 |
Part One - Why Write
Reading maketh a full man;
Conference a ready man; and
Writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon, 1625
The only end of writing is to
enable the readers better to
enjoy life, or better to endure it.
Samuel Johnson, 1757
No man but a blockhead ever wrote,
except for money.
Samuel Johnson, 1776
The three quotes shown above, taken altogether, neatly frame an answer to the question which is implicit in the title of this brief essay. There are probably as many answers to the question as there are writers, but I suspect the reasons ultimately fall into a few rather predictable categories, and a few words about each of them may be in order.
Let us start with Bacon. He contrasts writing with the two other forms of communication that man has devised, reading and conversation (which he calls "conference"). As he sees it, reading maketh a full man, by which he means informed, educated, aware, and thus "full" of information, ideas, etc. Next he suggests that conversation produces a "ready" man, that is, one who is able to perform well in the cut and thrust of oral discussion, argument, etc. Finally, he suggests that writing makes an "exact" man. Here he focuses on the ability of the act of writing to force one to a degree of organization and of precision of expression which neither reading nor conversation alone will teach.
The other two quotes, both by Johnson but about twenty years apart, speak more to the question of motive to engage in writing than in what writing will do for the person who engages in it. The earlier quote seems rather altruistic, as though the writer's motive is simply to improve the life or the lot of the reader. The later quote is a bit more acid, and I think does represent the views of some, but I suspect does not truly reflect Johnson's views.
At any rate, they clearly suggest that there can be all sorts of motives, altruistic and otherwise. One of the obvious others is of course vanity (in recognition of which there is an industry called the "vanity press", which specializes in publishing books by authors who cannot get published in an orthodox way but who nonetheless want to see their work in print), and are willing personally to pay the cost thereof in order to gratify their wishes.
In the end, why one writes is probably important only to the writer, and sometimes even he deceives himself as to the true reason. The only question of real importance is whether someone's effort to write results either in a greater sum of human knowledge or of human enjoyment. Those who write solely for money are soon found out, and their work is blessedly evanescent.
Part Two - Writing Is Hard Work
What is written without effort
is . . . read without pleasure.
Samuel Johnson, 1799 (Attrib.)
You write with ease, to show your breeding
But easy writing's vile hard reading.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1771
When a man is in doubt about this or that
in his writing, it will often guide him if he
asks himself how it will tell a hundred
years hence.
Samuel Butler, 1890 (approx.)
Even before the writer sets pen to paper, there are a number of preliminary questions which need to be asked, and answers which need to be provided, if only informally and if only by the writer to himself. Although I cannot tell you that all writers do this, I believe I can say with some assurance that the good ones do, and that, if you fail to do it, you are courting trouble and will realize, later on, that your failing to consider these questions was a serious mistake. Some will regard what I am about to say as self-evident and not needing discussion, but others may not, and it is to those others that I offer the following thoughts.
The writer should ask himself, and supply answers as thoroughly and candidly as possible, to each of the following questions:
A. Consider what you want to say. Force yourself to define the subject matter as precisely as you can. This is not to say that, as you get further into the project, you may not consciously change your mind, but having a clear and focused notion from the beginning will help in all sorts of ways.
B. Consider to whom you wish to say it. Define your intended audience; is it the general public; is it people in a specific trade or industry; is it academics; is it informed amateurs; is it people with an existing interest in the subject, etc.
C. Consider your motive for saying it. Is it emotional, commercial, fulfilling a job requirement (stated or unstated), or something else. Acknowledged motives are an aid to accomplishment; unacknowledged motives are subversive.
D. Consider the level at which it is to be presented. This is related to the question of who is the intended audience. With some materials, the age and/or reading level of the target audience is clearly understood, but in most cases not. In almost all adult materials the level of sophistication and the cultural and intellectual background of the intended reader is something that is assumed by the writer, and if the writer's assumptions in this regard are greatly incorrect, it could have serious adverse effects on reader acceptance.
