The Writer's Art

...Kilpatrick lines up on the issues...

...It is the same way with new usage...

...For anything that is specifically enlightening and even moving--such as his recollection of walking home four miles after seeing John Gielgud in Hamlet and being in such a state of oblivious rapture that he was astonished to find himself putting his key in his door--there is unfortunately a good deal more in the way of gush and boilerplate...

...Brother Satire, for instance, has taken to preaching the vulgar use of hopefully...

...The trick is to learn when to wink at rules, honoring them in the breach, taking no less trouble than those medieval monarchs did to house their various mistresses and wives under the same roof...

...The gentry's predicament raises for Jordan the intriguing question: What happens when leaders are leaders in name only, when elites occupy the seats of power but are obstructionist and anachronistic...

...Think of it this way: Imagine a father with a lovely daughter, the latter the object of a number of prospective suitors...

...Then he seems to waver...

...Kilpatrick only a bit more understanding here--I was reassured by his forthright condemnation of hopefully...

...Buckley's fulsome praise had turned out to be well earned, then Mr...

...Lewis, in a muddled and addled way, offers a profusion of interesting material that shows a generation aiming for a romantic, tragic vision of life but succumbing tO the trite and hackneyed...

...Buckley's foreword is a gentle poke at Mr...

...Buckley heaps fulsome praise on the author of this book, which at first sounded suspicious but turned out to be well earned...

...THE WRITER'S ART James J. Kilpatrick/Andrews, McMeel & Parker/S14.95 William McGurn lies in the personal voice of the author, which John Henry Newman deemed essential to great art...

...Levin feels himself up against...

...I confess that in my more wicked moments I myself have been known to favor host as a verb and to flout the distinctions between such a s and like (or among such as, s u c h . . , as, and like...

...This is unfortunately what Bernard Levin has managed to do in much of Enthusiasms, his hymn to painting, books, music, food, walking, cities, and other delicacies of civilization...

...When a man is writing to endorse rules, inevitably there will come an urge to assert his independence...

...But Mr...

...Were he to read James J. Kilpatrick's The Writer's Art, he would learn that it matters, it matters a great deal...

...His definition of enthusiasm as "the taking of great pleasure, the feeling of great ardour, the experiencing of great excitement, in the presence or contemplation of the object that arouses the enthusiasm" is reasonable, as is one of the tests he proposes for enthusiasm--namely, "the desire to communicate it...

...Kilpatrick, who evidently never had a nun to impress upon him the world of difference between "Can I go to the bathroom" and "May I go to the bathroom...

...Kilpatrick's prohibition against using unusual words...

...Indeed, I originally had intended to write, "In the introduction, Mr...

...In fact, we live in an age in which the social norm is the ostentatious pursuit of the perfect croissant, the best quadrophonic reproduction, the most high-minded framed poster...

...At least, the reader might infer that from the title...

...books such as this one...

...Kilpatrick reminds us that without them it would be impossible to distinguish between a pretty tall woman and a pretty, tall woman...

...ENTHUSIASMS Bernard Levin/Crown Publishers/S12.95 Thomas Mallon things that make nineteenth-century bardolators look like models of restraint and precision by comparison...

...So, if Mr...

...and What's the latest, dope...

...And there is nothing inconsistent in that father's gladly extending his hand to the young man who has proved his mettle...

...On the issue of "sexism" in language, he rightly dismisses chairperson as "'absurd...

...The world was a difficult and demanding place for Virginia's second generation, people who had been raised to expect positions of influence as a matter of course but found that a republic entailed perpetual selfgovernment and self-assertion and who found further that their own corner of the republic was in economic decline...

...Buckley noted, hard not to learn from the book...

...Finally, on those rare occasions when he proposes a departure from the norm (as in the case of the subjunctive), more explanation would help...

...But since I share many of Mr...

...And let's not hear any nonsense about being "too rigid," As children we learn that lying.is wrong but as adults we understand it is sometimes necessary (as in, "Your hair looks wonderful, darling...

...Menuhin on a Stradivarius is something else...

...And for Lewis, the question: What happens when an elite fears that the terms of worldly success directly threaten their self-esteem...

...There are three paintings in the Uffizi that clamor to be my favourites, all of them quite justifiably, and to all of them I swear A basic assumption about enthusiasm is that one man's meat will be another man's poison...

