Simple & Direct: A Rhetoric for Writers

"Simple & Direct" had a major influence on my becoming a technical writer. It is an attack on incorrect word usage and just-plain-stupid writing. Anyone who takes writing seriously should have it on their shelf next to "On Writing Well" and "The Elements of Style".

Barzun has written one of the best guides to prose composition, one to be set on the shelf with Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" and Graves & Hodge's "Reader Over Your Shoulder" and consulted often. All three of these books adhere to the Strict Taskmaster method and demand that the writer PAY ATTENTION to what he (or she) is doing. Prissy? Perhaps. Overbearing? At times. But such discipline is the first essential step towards becoming a real writer.Only after one has internalized the Taskmasters and made their advice an ingrained habit can one then go on to profit from such excellent books as Joseph Williams's "Style," Thomas Kane's "Oxford Essential Guide to Writing," and Arthur Quinn's "Figures of Speech".

I taught newswriting as an adjunct in the journalism department of a state university for a couple of years, and Barzun's "Simple and Direct" was on a list of books and essays I strongly recommended to all my students. I used to work as a radio news and documentary producer and news director and I found Barzun's prescriptions on prose style a reliable guide for editng my own work and others as well. Barzun's approach can be a bit irritating at first because he tends to be fairly prissy about style, but if you can get past that, you begin to perceive the prissiness as a tight focus on precision of the type that is lacking in much modern prose writing. His main rule is one I paraphrased at the first meeting of every newswriting class...that there are only two reasons for producing bad writing; either you don't know what you're writing about, or you don't know how to write about it. I lost my copy of Barzun years ago. I think one of my students walked off with it. If so, I hope he or she is using it. I'm glad to know it's still available.

I read this book - twice. I am not an academic; I am a writer, and I find book to be not only useful but entertaining (as are most of Barzun's writings). As a writer he is careful and exact if not always concise. But even his lack of brevity has its merits; there is no misunderstanding what he is saying. I believe that only someone who has difficulty understanding the English language could call this book ". . .one of the worst books on English composition. . ." It is well written, well organized, and, although not always simple and direct, always complete, grammatically correct, and understandable.As to another review, modern linguistic research has little to do with learning to produce a composition in English? Additonally in that review, the not-so-thinly veiled ad hominem attack on Barzun as being "pompous" and "nasty" has little to do with the merits of the book and do not constitute a review. I certainly recommend the book for some excellent insight on how to write properly. Be prepared to work at it a bit, but that's as it should be; correct English writing requires some effort.

If one desires to mould one's prose around the lumpy and shifting shapes thrown up by statistical sampling -- in other words, according to the latest results of the human birdwatchers known as linguistics professors -- then don't read this book. But if you seek concision and character for your writing, and if you don't mind taking the advice of a very great though very old prose stylist, then read, and profit. It is short the fifth star only in order to save something for his "House of Intellect", "Berlioz" and "Science: The Glorious Entertainment".