I don’t know what excites these days, but I get a kick when I write about people who write about people who write about writing.
It’s a rare chance, but if you’ve read newspapers closely of late, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style has set the necessary actions moving. Penguin Books recently released a new illustrated edition of the classic work.
Some critics lament the new illustrated edition as a “mortifying mistake” (David Gelertner, The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 14, 2005). Other critics call Elements a “corpse that is overdue for burial” (Jan Freeman, The Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005). I mop up their ejaculations and present a well-balanced account of the history of Elements.
Like many Hillsdale College students, I encountered Strunk and White’s writing guide in English class.
First published by William Strunk in 1919, the manual was revised three times by his student E.B. White. Known for its simplicity, Elements became a rare best-selling book on writing.
“It is 78 pages, affordable, user-friendly, easily digestible, with simple rules and clear illustrations,” Michael Jordan, chairman and associate professor of English, said. “Simplicity is its virtue.”
Jordan uses Elements in conjunction with the Writers Harbrace guide and Pocket Keys for Writers. In some situations he prefers Elements for its readability, low cost—around $4 in the bookstore—and portability.
Compared to the $40, 896-page hardcover Harbrace manual, Elements has a sexy, slim feel and fits in the back pocket of my tightest-hugging jeans.
Tracy Simmons, director of the Herbert H. Dow II Program in American journalism and lecturer in journalism, begins every term of his Prose Style class with Elements, but does not call it sexy. Simmons chooses a different, but equally-flattering term, when he calls it a “boot camp.”
“It will not make you Fitzgerald or Hemingway, but it helps to rid our system of some of the toxins,” Simmons said. “It can help us not to be offensive writers or peculiarly bad writers.”
While perusing reviews for the new illustrated edition of Elements, most critics bow with respect toward its old versions, and question the intentions of Maira Kalman, the artist who believed the example sentences needed illustrating.
Kalman drummed up a great deal of hoopla for Elements, from support to disgust. She put herself on a limb with her illustrations and proposal to perform a musical version of Elements. The New York Public Library accepted Kalman’s proposal and staged the performance last week.
While Simmons does not treat Elements as “holy writ,” he did say that the new illustrated version and performance is silly.
One writer on The Perfect World Web site, a blog service, attended the concert and described it as, “one of the most magical, hysterical, sincere, ironic, silly, glorious, hip, nerdy and just plain cool concerts ever performed…Needless to say there was a long standing ovation.”
The writer from Perfect World enjoyed every moment of her trip to the concert, and described numerous quirky dealings with words in the printed program, and throughout vocal renditions, as well as mentions the lavish free food at the reception and a monitor playing a “French surrealist” film by Kalman.
Her description matches Gelernter’s in content, but not in opinion. Gelernter wrote, “The decorator who refurbished this book by hanging these bright, jazzy, irrelevant pictures all over did not believe in keeping things plain and simple.”
Gelernter argued that White fled New York literary society to live in Maine with “nonhotshots,” and despised “pompous, high-flown abstraction.”
Scott Eymen, in a Palm Beach Post article Sunday, Oct. 9, 2005, agreed, “there’s nothing exactly wrong with Maira Kalman’s illustrations…and God knows, there’s nothing wrong with The Elements of Style, but this is a mixture that doesn’t quite work.”
Eymen writes in his article: “A sentence about the proper use of commas — ‘Well, Susan, this is a fine mess you are in,’ is illustrated by a doleful basset hound whose name is presumably Susan, which is a dumb name for a basset hound.”
But as final support for Kalman’s effort, White’s granddaughter Martha White defends her in an Oct. 19, 2005 New York Times article.
Martha White granted permission for the illustrations and said her grandfather enjoyed and wrote spoofs. White wrote in a 1981 letter that Elements was adapted for a ballet production, and he believed Strunk would have, “lost no time in reaching the scene, to watch dancers move gracefully to his rules of grammar.”
Through the commotion, it appears as though Elements will remain well-known to writers.
“I think it will have staying power,” Jordan said. “If the simple, unadorned Elements is available, that is what I would recommend.”