...Kilpatrick is no populist on these mat1 "~1 ot long ago, while I was still laboring as assistant managing editor for this family magazine, the mere question of punctuation was enough to turn an otherwise idyllic Hoosier afternoon grey and ugly...

...The country riddler brings skill to his instrument, and often a remarkable level of skill...

...T h e s e , however, are but quibbles, and I wish them recorded as such...

...This pseudo-enthusiasm may be the vulgar hallmark of our age, but had as Thomas Maiion teaches English at Vassar College...

...I laughed when he warned against such constructions as Rosemary started cooking herself when she was eighteen...

...There can be no doubt where Mr...

...He tells us about "Shakespeare's unique ability to understand the human soul and its needs and powers" and other such THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 39...

...editorial features editor of the Wall Street Journal/Europe...

...Of course there are some, like my brother John, who wonder if it really matters...

...Kilpatrick, now a grandfather, has and I, pink-cheeked, still lack...

...The hard-liners have their part...

...I struck it out...

...But what happens when a man takes his meat and pounds it into the sort of mush that couldn't kill or fortify any of those to whom he serves it...

...Perhaps they found the price--increasing material discomfort and loss of political cloutmworth the cultural continuity by which they maintained a semblance of a purely Southern, patrician way of life...

...Far from fearing to enjoy, we are desperately afraid to be caught failing to enjoy...

...In the author's own words: There is nothing arcane or mysterious about the crafting of a respectable sentence...

...I just don't think this will do...

...For one thing, Mr...

...One might suppose that a man finicky enough to distinguish between alibi and excuse would be sensitive to the distinction between can and may...

...Here I speak for the silent majority, those afraid that the expression "I don't know" is a confession of ignorance...

...So, too, the new in language ought to be met with suspicion, but, after the trial, be accepted with the heartiness of that father's handshake...

...My hope in this book is not to make better Menuhins, but to make better fiddlers...

...There are portions of his book I wouldn't dream of commenting on: I am, for example, generally indifferent to what I eat, and I cherish an active hostility to that barking freakshow of glandular irregularity called opera...

...but if he is really going to provide a useful deterrent to the Yale boys so intent upon torturing literature before they destroy it finally, he's going to have to be a good deal more bracing than this...

...To go too far or not far 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 enough is the common lot...

...Writing is a skill...

...For the most part, I have no difficulty with Mr...

...His distaste for the subjunctive has already been mentioned...

...Levin's stated purpose in writing his book: "to try to convey my enthusiasm, not to lecture my readers or to provide them with useful knowledge or instruction...

...The emphasis of this book is on the practical, and though witty it is never (okay, rarely) pompous...

...Just to cite the example of commas again, Mr...

...Against the argument that communication need only be "effective," his retort is worthy of Disraeli: " I f the purpose of housing were solely to provide shelter from the rain, the Sun-King could have erected an A-frame...

...It is a matter of delicate judgment...

...I cheered at the distinction between while and since...

...refers to him as a "firm custodian," and Mr...

...It was a nasty affair that set managing editor against assistant, friend against friend, and an exasperated typesetter against both...

...Their obstinate response was of their own choosing...

...Yet even the best of them, and certainly Mr...

...On page 90 he writes, "Instead of writing that 'every student has an obligation to do h/s duty,' We may write with equal clarity that 'all students have an obligation to do their d u t y . ' " Yet on page 178, under the heading "Everyone Had 'His,' Dammit," he seems to imply that he himself does not do this often...

...Perhaps I oughtn't have said "mere," because these disputes-chiefly about the commamwere as serious as those concerning that~which, bring/take, even compose~comprise...

...Levin is, after all, talking about his earthly deities here, and there seems little point--and perhaps even some selfishness--in having a preacher whip himself into frenzies of delight while remaining indifferent to whether the congregation gets religion or not...

...This is the sort of English up with which I shall not put," Winston Churchill is alleged to have said, reminding us that there are traps on the right as well as on the left...

...Disagreement is half--if I may indulge the reader, the greater half--of the pleasure...

...Kilpatrick is among their ranks, occasionally fall from grace...

...In the foreword, William F. Buckley, Jr...

...Kilpatrick would be a fraud, and ~1 a candidate for a libel suit...

...Any normal father starts out with the per-fectly reasonable assumption that none of these ~noonstruck blockheads is good enough for his Susie, and so naturally sets up a few obstacles to prove the point...

