Gleanings from Maira Kalman
Three passages from The Principles of Uncertainty.
How to improve writing (no. 70)
A page-ninety test.
Carrying on
Winston Smith has begun to keep a diary. Will there ever be someone to read it and understand?
W(h)ither grammar
How many problems in reading stem from an ignorance of basic grammar? And how many problems in writing stem from an ignorance of basic grammar?
Nat Hentoff (1925–2017)
“I was addicted to books.”
Make it known
John D’Agata’s The Making of the American Essay (2016) has a witty sequence of epigraphs from Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, and John Ashbery. But D’Agata isn’t the first to put them into a sequence.
Martinis or cheap cigars
Henry Threadgill, on the importance of adjusting to the economic difficulties of life as an artist, filmmaker, musician, writer.
Deresiewicz v. D’Agata
“It kills me to think that there are going to be people walking around who believe that Socrates was an essayist because a self-important ignoramus named D’Agata told them so.”
Lambuth serendipity
Bryan Garner’s Usage Tip of the Day today includes a passage from The Golden Book on Writing.
A David Lambuth sampler
David Lambuth appears not to have been an especially prolific scholar. But he was an excellent writer.
The other little book
David Lambuth’s The Golden Book on Writing, better than The Elements of Style.
VKNY
Verlyn Klinkenborg’s Several Short Sentences About Writing, popular in a NY bookstore.
notebin.cc
An online text editor.
How to improve writing (no. 69)
Writing that represents the speech of someone fleeing an erupting volcano should exhibit greater terseness, greater urgency.
“Are We Teaching Composition All Wrong?”
Provocative reading in The Chronicle of Higher Education.
How to improve writing (no. 68)
I don’t read New Yorker prose (or any prose I’m not editing) looking for things to change: these passages presented themselves to me (or to my bad-sentence radar) as prose in need of repair.
“Fountain pens, pencil, and pipe”
Walter Benjamin operates on an idea.
How to improve writing (no. 67)
Ford Madox Ford’s page-ninety test (and it is page ninety, not ninety-nine), can yield amazing results.
How to improve writing (no. 66)
A partial sentence from a short piece at The New Yorker website.
Smoke and ink
Walter Benjamin on “flow.”
Joe Gould’s Teeth
A scrupulously documented journey down a rabbit hole, or rather, a journey through whole warrens of archival material.
How to improve writing (no. 65); or, CBS, sheesh
“Commander-in-chiefs” and other problems: improving a CBS This Morning story about Ken Burns.
“How not to write”
Advice for aspirants in the humanities.
How to improve writing (no. 64)
A bad sentence in The New York Times.
Speed v. accuracy
A fortune cookie, revised.
Lives and writings
From Joseph Joubert.
Form and content
Joseph Joubert, John Ashbery.
Thinking and writing (2)
Joseph Joubert: “Writing is closer to thinking than to speaking.”
Thinking and writing (1)
Sir Ernest Gowers: “Clear thinking is hard work, but loose thinking is bound to produce loose writing.”
From a van Gogh letter
Admire as much as you can, most people don’t admire enough.