E. Consider the question of justification. Why is it that you think what you are intending to say should be said. Is it that its importance is clear to you but apparently has not been clear to others; is it that others have treated the subject but in a way you believe to be inadequate, incorrect, biased, or otherwise defective; and why do you think you can do a more satisfactory job.
F. Consider any planned limitations or short-comings of your proposed work. Will it have boundaries imposed by external forces such as editorial constraints, marketing difficulties, difficulties in fitting your subject matter into the overall scheme of things, etc.
G. Consider the question of timeliness. In our fast-moving world, this is an issue that intrudes all too often. If the project is one which must make it to market in a very brief period in order to capitalize on some transitory mood, issue or event, or to otherwise achieve maximum public acceptance, there will be pressures to complete, to take shortcuts, or to compromise in other ways, that the writer may not find acceptable.
H. Finally, consider the mundane but nonetheless important questions of format, layout, page composition, etc., as some of these questions may inter-relate to the internal organization of the text, etc.
The only guarantee that I make about the aforegoing list is that it is incomplete. Use it as a starting point, not as a finished product. My guess is that the list you eventually come up with for yourself will be about twice as long.
Part Three - A Writer's Toolkit
Man is a tool-using Animal. . .
Without tools he is nothing,
With tools he is all.
Thomas Carlyle, 1834
As with any other serious craft, writing requires an appropriate kit of tools. A few words follow about what such a kit might usefully consist of. Needless to say, every writer, and indeed many who are not writers, will have his own ideas on this subject, and I make no claim that my views on the subject are better than anyone else's, but they will at least furnish a starting and reference point.
There seem to be about eight categories into which these tools fall. They are, in no particular order, books dealing with (a) word meanings, (b) usage, (c) grammar, (d) style, (e) punctuation, (f) etymology, (g) pronunciation, and (h) the English language. A quite complete bibliography of materials in each of these various categories is found in the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style (about which more later in this essay).
May I suggest that you get yourself to the reference section of a large public library, or to a large bookstore, and examine as many of these materials as you can, before making any purchases. Buying a reference book sight unseen is not a very good idea, and if you will be using it frequently you owe it to yourself to get one which will best fit your needs and which you will find most comfortable to use. No one tool is equally agreeable to all users, so do not handicap yourself with something you will find inadequate or irritating to use.
The most fundamental writers' tool is the dictionary. Lexicography, which is the science of identifying the meaning and usage of words in the written language, and of constructing dictionaries to reflect that meaning and usage, has been around for at least several hundred years, and one of my idols, Samuel Johnson, spent a good portion of his life working in that intellectually demanding field. As word usage changes over time, so of course do dictionaries, and while it is not essential to be absolutely up to the minute, it would generally be wise to use one which was published within the last, say, twenty years.
The "six hundred pound gorilla" in this category is the Oxford English Dictionary, all twenty volumes and twenty-two thousand pages of it, weighing altogether in the vicinity of sixty pounds. If you have the enthusiasm, the shelf space, and the low four figure purchase price, it is a wonderful thing to own. There are also abridged or condensed versions in print, and, happily for the technocrats among you, a CD-ROM version which is substantially less expensive than, and completely avoids the weight and space issues associated with, the full print version. On this side of the Atlantic, the various dictionaries published by Merriam-Webster, MacMillan and Random House are industry standards, and serve various levels of users very well indeed.
On the periphery of this subject are two other categories of tool. First are the quotation source books. They, in addition to being marvelously serendipitous reading materials, can help to focus a writer's own thinking on particular matters, and afford the writer the comfort, if it is needed, that the subject in which he is currently interested has also been of interest to others. My two favorites in this category are Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. My copy of the former dates from 1941, and of the latter from 1999. They are both useful and enjoyable, in their own ways, but the later product has it all over the older one in terms of indexing and categorizing of the contents. I suppose that this may have something to do with modern information processing techniques.
