. The Royal Primrose was the Russian title of the book, and The Iverian Legend was the Georgian title.
Whoever you are, wherever you hail from, you are a font of exotic information. I appreciate that.
Teaching American kids Spanish is just another form of humiliating conquered slaves. Why teach them German, French or any of the Scandanavian languages when you can drag them down from their northern European elite status by teaching them a language spoken by peasants who may one day become their masters.
Teaching Spanish to American kids is nothing short of a crime.
As someone who is old enough to have learned correct English in grade school (those were the days!) I loved this piece. I’d like to offer a recommendation for readers who want to improve their English but don’t want to sign up for a course or tackle a 400-page book.
“Essential English Grammar” by Philip Gucker is a concise, excellent summary of the subject. The book is divided into short lessons of a few pages each, with exercises and answers in the back so that you can check your understanding of each topic. It’s published by Dover Books and was written in the mid-1960s, and is therefore refreshingly free of any “ze/zer/zim” nonsense. The only outdated aspect of it – and Mr. Reed touched on this in his article – is that it teaches the use of the generic masculine pronoun, which for better or worse has become generally unacceptable. I have recommended this book to people numerous times and am happy to do so here.
In the spirit of this column, I would also like to mention to any aspiring writers two of my own pet peeves:
1) Please learn the difference between “uninterested” (which means not interested) and “disinterested” (which means impartial). I see these words constantly used as if they were interchangeable, and they’re not. A judge presiding over a trial should be disinterested. The judge should not, however, be uninterested in the trial.
2) Please, please, PLEASE learn the correct definition of “ironic” – it may be the most misused word in the English language today!
The substantive form of uninterested is ‘lack of interest’. It is this form of the word which usually lures the unwary writer onto the rocks of ‘disinterest’.
As a foreigner, I would say that for the most part, American book authors, especially of non-fiction, write in a simpler and more understandable language than the British do. Of course, there are exceptions, but in most cases this is true.
Great piece! Thank you.
One peeve I have is never called out, and I’m puzzled as to why, because it’s a serious insult. It’s using “that” for “who.” The latter is for humans and higher individual animals like pets or barnyard animals who* you know. “That” is for lower animals and inanimate things. When one says, for example, “the author, that guy that wrote [my favorite novel]” instead of “the author, that guy who wrote…,” one is gravely insulting that person. He’s not a rock or a sand flea, he’s a hooman being!
*I didn’t use “whom.” I don’t care about that particular rule, and truthfully don’t know it that well.
I persist in using the masculine “he” (women understood as included) rather than “their”. Back in the 1970s, there was an attempt to introduce into written work the hideous “s/he”. I’ll even throw in the occasional “poetess” or “authoress” to signal my reactionary tendencies.
Quite right and and you’ll also meet the odd aviatrix, pilotess, paintress, protestrix or conductrix. My personal favourite though is actress, the use of which elicits fulminating rage year-long, but appears quite unobjectionable when the Academy Awards roll around.
The verb agrees with the subject of the sentence, not the object of the nearest preposition. Wrong: “The statues in the house, near the big bay window, was the clue that gave John away.”
Can you elaborate what is wrong here? Are you saying that the clue is the subject to which the verb gave is agreeing with and not the object John?
I read a lot of scientific papers and I feel a lot of times the writers try to sound smart when in actuality the sentences are often too long and the idea gets lost.
Long sentences which make sense should not be hoped for from those without a solid grasp of grammar. When we we all learnt Latin from age nine or earlier this was not a problem.
The simplest form of the sentence in question would be: “The statues were/was the clue”. The verb ‘to be’ is the most commonly used in English and is intransitive, meaning in essence that the sentence should mean the same read backwards. This particular example illustrates, perhaps inadvertently, a common probem relating to the agreement of number either side of the verb ‘to be’. Strictly speaking it should read: “The statues were the clues” or “The group of statues was the clue”, both of which can be read back to front. The phrase ‘near the big bay window’ modifies ‘statues’ and functions as an adjective. It has no relation to the verb of the sentence. I believe this was the point Mr Reed was making.
More commonly verbs are transitive. They have a subject and an object. “We, in a rage, kill her” is quite different to “She, in a rage, kills us”. The forms of the personal pronouns are different for subect and object and dependent on gender in English but this does not apply for any other substantives/nouns. In Latin and to a lesser extent in many other European languages, all substantives take different forms depending on their gender and role in a sentence. “Der Hund sitzt auf der Katze” vs “Die Katze sitzt auf dem Hund”.
I think the issue may be that “The statues [plural) in the house . . . was [singular] the clue that gave John away.”
Correct: “The statues in the house . . . were the clue that gave John away.”
The nearest preposition thingy refers to “near the big bay window”, which being singular caused the confusion.
This has led to both awkwardness and absurdity. “If someone comes into the gym, tell him or her to put his or her dress in his or her locker.”
The flagrantly anti-white male instructor of my Phenomenology class at SUNY Stony Brook in 1990, Anthony Steinbock, advised us either to use non-specific pronouns rendered as both genders separated by a slash (he/she, him/her, etc.,) or intentionally to use female pronouns in contexts where social convention would assume males such as surgeons and Senators.
Steinbock, now grizzled and sans ponytail, has advanced to become the current chair of that school’s philosophy department.
In German Steinbock means a capricorn, but indeed it is simply a goat.
Sound advice, though I’m still puzzling over why I don’t quite accept the following:
“Bellicose” means “aggressive, inclined to fight.” “Belligerent,” from the Latin gerund, means, “engaged in fighting.” “The bellicosity of the Japanese led to war, in which they and the Chinese were the chief belligerents.” These latter two are now often used interchangeably, diminishing the clarity of language.
Belligerent, unlike bellicose, can be used as both a noun and an adjective. Its use as a noun in the example provided is correct. But I think the author is incorrectly distinguishing between bellicose and belligerent when the latter is being contemplated in its adjectival form. It was the belligerence of the Japanese (eg, the invasion of Manchuria) that led to war with China, not their mere bellicosity.
A bellicose nation is one which makes warlike proclamations, whereas a belligerent one is, as the author notes, engaged in hostile activity. Venezuela is being bellicose as it advances (bogus) verbal claims to ownership of Caribbean oil fields under longtime Guyanese jurisdiction. China, OTOH, is being belligerent when it deliberately sends its fighter planes into Taiwanese airspace.
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