Style: An Anti-Textbook

Lanham, the true hedonist, even epicure, when it comes to prose (and probably other things), understands that the root of all art, all human expression, is based on pleasure, and he knows how pleasure is made through sequences of words. I love him for this. In writing--as in all art--we have to play with our raw materials, and, as Aristotle says, we play when we imitate, and then we learn things. Invoke the Sanskrit goddess of divine play, "Lila." Galumph, Galumph, Galumph! Lanham's got the groove, what else can be said?

This book is brilliant. It's also quite funny. It's an argument for bringing back rhetoric, particularly the study of literary ornamentation, to transmute the leaden prose and confused thinking all around us nowadays. According to Lanham, preaching "scientific" notions of clarity won't cause students to write more clearly: it will only make matters worse. (Are you listening, Strunk & White?) We must turn the act of writing into an aesthetic game. Once we recover our sense of literary play, and not before then, our prose will improve. Some of the examples that Lanham uses are rather dated now--my goodness, how stale and silly all that hippie lingo sounds today!--but his advice is timeless. Lanham occasionally overstates his case. This is often an effective pedagogical tactic. Although I think Lanham is mostly right about how to improve our prose, it's certainly possible to produce a gorgeous flow of words and still be a stranger to reason. (A little logic now and then is relished by the best of men.) I suppose there is a danger that some recalcitrant students will use Lanham's book as an excuse to avoid the hard work of thinking and writing clearly, just as some unimaginative grinds use Strunk & White's book to justify writing only the most ploddingly blunt and dessicated prose. Such are the hazards of pedagogy.

Lanham, an expert on classical rhetoric, has written a witty, counter-intuitive work that argues, plausibly, that English teachers have erred in trying to instill clarity in their students' writings. What is needed, says Lanham, is to teach, not clarity, but delight--i.e., rhythm, euphony, word play, all the belletristic devices of classical rhetoric--before we can hope to see good writing in student compositions. Once students (and journalists and bureaucrats and everyone else) learn to enjoy writing as an aesthetic game, clarity will follow automatically. Teaching clarity divorced from delight is doomed to failure. Even if you don't agree with Lanham's argument, you will be thoroughly entertained and even usefully informed by his little essay.

Anyone interested in the teaching of prose must hunt down a copy. This is Lanham's most eloquent and persuasive work.