The second category is of course the thesaurus, whose purpose is to alert the writer to all of the available synonyms or antonyms of the word he currently has in mind. Few of us have such a complete vocabulary at our finger-tips that we do not have to look in the thesaurus occasionally to be reminded of just the right word. I say "reminded" advisedly, because the thesaurus does not itself provide definitions; it assumes you know the meanings (and shades of meaning) of the words shown and that all you need is a reminder of their existence. The industry standard in this field is Roget's Thesaurus, published by Crowell, which has been around in its various editions for 150 years now. A smaller but also quite useful volume is the Oxford American Desk Thesaurus, which is published by Oxford University Press.
Finally, let me return to a quick word of praise for the Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style, recently published by Oxford University Press and available in paperback for under $20. It cleverly and entertainingly identifies hundreds of grammatical trouble spots, and illustrates, with reference to contemporary publications, (a) the errors commonly made by writers, (b) the underlying reason why the error occurs, and (c) the correct usage. Its author is both a noted lexicographer and a lawyer, and in my view this volume is a "must have" for any writer. Although it is organized in dictionary form, alphabetically, it is so charmingly written that it could happily be read from end to end, and even a modest acquaintance with it will keep you from committing a host of embarrassing mistakes.
Sharpen your tools now and get to work.
Part Four - On Reading
What a sad want I am in of libraries,
of books to gather facts from! Why is
there not a . . . library in every
county town? There is a jail . . .
in every one.
Thomas Carlyle, 1832
Though it seems pompously self-evident to say it, one can learn to write only by writing. What may not be so self-evident, however, is that one also cannot learn to write unless one has learned to read. By this I do not mean the simple mechanical skill of reading as taught to us (or at least to most of us) during our early years, but the more critical and informed reading that only an adult or near adult is capable of doing.
You may realize that a recurring theme on this site is the fundamental value of choice and discrimination, and that I have no time nor patience for those who view all examples of a given art as equally meritorious. Writing is just like everything else that human beings do, some small amount of it is lyrically and luminously good, some larger amount of it is lamentably and ludicrously bad, and most of it falls somewhere in between, more I fear toward the lower end of the scale than the upper.
What is an aspiring writer to do then, in selecting things to read which will be worthy exemplars. This decision is fraught with some considerable peril for the writer's career, as an early submersion into averagely or poorly written works will place a heavy, and possibly uncorrectable, burden on the aspiring writer. On the other hand, a thorough early grounding, or if that chance has gone by, a later remedial grounding, in the works of some of the very best of the writing profession will inculcate habits and standards which, though the novice writer may not yet be able to equal them, can be clearly aimed for and perhaps achieved, given sufficient time, talent and temperament.
I am going to put myself out on a bit of a limb here, and identify twenty writers, most of whom have been active during the second half of the twentieth century and all of whom have, I believe, something valuable to teach us about writing as a craft and as an art. All of them write principally non-fiction. All of them have written a substantial, some an astonishing, number of books.
My selection is utterly personal, and is not based on prestigious reviews, literary prizes, best-seller status, or other public recognition, although all of those listed have received a huge share of all of these things. As they write in somewhat different subject areas, and as your own personal interests may lie in some areas and not in others, I have indicated generally the subject areas in which most of their work falls, so you can aim your efforts agreeably. You should not, however, just read two or three of these authors; they all have valuable lessons to teach, styles to illustrate, talents to display, and substantive information to impart.
I realize that "top ten" lists are inherently arbitrary, and that a number of promising younger writers, who have not had time to develop a substantial body of work, are not mentioned. I hope they will forgive me. However, if you simply read one book from each of the twenty authors listed (ten American, ten British) you will have become awakened too much that is valuable and worthy of emulation, and, not incidentally, advanced your overall education and worldliness by several notches at least.
