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book review, books, critique, Richard Dawkins, science writing, Steven Pinker, style manual, The Sense of Style, Unweaving the Rainbow, writing, Writing advice
At first Steven Pinker was my new hero. Within the first few pages of reading his widely acclaimed “The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21st Century,” he debunks the long-standing myths about the evils of passive voice and killing one’s darlings.
We now know that telling writers to avoid the passive is bad advice. Linguistic research has shown that the passive construction has a number of indispensable functions because of the way it engages a reader’s attention and memory. A skilled writer should . . . push back against copy editors who, under the influence of grammatically naive style guides, blue-pencil every passive construction they spot into an active one.
Finally! Someone is speaking my language.
And he doesn’t stop there.
The classic manuals . . . try to take all the fun out of writing, grimly adjuring the writer to avoid offbeat words, figures of speech, and playful alliteration. A famous piece of advice from this school crosses the line from the grim to the infanticide: “Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetuate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—wholeheartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.” (Though commonly attributed to William Faulkner, the quotation comes from the English professor Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his 1916 lectures On the Art of Writing.)
I was thrilled. My top two pet peeves on bad writing advice soundly tromped by the latest style guru.
Pinker goes on to say what most writers would readily agree with, that to be a good writer you need to be a good reader. What’s more, you should acquire “the habit of lingering over good writing wherever you find it and reflecting on what makes it good.”
That’s what he proposes to do in his book, to teach the principles of good style by “reverse-engineering examples of good prose.”
By now, I’m bubbling with enthusiasm, and eagerly turn to his first example, the opening lines of “Unweaving the Rainbow” by Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist and popular science writer.
That’s when my giddy glide toward Pinker fandom comes to a screeching halt, because this paragraph is a ghastly example of good prose.
Shouldn’t, above all, good prose make sense? Failing that, what good is “style”?
But this example is so full of logical inconsistencies and pure nonsense, I’m amazed that a scientist (the supposed epitome of logical and rational thought!) would write it, let alone that a stylist would recommend it. Surely Pinker could have found a better example of good prose.
Don’t take my word for it. Read it for yourself. It’s not so much the style I object to as its substance:
We are going to dies, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds, it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
Okay, he has an intriguing premise in his opening line. It makes you sit up and take notice. It makes you want to find out more. I’ll give him that.
But the next sentence is clearly nonsense, and rather than intrigue me, it makes me question the author’s intelligence: not a good sign of good prose. He says, “Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.” But if “most people” are not born, “they” are not people. His sentence makes no sense. He’s referring to something that doesn’t exist and calling it a person. His terminology is all screwed up. He goes on to call these non-people “potential people,” “unborn ghosts,” and “possible people,” when, in fact, “they” are nothing, non-entities.
What he’s really trying to say, in what he thinks is a clever way, is: “We’re lucky we’re alive.” Because in the bijillion possible ways our DNA could have been strung, it was strung in the way peculiar to us, thus making me “me,” and you “you,” and not someone else.
Fine. I get that. I’m lucky I’m going to die because I’m lucky I was ever born. I’m also lucky I was born a person and not an ant, or algae, or a cancer cell. I’m lucky my daddy’s sperm beat out all the other sperm to penetrate my mother’s egg, and that it was that particular egg, and not another, or I could have a sister I never knew existed because I never would have been born. I’m lucky in a bijillion ways that doesn’t include a specious argument comparing me with “potential people.” Which makes me wonder what caused him to choose that clumsy and rather irrational example?
But let’s move on. Next he claims those potential people (or potential ways of stranding DNA) “will never see the light of day.” Never? Really?
Who is to say that one of those potential people, as he calls them, or possible DNA strandings is not being born as we speak, or will not be born next week, next year, and next century? In fact, aren’t all people pulled from that pool of DNA possibility, including future generations, which will go on peopling our planet onward to eternity, or at least the end of the human race?
If you really think about it, based on his logic, it’s not so much that we “actual people” are luckier than those “potential people,” but that while we are lucky now, at this point in time, they will be lucky later on when our luck has run out.
So, that sentence about “the light of day” makes no sense either. But the next one is even sillier.
He says “certainly” the set of as yet unborn potential people includes poets and scientists greater than the set of already produced people. Certainly?
There’s two things wrong with this sentence.
First he’s presupposing that DNA alone is responsible for poetic and scientific greatness, when certainly our parentage, education, place of birth, economic status, and any number of other criteria is equally important. We could almost certainly say that people who had the potential to be greater than Keats and Newton have already been born, are alive this moment, but sadly for them and us, they were born to a Pygmy tribe in Africa, a female in Afghanistan, or a crack baby in the ghetto. None of which would have had the education or opportunity to reach her or his full potential as poets and scientists.
