Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking Read Online Free PDF Page A

Verse. The Art of Writing is a collection of his lectures delivered at Cambridge in 1913–14—in itself a poignant thought; how many of his adoring and gifted students (as I imagine them) perished shortly there-after in the First World War, never to put into practice his cogent teachings? The lectures, as Sir Arthur makes clear in his “Inaugural,” were a complete departure from the dry dronings-on of pedagogues, standard fare served up to students in those days. I detect that Sir Arthur had deliberately set out to be something of an iconoclast who would disrupt the calm and even flow of traditional academic instruction. He combines erudition and informality, depth and humor, in the most entertaining fashion. To cite just one sample passage that struck home to me: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings .” A marvelous piece of advice; thanks to Sir A. Q.-C., my wastepaper basket is a veritable Herod’s graveyard of slaughtered innocents. (Editor: Please delete last sentence.)
    The Elements of Style , by William Strunk, Jr., and E. B. White, which first appeared in 1959, is now a standard high-school text; hence older readers may think it beneath their dignity to consult it. If so, they will be missing a rare treat and much valuable instruction. I only wish I had had access to this book when I first started writing; I could have avoided many a stylistic blunder (see comment on “Trial by Headline”). The last chapter, “An Approach to Style,” is particularly rewarding.
    On Writing Well , by William Zinsser. This book, which grew out of a course that Mr. Zinsser teaches at Yale, also appears at first glance to be rather elementary. Yet it is full of excellent advice that any writer, whether beginner or professional, would do well to absorb; see, for example, Zinsser’s chapters on “The Lead” and “The Ending,” and his delightful comments on humor as the secret weapon of the nonfiction writer.
    In addition to these texts there are a few reference books that I use as crutches or mind-jolters, consulting them constantly when struggling with some particularly difficult and elusive passage: Roget’s International Thesaurus , Fowler’s Modern English Usage , and Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations . The last two can also be great time-wasters, as one can easily get sidetracked into reading all sorts of interesting passages having nothing to do with the work at hand; but wasting time is also part of the writer’s lot, since nobody can be expected to grind out word after word, sentence after sentence, without a bit of relief.
    EDITING. There are two stages: (1) your own editing, a continuous process until you are finally satisfied that you have organized, revised, pruned, polished your work to the limit of your ability and are ready to consign it to the uncertain mercies of book or magazine publisher; (2) professional editing by the latter.
    In the first stage, I rely heavily on the advice and criticism of friends who are good enough to read what I am doing and who give opinions on everything, ranging from the general thrust of the piece to faults of grammar and syntax. These amateur editors include my family, students, neighbors, the thirteen-year-old junior-high math wiz. Seldom has any one of them failed to come up with some valuable suggestion. On one occasion, when Kind and Usual Punishment was in galleys and had been proofread by me and half a dozen highly literate pals, I offered the thirteen-year-old a dollar for every mistake he could find; I wound up owing him eighteen dollars.
    I also make it a practice to consult with people who have first-hand knowledge of the subject matter. When writing Kind and Usual Punishment , I circulated the draft to members of the San Francisco Prisoners Union, all ex-convicts, who supplied many vivid details from their own prison