Without further ado, the lists follow. I am confident these writers will give you as much pleasure and profit as they have given to me:
AMERICAN WRITERS
David McCullough - History, biography
William Manchester - History, biography, autobiography
John McPhee - Cultural history, sport, art, science
Martin Mayer - Business, banking, law, insurance
Richard Rhodes - History, science, medicine
Thomas Friedman - Culture, politics, international affairs
Robert Buderi - Science, history, technology
Sherwin Nuland - Biology, medicine, health
David Remnick - Culture, politics, international affairs
David Halberstam - History, culture, sport
BRITISH WRITERS
George Orwell - Journalism, essays, political and cultural commentary
Alan Moorehead - Military history, travel, biography
David Howarth - Adventure, military history
Peter Fleming - History, travel and adventure
A.J.P. Taylor - History, essays
Martin Gilbert - History, biography
Isaiah Berlin - Philosophy, history of ideas, essays
Alistair Cooke - Biography, cultural commentary
Roy Jenkins - Biography, political history
Robert Graves - History, mythology, autobiography
Part Five - On Resources
You know by now my view that reading and writing are hopelessly interconnected, and that one cannot hope to write well without first having voluminously read well. At one point, having temporarily taken leave of my customary good judgment, I had thought to say something substantive in this essay about the art and craft of writing. Imagine my relief on finding that I could spare myself both this arduous task, and my inevitable disgrace in attempting it, by pointing you instead toward two existing works on the subject, both of them by writers who are on one or the other of my "top 10" lists of authors.
The more recent of them is "How to Write" by Richard Rhodes (1995, William Morrow, ISBN: 0-688-14948-0), and the other is "Why I Write" by George Orwell. The Orwell piece is only seven pages or so, and is found in Volume One of his collected essays, journalism and letters (2000, David R. Godine, ISBN: 1-56792-133-7). He wrote it only four years before his death, but because of its significance it is placed chronologically out of sequence, as the first essay in the volume. A minor masterpiece, it says just about everything which usefully can be said about the subject, in his characteristically straightforward yet vivid manner. Rhodes' book received extraordinary critical praise, with the Washington Post saying of it "this is a remarkable work of self-revelation . . . how generous Rhodes is with his mind and his heart. Buy this book, buy it. It's a handbook on how to live."
I am sure there are other treatments out there (actually, I know there are) but these two will be all that most anyone could need, and I will stop there. By the time you have finished these two books you will have either given up or become so motivated that you will find anything else you may need with no help from me.
As far as the purchaser is concerned, there are two kinds of books, new books and used books. They differ not only in appearance and price (and most importantly, availability), but also in where you can find them.
For new books, first consider your local book seller, if you are fortunate enough to have one. If mail-order is the route chosen, presumably everybody knows about Amazon (www.amazon.com) and Barnes and Noble (www.bn.com). I suppose every bibliophile has his own private list of sources, and I am no exception. I am going to share with you here three special sources of new books, all of them quite different from each other, but which, taken together, can reliably supply an extraordinarily broad range of materials for the serious and informed reader:
1. My very favorite is "A Common Reader", a mail-order book seller located at 141 Tompkins Avenue, Pleasantville, New York, 10570-3154, telephone 800-342-7323 (www.commonreader.com). The people who run this remarkable operation are not just book nuts (although they certainly are that) but they understand, and cater brilliantly to, the serious reader's needs. They publish about a dozen catalogs a year, each of which contains short reviews of about one-fourth page each, giving some useful and candid descriptions of the book in question. I have never been materially mislead by any of these reviews, and I have (as my box of cancelled checks would confirm to you) ample experience to base that on. Even if you don't intend to buy any books (we'll see how long that resolve lasts!), you should get on their catalog mailing list; the catalog has wonderful entertainment value and is so well-written that it itself could serve as a tutorial device for the would-be writer.
