More on Strunk & White
Well, I’m clearly not the only one celebrating the anniversary of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style: The New York Times has weighed in, with a kinder, gentler approach than the review I cited in my last post.
My favorite part? This story:
“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers,” Dorothy Parker once wrote, “the second-greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first-greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”
And then there’s this gem:
White argued that Strunk had also been motivated by sympathy for the writer’s victims: “Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground or at least to throw a rope.”
So you can pay your money and take your pick of reviews, but no matter what anyone says, it’s staying on my shelf. My friend Rachel once told me that her favorite book in the world is Emily Post, because she can look at it and be reassured that somewhere there’s a place with all the answers. An illusion, perhaps, but a comforting one.
So choose your favorite illusion of perfection and you’ll be … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in About Writing, Editing, Words on April 24th, 2009