The second problem with this sentence is that it does not belong in this paragraph. It does not support his topic or strengthen his argument about how lucky we are to be alive. A good editor should have deleted it.
But his most stupefying statement is his last, remarking on the “stupefying odds” that “you and I, in our ordinariness” were ever born. How strange he would come to the conclusion of how “ordinary” we are, for it defies the very point he was making all along. In the terms of his own argument, the very point he is advancing, our very lucky and exceptional birth would qualify us as extraordinary; indeed, far surpassing all those innumerable unlucky, unexceptional, unborn ghosts.
Pinker claims that Dawkins’ purpose, as an “uncompromising atheist and tireless advocate of science,” is to explain how “his world view does not, as the romantic and religious fear, extinguish a sense of wonder or an appreciation of life.”
If that was his purpose, then he failed miserably. For all he did in that opening was to irritate this reader with all his non-logical arguments. The only “wonder” of it for me was how a scientist could write it, and how a stylist could praise him for it.
If I could rewrite his paragraph to remove the logical inconsistencies and yet retain what Pinker claims was Dawkins’ purpose–to move the reader to marvel at the wonder of existence–here is how I would do so:
We are lucky to be alive. That joyous fact should far outweigh any grief in the knowledge of our eventual death. We are lucky because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people containing you and me. Our birth is an exceptional and extraordinary accident. Out of all the innumerable sand grains among the sand dunes of time, the winds of chance happened to pick up the ones producing you and me and spun us into being. In the teeth of these stupefying odds, you and I, in all our uncommon glory, won the mother of all lotteries.
Lucky indeed.
Deborah, this post is great. I’d seen this book and was tempted, but am in the middle of other reading adventures at the moment, so I’ll look forward to hearing more of what you have to say about this book. I certainly agree with you that this is not a good example of virtuoso stylistic writing. I am trying to consistently work with Priscilla Long’s book, The WRiter’s Portable Mentor, lately. It is my bible. She has wonderful exercises for developing style and voice – she gives me direction and structure for how to do this in a way no other writer has. It takes lots of time and practice, though.
Thank you, Valarie, for your comment as well as bringing it to this new post. I’m thinking of writing a post on WordPress glitches. Too often my posts do not show up in the reader under the categories and tags I’ve selected. Sometimes, as I did today, I’ll repost it with fewer tags and categories, and it will show up. This time when I reposted. it showed up in “book reviews” and “Steven Pinker” but nowhere else. Sigh. Still that’s better than showing up nowhere at all. But why would it not show up in the other categories like “writing” at least?
On Pinker’s book, I’ll probably write more when I’ve finished reading it, and I also plan another post on Dawkins’ science.
The book you mentioned by Priscilla Long sounds like something I’ll want to read, so thank you for that. I’ll be looking forward to your review on her book as well.
Thanks, Deborah. I never thought to check to see if my posts show up as I’ve tagged them. I really do need to get more savvy about this. I’ve been thinking about you and your writing and your finishing the novel and not liking it so much. Your post was so moving and honest. Was glad to hear you are in a better place after talking things over with someone trusted. I have certainly had similar feelings.
Thanks again, Valorie. I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one! I did get over that “hate” phase, and discovered what caused it–trying to read it with too much distance, to the point of not allowing the prose and characters work their magic. I have another post on “ways of reading” I’ll probably get out there soon to talk about this phenomena. I’m beginning to think this is why so many works of fiction I read do not move me. The reader has a responsibility to suspend judgement, disbelief, long enough to allow a bonding with the book, the voice, the prose, the characters. If we start off with too much skepticism, and the purpose to tear it apart, we will be unable to allow that bonding. Or so it seems to me. Finding that sweet spot, that balance, is essential, I believe now, to truly be able to critique a book. I was reading my draft like a stalker with a sniper rifle, not a potential friend or lover. That’s why I hated it.
Wow, looking forward to hearing more about ways of reading, too.
Hummm….got this twice, Deborah. Anyone else?
Ken
Sent from my iPad
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Yes, sorry about the Ken. Occasionally I have to post twice because the first time it didn’t show up in WordPress’ reader under the categories and tags I listed. It’s always annoying when that happens, for me and for readers, but I want my posts to get as wide a viewing as possible. I’ve noticed others have to post theirs twice occasionally too. It’s a shame, but unavoidable. Thanks for bearing with me.
No problem, I also retweet my posts and Google+ them to Public and Extended Circles, in addition to send the title snd link out to my mailing lists. Do you use social media to get your posts out?