2. Another useful mail-order book seller is The Scholar's Bookshelf, 110 Melrich Road, Cranbury, New Jersey, 08512, telephone 609-395-6933 (www.scholarsbookshelf.com). These people seem to concentrate on remaindered or other commercially special types of books, and mail their catalogs at the rate of between fifteen and twenty a year, in different subject areas. The reviews are minimal, containing only basic descriptions of the books, perhaps because the catalog seems to be aimed more at academics and experienced readers, who may not need the degree of hand-holding that the novice reader would find useful. Prices are generally attractive, however, and sometimes quite remarkable bargains can be found. With the price of many serious hard cover books now hovering in the range of $40.00, it is hard for many of us to build much of a library. With discounted prices at about, say, one-fourth that level, we can either spend one-fourth the money or, even better, buy four times as many books. There is a cryptic old saying "horses for courses", which simply means that different race horses tend to do better over different types of racetracks. So too do different businesses cater to different types of reader needs; if you need or enjoy the hand holding and the extensive reviews, you pay list (or about list) price, but if you do not need these amenities then the price can be somewhat less.
3. Finally, a third mail-order book seller, Dover Publications, Inc., which is located at 31 East Second Street, Minneola, New York, 11501 (www.doverpublications.com). Their catalog comes out six or eight times a year, and in the subject areas covered (which are somewhat limited) contain some quite remarkable materials. Dover seems to specialize in reprints of older books, ones which are no longer protected by copyright. For those of you who read only the latest stuff, it will be of no interest whatever. For those who recognize that many wonderful, indeed timeless, things were written fifty years and more ago, it could be of enormous value. Quite a number of the books are priced as low as $1.00. No, that is not a misprint, that is $1.00 for a new (not used) book. A typical price, across the catalog, is in the range of $6.00 to $12.00, and if your book tastes run more to timelessness than to trendiness you should get on their mailing list. Your pocketbook, and your mind, will thank you.
Unlike new books, used book selections involve one additional practical criterion, physical condition, and one additional economic criterion, the edition, so-called "first editions" being sometimes a good deal more expensive because they are more valuable to collectors.
Sooner or later, every book becomes a used book; no book remains in print forever, and for that reason a used copy may be your only way to get hold of a particular book. This is not a matter of economics, it is a matter of simple availability. Not surprisingly, quite a vibrant industry exists for the purpose of filling this need. There are a few special resources that used book hunters absolutely need to know about, and I will try and reflect the most important of them here.
There are two distinct categories of resource; first, various consortia of used book sellers who have banded together to display their combined inventories on a single website; and, second, special used book search engines, which do not have an online sales facility but simply disclose the availability of the item being sought and point you to a source for it.
In the bookseller category, Alibris (www.alibris.com) is my first pick, followed by Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com). Alibris claims to have a combined inventory of "thousands of booksellers" on its site. You can browse the site by subject area or use an internal search engine to retrieve information by author, title, or subject. Advanced Book Exchange is very similar, and claims to represent over 8,400 independent booksellers.
In the search engine category, I also have two recommendations. In the USA, Book Finder (www.bookfinder.com) claims to reflect the combined inventories of over 30,000 book sellers worldwide, and over 30 million titles. In Great Britain, a similar project (www.usedbooksearch.co.uk), claims to show 25 million titles. It would seem fairly safe to presume that if a search on these two Sites does not turn up what you are looking for, the book either does not exist or it is, practically speaking, unavailable anywhere.
Finally, a brief word about a book-world curiosity that is not as widely known as it should be, but which may be of some use or enjoyment. If your travels take you anywhere near the border between England and Wales, you should plan to visit the village of Hay-on-Wye, which, most improbably, has over three dozen retail book sellers in or nearby, with combined inventories of about 4 million volumes. For more information, have a look at www.hay-on-wye.com and www.booksearch-at-hay.com.
Given the huge quantity of material in print, and the enormous imbalance between good books (the few) and not-so-good books (the many), it is essential to develop ways to screen one's reading choices. If you have reached the point where your own judgment is reasonably trustworthy, clearly the best screening method is to browse the bookshop yourself. There is no substitute for being able to pick up a book, skim the table of contents, read a page or two (or ten) at random, look at the fly-leaf and the author's list of prior publications, read the review excerpts printed on the dust jacket, and, last but not least, evaluate the typography, the quality of construction, and other tactile features of the book.
