A Writer's Companion

Richard Marius's handbook for writers is the best I have ever seen. It is writen with the same clarity of purpose as Strunk and White's _The Elements of Style_ but more thorough on the rhetorical dimensions of writing. His chapters, "Paragraphs" and "The Fundamental Principles of Sentences," are especially useful and entertaining to read. I must, however, point out a startling difference between the the third and fourth edition. The third is more gutsy and truthful about English Department agendum in universities. Marius's revisions for the fourth edition before he died seem uncharacteristic of the ethical principles his writing has always been known for. In short I find Marius's feelings more present and direct in the third edition than in the much softer fourth edition. To give an example of Marius's grit and honesty about the growing popularity of autobiographical writing in certain academies, I quote from Marius's preface to the third edition, which he uncharacterstically euphemizes in the fourth: "I don't care much for sappy writing where writers tell me what they feel about things rather than what they know about things. We seem awash nowadays in the rhetoric of dramatic personal experience, where writers gush over their emotions about the common places of life" (xiv). To conclude the sentiment that this review of Marius's book inspired, I quote George Steiner from his interview in _The Paris Review_ about writers who he says take "enormous risks": ". . . a book that's worth living with is the act of one voice, the act of a passion, the act of a _persona_" (51).

Richard Marius has done an excellent job with this book. In an engaging and witty style, he sets forth the dos and don'ts for writing the English language. He happily tells why certain "elementary school" rules should be ignored (beginning a sentence with a conjunction) and points out common grammatical errors ("as" verses "like" and "bad" verses "badly" are two I had to clean up). This small but dense book is a joy for anyone who needs to polish up his/her use of the English language.