I do. Usually I wait a day or two between each so I can look to see if doing so brought in any new views, etc. I do twitter, Facebook, and sometimes Google+ and Linkedin. I’m not very active on the last two.
Wonderful post. Thank you for alerting me to what looks like another great book from Pinker, even taking into account your balanced critique. He is definitely a genius. I thought ‘The Better Angels of our Nature’ was one of the best non-fiction books I had ever read.
Thank you, Malcolm. I read his “The Language Instinct” long ago and was deeply impressed. Sounds like I have some catching up to do on his work and Better Angels may be the place to start.
Don’t know if you meant for readers to laugh or sigh with that post, Deborah. I did both. That quote from Hawkins reminded me of some examples of modern art or prose that smack of the Emperor’s New Clothes–all sound and fury, signifying nothing (or perhaps only signifying nakedness).
Someone recently gave me that style manual, and I set it aside to read later–which often means never. Because, really, I’d much rather read something that helps me hear and thus helps me write. Beautiful poetry, beautiful prose tunes us, doesn’t it, toward the lovely?
Normandie I was so disappointed in Dawkins’ opening I had to write a post about it! I was both laughing and sighing too. But it did get me thinking and arguing, and that’s a good thing. I don’t think I’m done with Dawkins. I have another post planned as well.
I look forward to reading it.
I’m sure glad you posted this. I’ve been struggling with how to change the passive voice that shows up in my writing for a year. Talked with some professional English teachers/college profs… Nothing wrong with passive voice, they tell me. “As I phrase things in such a manner as to describe a situation, I find myself satisfied having placed my readers in the situation first..
I’m glad this helped. Some things are better said in the passive voice, especially when creating a sense of distance, or mystery, or reflection. And perhaps because of that some editors and readers who are looking for more up-close, direct, intense writing dislike it, and I can see why if that is needed in the scene. But sometimes that’s not what we’re going for.
You did a great job rewriting the paragraph. I like it for several reasons. My one quibble would be with “our birth.” Our births?
Interesting Luanne. I see what you mean, but I still like birth in the singular. Maybe I’m going for the royal we. But in that case I need to change “eventual deaths” in the 2nd sentence to the singular also. It’s funny, but the singular “sounds” right to me even though grammatically it shouldn’t, and I’m trying to figure out why. I think it does have to do with the fact I’m going for a universal, “we’re in this together” sort of “we.” We the human race, perhaps. We as one.
This is what I love and find so fascinating about writing and language and style–it’s so layered and nuanced. It’s why every word matters and means so much. One way is grammatically correct in the conventional sense, but using the singular evokes something that is perhaps more in keeping with intent and the greater meaning. I really don’t know what is more “correct” in this case. But either way it should be consistent.
OK, now I’m really intrigued and trying to find out why using the singular works here. I did some googling and found these:
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting” (Wordsworth poem);
“Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.” (Einstein).
So we should be able to explain this grammatically, and I’ll see if I can find that explanation tomorrow, since it’s almost midnight now.
If any other readers have an answer, please let me know. In the meantime, I’m changing deaths to death.
Your ‘rewrite’ of the opening paragraph is exactly what editors are supposed to do for their authors…take what was hinted at, implied etc and order it for readers to understand and appreciate. Plus, the edits should help lead the author to become an even better writer in my opinion, resulting in a mss one can be proud of.
However, if the intro is so messed up to begin with, it’s a wonder any editor would pick up the mss in the first place.
Just my 2cents.
😉
I like your 2 cents. Thanks, Laura.
I’ve always said passive voice is not bad. I even posted about that misconception on my blog, after a beta reader (and author) told me by book was full of passive voice. She was wrong, though.
Oh, I replied back to your comment about Feedburner. I hope it helps. 😀
Good for you, Chrys. I remember seeing that on your blog. And thnx for Feedburner info.
Loved this post! I write my fiction first person, present tense and yet use an extremely passive voice. Also, I really want to see you “bubbling over with enthusiasm.” I’m trying to picture it.
It’s hard to imagine you being passive about anything, Little Miss. Happy to see you here.
I like your version of Dawkins’ paragraph much better. But, then, I find Dawkins to be the pretentious proselytizing leader of a pseudo-science cult with precious little to say that’s of any value whatever. His premise is whacked from the get-go.
Thanks, Tom. I haven’t read enough of Dawkins to judge his scientific work and writings, but his atheistic premise is one that I could not agree with.
I think that paragraph was one of the “darlings” that should have been killed. 🙂
Great post. I agree with you both on passive voice and innovative wordplay. Both are tools a good writer should know how to use.
Thank you, Anne. And I do believe you are right, some “darlings” deserve a good whacking. Knowing which to keep and which to lose is the difficulty.