Secondly, you can read book reviews, either conventionally published or on-line. Reliable sources for the published book reviews are the New York Times Book Review (www.nytimes.com/pages/books), the New York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com), Publishers Weekly (www.publishersweekly.com), and Library Journal (www.libraryjournal.com). The former two are the best known to the general public, the "industry standards", if you will; the latter two are aimed principally at professional book-buyers (e.g. librarians), and are quite expensive and thus hard to justify as a personal subscription. You might, however, try to persuade your local librarian to lend you a few back issues, just so you can see what sort of information travels around in the world of professional book people. Another useful possibility is Kirkus Reviews (very pricey but quite good), which I have not seen in the flesh but extracts from which I have seen and admired on numerous dust jackets over the years.
Some other resources you need to know about, even though they are more difficult to get hold of here, are the English reviews published in the Times Literary Supplement (www.the-tls.co.uk); the Sunday Times (www.sunday-times.co.uk); the Sunday Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk); and The Economist (www.economist.com). Generally written to a very high standard, they are properly given great weight in academic and other knowledgeable circles, and will amply repay your efforts to get hold of them.
I will mention here, just in passing, a mildly irritating feature of some book reviews. Many of them are a bit too precious for my taste, the most plausible explanation for which is that some reviewers are "wannabe" (or perhaps has-been) authors themselves, and use their reviews as a platform from which to persuade the reader how much better a job they could have done. Maybe this is what the poet Hillaire Belloc had in mind when he wrote that "of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing".
Clearly, the best solution for all of us is to develop our own critical skills, acquire a sense of the reliability of specific authors (and publishers as well, each of whom displays a discoverable pattern of quality, if you look hard enough). That way we become less dependent on others (a recurring theme on this Site, in case you haven't noticed), and better able, for the sake of preserving both our leisure time and our pocketbooks, to dodge the dross and grasp only the gold.
A third possibility is to confine your reading to those authors whom you have come to know and trust. If that stable is substantial, you will never have a shortage of reading material, but if you are new to this game it is a quite limiting technique. Lastly, you can rely on the recommendation of knowledgeable friends or acquaintances, but here too, unless your circle of acquaintances includes quite a number of voracious readers, you will not get much out of that.
A couple of things I would not recommend are a general and uncritical reliance on (a) so-called "best seller" lists, and (b) lists of books which have won various prizes (Pulitzer is perhaps the best known to the general public). This is not to say that good books do not appear in these lists, and the lists clearly are an indicator of some degree of virtue, even though, in the former case, it is purely commercial rather than aesthetic or intellectual virtue. Use these lists as a resource if you must, but do so thoughtfully, and not, for heaven's sake, as your exclusive reading list.
Part Six - On Posterity
Posterity = the condition of
coming after.
OED, 2nd ed. 1989
Think of your forefathers!
Think of your posterity!
John Quincy Adams, 1802
Every man has a lurking wish to
appear considerable in his native place.
Samuel Johnson, 1770 (approx.)
Posterity, in the broader sense, means whatever comes after the present. In popular usage, however, it more narrowly refers to what comes after one's own death, not just immediately after but down the decades and centuries after.
The notion of posterity has a difficult time getting its fair share of attention. The young have no awareness of it, the middle-aged no time to think about it, and the elderly no taste for examining something that may be arriving all too soon for comfort. That leaves it to those of us who are no longer middle-aged and yet not quite elderly, to take the idea out for the occasional airing and perhaps, with a bit of luck, shine some useful light on it.
Posterity has to do with, in addition to the purely biological question of leaving descendants to carry on one's genes, the issue of how one is to be remembered, and by whom, and for how long. Many people are indifferent to this, or at least say they are, but others will acknowledge, publicly or privately, the desire to be favorably remembered in a wider circle than their own families, and for a time longer than the lives of those now living. In the quote shown above, Johnson stressed the spatial component of the "lurking wish to appear considerable". I think there is also a temporal aspect to that wish, and that is to appear considerable beyond the term of one's natural life.