...Jordan, crisply, drily, but carefully and persuasively shows how Virginia statesmen (to paraphrase the historian James Schouler) took a large state and made it small...

...A little instruction is not only polite, sometimes it is necessary...

...The urge is not always bad...

...But if these standards are reasonable, they're also minimal, as is Mr...

...Someone, of course, eventually will pass the test...

...In The Writer's Art, James J. Kilpatrick shows just how enjoyable the journey can be...

...But it is not so...

...Kilpatrick's propositions (his prepositions, too...

...Writing is carpentry...

...The construction of a good, solid sentence is no more a matter of instinct than the putting together of a dovetailed drawer...

...This shows only that all of us have something to hide...

...Others will have their own tests of orthodoxy (meaning, everyone will have his own test...

...Buckley correctly observes that it is difficult to read The Writer's Art v~ithout finishing the better for it...

...Though I was dismayed by his flippant dismissal of the subjunctive--were Mr...

...He nicely weasels out of having to make his case by stating: "The active hatred of pleasure and excellence, however, though more important, and certainly more sinister, than the indifference which is so fashionable today, deserves a study in itself, though one which I am not much inclined to embark upon, if only because I would find it too depressing...

...My opinion is that he doesn't really believe this himself, and, with the rest of his admirers, I pray that he will repent of his apostasy...

...Kilpatrick does not shy away from the description...

...But my brother is a man who uses finalize as a verb, without the slightest blush...

...Back and forth the copy would go, commas inserted, then deleted, inserted again, deleted again...

...I would abandon the controversy altogether," says Mr...

...Levin on the job against the "idiot 'structuralist' or parlour-Marxist," and to hear him state unabashedly that the arts are supposed to reveal the universe...

...On his very first page he states that "to be passionate in appreciation of the good things of life, especially the nonmaterial things, is to c o u r t . . , stern denunciation as an irresponsible h e d o n i s t . . , behind much of the contempt for joy lie a deep fear and hatred of enjoyment...

...To be impressionistic is one thing-and an admirable thing--in criticism...

...Clearly, Mr...

...at high levels it becomes an art...

...To avoid them takes the years of experience that Mr...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR OCTOBER 1984 37 ters, but he does yield to temptation now and again...

...But, like the temptation for that "one last drink," it can be dangerous...

...Levin's discussion of Shakespeare is typical of what he does throughout Enthusiasms...

...Only a twentieth-century barbarian would suggest that we drop the rule because of the exceptions...

...Surely I am not the only one who reads Verbatim and is stumped by some of the errors the editors list under the heading "Sic...

...On page 183, however, I learned that fulsome meant phony...

...Levin's combative premise is wrong...

...Levin barely presents examples, much less a ',study...

...the difficulty is to strike the balance...

...Let me come to his defense: Change is vastly overrated...

...Both are now better off: The father gains a worthy son-in-law...

...One hears this voice in Fowler's Modern English Usage, and it is also what makes it easy to distinguish William Satire's columns from, say, James Kilpatrick's...

...to be icky-sticky is quite another...

...We are so eager to be (and, above all, to appear) enthusiastic that we buy hideous art, endure terrible theater, and display overpriced books on ugly high-teeh cocktail tables all because we've been told that these are things we must be enthusiastic about if we're to lay any claim to good taste and cultural soundness...

...Doubtless some readers (I have in mind those trendies who go out of their way to find a preposition they can end their sentences with) will find Mr...

...Just between us, this man knows how to make a sentence crack...

...As Theodore Bernstein similarly pointed out years ago, there is an important difference between What's the latest dope William McGurn is presently (sic...

...In this spirit, much of Mr...

...Levin has trouble stopping himself from spraying great clouds of perfume upon every chapter...

...At other times he is vague...

...it is the craft of joining words together...

...Kilpatrick's work not progressive enough...

...Though an Englishlanguage Tory, he is no fanatic, and Mr...

...Such disputes are to be expected in an establishment where, I am happy to report, the serial comma is still respected...

...And it is, as Mr...

...Actually, Mr...

...it is, it's not the same Puritanism Mr...

...Levin's loves, and still find myself unmoved by his well-meant book, I think he would want me to tell you why...

...The charm of books like this one (such books...

...the young man loses some of his rough edges...

...When at last we find someone with whom we are in general agreement (or someone who generally agrees with us) the real delight is in the theological nitpicking...

...I am delighted to see Mr...