All sorts of public figures have some sort of a posterity. Athletes, politicians, actors, and other sorts of celebrities, all will be remembered, at least for a time, but in a world increasingly afflicted with attention-deficit-disorder, their posterity seems destined to be short-lived. Moreover, how such figures are remembered is influenced, even controlled, by their biographers, as, with rare exceptions, they leave no written record of their own. Only the writer, it would seem, has a realistic likelihood of being accurately recalled, as only the writer can leave behind the readily accessible evidence of his life's work.
A warning. It is ironic, perhaps, that the very characteristic of writing that can enhance the writer's posterity can also damage it. That characteristic is permance. Unlike speech, written utterances, at least the ones which get published, never go away. This is what the poet had in mind, some century and a half ago, when he wrote:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
The writer instinctively knows this, and this, probably above everything else, is what leads to greater reflection in the use of the written, as contrasted with the spoken, word. It is undoubtedly what Bacon had in mind when he said that writing improves exactness. Speak witlessly and you will likely get away with it, as public figures of all sorts prove to us every day. Write witlessly and you run a very real risk of ruining both reputation and career.
All else being equal, a person's posterity persists in direct proportion to the durability of the medium in which his contribution to posterity is expressed. During the last millennium or two, this principle has favored writers (and composers and playwrights) to a substantial degree, but architects and builders, particularly those whose materials were of the more durable sort (e.g. brick, stone, etc.), have been favored also. Only in the last century or so, with the advent of sight and sound recording, have actors and musicians had any real chance at posterity.
As an exercise in evaluating the role of writing in determining a person's posterity, consider as a class our Founding Fathers. All were men of conscience and of action, all were conspicuous leaders, all (or so we have been taught to believe) were fearless champions of a cause greater than themselves, and all were literate. Not all were writers, however, and it seems to me that this division may explain, even perhaps to a large extent, why after the passage of some 200 years we have rather different insights into, and feelings for, the various members of this remarkable group of men.
Now 200 years is not a particularly long time when you are thinking about posterity, but as a relatively young nation we must make do; at any rate it is about ten generations, and thus longer by a factor of five than any posterity which may reasonably expect to be enjoyed by the ordinary citizen.
At the risk of being challenged by the historians among you, I am going to identify the most, and the least, prolific writers among the core members of that group, and use them to test my hypothesis. The most prolific, it seems to me, was Jefferson; the least was Washington. My thought is that our respect for the non-writers can only be derived inferentially, while that for the writers can also be found referentially. Let me explain.
Our thoughts about Washington go something like this. We know him to have been both adventurous and the master of an intellectual skill, which are the qualities he displayed as a surveyor of the American hinterland. We know him to have had sufficient personal bravery, organizational skills and command presence to have functioned effectively as a senior military commander. We know him to have enjoyed the respect, actually the deference, of virtually all of the other Founding Fathers, who were themselves persons of consequence in their respective communities and hence quite accustomed to making judgments about their fellow man. Ergo (we say to ourselves), he must have been a pretty remarkable specimen. There is little room to dispute either the methodology or the conclusion, but it is only inferential. We don't know, because of the scarcity of his writings, how his mind worked, how his soul guided him, or anything else of an internal nature. There is nothing written for us to refer to.
Jefferson, on the other hand, wrote voluminously, about both his public and his non-public life, and while some contemporary scholars have lately come to complain that he perhaps did not set down all that was on his mind, he did astonishingly well, particularly considering the many other demands on his time and energies. The important difference, as I see it, is that Jefferson's writings, and those of the other writing Fathers, give us a window into the minds and souls and times of the authors that we simply do not, and can never, have as to the non-writers among them.
What, you may say, is the big deal in all of this? Is Washington any less a behemoth of history and an icon of political freedom for having not put pen to paper? Probably not, but who is to say what the future holds. Francis Bacon has valuable lessons for us 400 years later that his monarch, Queen Elizabeth I, does not, and Samuel Johnson speaks importantly to us down these intervening 250 years, while King George III is utterly silent. Yes, the princes and the presidents, all of them, will be remembered in the textbooks, but, with few exceptions, that is all the posterity they will enjoy. The writers, at least the very best of them, will endure for a time and to an extent that mere rulers can only mutely envy.
Part Seven - On Encouragement
Providence seldom vouchsafes to
mortals any more than just that degree
of encouragement which suffices to keep
them at a reasonably full exertion of
their powers.
Hawthorne c.1850
During my senior year of high school, our English teacher instructed his students to prepare an essay describing some physical object of the writer's own choosing. Betraying an early interest in things automotive, I chose for my subject the pneumatic tire. Considering that tires of that day tended to burst, go flat, wear out, and thus need tending with monotonous frequency, I was no stranger to that lowly appliance.
I have long since lost the essay, but even now, some forty-five years later, I can generally recall its content. That is not so much the product of a wonderful memory, but of the substantial effort that I put into the assignment. On reflection, I am sure the level of my exertion had a good deal to do with the fact that I was allowed to pick the subject. There may be a moral there, somewhere, for those who choose to see it.
Several days after handing in the assignment, I was scheduled for the obligatory student-teacher conference to discuss it. At the appointed hour, I presented myself at the teacher's office. He, the teacher, was not only the head of the English department, but was also the school's wrestling coach, the school's chief disciplinarian, and, perhaps not coincidentally, the principal curmudgeon on the faculty. He also had both a commanding physical presence and a generally stern and impassive face. I was suitably intimidated.
After some fairly minor comments about the organization and style of the piece, the teacher bluntly suggested, by way of more global criticism, that perhaps I had chosen a subject which was intrinsically too difficult for a student of my limited talents to do it justice. Having had a sincere interest in, and having worked hard at, the assignment, I had hoped for a better outcome, and this suggestion was both surprising and more than a little unwelcome.
Furiously casting about for an effective rejoinder, and at the same time trying to bear in mind the teacher's personality and predilections, the only thing I could come up with was the counter-suggestion that if I had chosen an easier subject I would perhaps not have learned quite so much from the assignment. It was now teacher's turn to be caught off-guard, and it was immediately clear that I had touched some hidden nerve. He sat, quite still and silent, for about five seconds, and then, looking up at me from his seated position, nodded slowly in the affirmative. "You've got something there, boy", he said in a voice I was relieved to recognize as being mock gruff (as contrasted with his regular kind of gruff).
He quite visibly relaxed after that, and the rest of our discussion, although fairly brief, was a bit more on the plane of colleagues discussing a matter of mutual interest than it was the earlier student-teacher confrontation. It was as if, without anyone actually saying so, I had somehow been admitted, however provisionally, into the world of writers.
Why have I bothered with this juvenile anecdote? It is because I now recognize, in distant hindsight, the great value of encouragement to a budding writer. Writing is a solitary, a painful, and a largely thankless activity, and any signal which the writer is fortunate enough to receive, from those he likes or respects or to whom he is subordinate, that his efforts are bearing useful fruit is of considerable psychological value.
So if, in your family, your circle of friends, or your travels, you come across someone who is trying to develop skills of this sort, have a thought for some gesture of encouragement. It need not be lavish, it need not require much effort on your part, and it can be very subtle indeed --- do not worry that the writer may not pick up your signals; I assure you his antennae will be adequate to the task. Also, do not be offended if no thanks are forthcoming. This is a touchy area, and it is one which is best passed through rapidly, even a bit matter-of-factly --- gushing is absolutely inappropriate.
Your thanks will come, later and indirectly, in the greater likelihood that your nascent writer will someday make his own useful contribution to the written word.
|