Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style [Hardcover]

Mark Garvey's well-researched "Stylized" is billed as "a slightly obsessive history of Strunk & White's 'The Elements of Style.'" Garvey is an unabashed fan who maintains that "ounce for ounce, this work has done more to establish an American ideal of good prose style than any other book or any teacher, living or dead." Garvey not only provides the reader with a history of "The Elements of Style" in all of its incarnations, but he also gives us a glimpse into the lives and personalities of its authors, William Strunk, Jr. and Elwyn Brooks White. Garvey likens these two men to Rodgers and Hammerstein, the Wright Brothers, and Lennon-McCartney; to him, they are the rock stars of fine writing.

Garvey entertainingly, humorously, and in great detail, traces "The Elements of Style" back to its inception. The first edition was self-published by Strunk, a professor of English at Cornell, in 1918. Strunk hoped that this handbook would ground his pupils in the fundamentals of English composition. At forty-three pages, it was intended as a handy manual, covering "the basics of clear and clean writing [with] tips on usage, composition, word choice, [and] spelling." The price was twenty-five cents and one of its purchasers was Strunk's student, E. B. White. At that time, White was a Cornell undergraduate, and he probably had no idea that he would someday become a renowned essayist, children's book author, and "the voice of the New Yorker magazine."

It was not until 1957 that White revisited "The Elements of Style," and wrote a New Yorker article about Strunk and his philosophy. This led to a collaboration between the Macmillan Publishing Company and E. B. White, who eventually updated Strunk's text. In the revised edition, published in 1959, White included a foreword, an introduction, and a final chapter, "An Approach to Style." Since that time, "The Elements of Style" has been updated repeatedly (most recently in 1999) and is still in print. However, is it still needed today, when most of us communicate almost exclusively via cell phone, email, text messages, and blogs? There are indeed those who proclaim that Strunk & White's ideas are outdated, irrelevant, or just plain wrongheaded--that their "rules" no longer apply in this postmodern era.

However, Garvey and other writers, some of whom speak out in "Stylized," believe that there are certain standards that never go out of date, "that careful, clear thinking and writing can occasionally touch truth; [that there is] depth in simplicity and beauty in plainness...." Those who admire Strunk and White will enjoy reading about their personal lives, professional accomplishments, and the delight that they took in the English language, good literature, and lucid writing. As long as we put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, there will be a treasured place for this little book in our personal libraries. As White's editor at Macmillan, J. G. Case once said, "Sloppy usage drives out meaning" and leads to "muddle, waste, frustration, [and] murk." The purpose of writing, he goes on to say, is "to transmit meaning, to enlighten and clarify...." This is as true today as it ever was.

I'm delighted that Mark Garvey has given us a history of _The Elements of Style_. The book provides a refuge for letters, commentary, and photos that could otherwise vanish before long. Probably this is why, somewhere midway, the book began to seem more of an elegy than mere history. I'm sure this was not Garvey's intention, but on the whole his work testifies to the diminishing influence of "Strunk & White" (even among its disciples) and especially to the sorry condition of the post-White edition of _Elements_ (the 4th).

To be clear, I think everyone should buy and enjoy this book. But know that you'll be enjoying a window onto a world that no longer exists. The first indication of this, sadly, is the quality of the writing by Garvey as well as by the writers he invited to contribute. It is noticeably un-Strunkian. Consider an early sample:

"Chapter III also contains the rule and the paragraph that constitutes Strunk's Sermon on the Mount, the nugget that cradles the book's DNA and that might be sufficient to reconstitute _The Elements of Style_ in its entirety should the rest of it, like heaven and earth, pass away" (15).

I want to enjoy this sentence, but I stick at the clash of images when I get to a nugget cradling a book's DNA. Also at the cumbersome non-meaning of "in its entirety." And also at the lumbering quality of the whole sentence. I don't think I'm quibbling over a single instance. Too often I came across sentences like this:

"The notion of style that White was honing with such skill and deploying in the service of _The New Yorker_--the attitudes and approaches that worked for him--would eventually be codified, to the extent that lightning can be successfully bottled, in Chapter V of _The Elements of Style_" (34).

There's too much stuffed into that sentence for it to exemplify the plain style. One giveaway is "successfully." It does nothing but deflate. Leave it out and see how punchy the phrase becomes. Over-qualification, ironic for a disciple of _Elements_, becomes Garvey's stylistic signature. Try this one: "...a physical typescript is a reassuring thing to see and hold in this age when books routinely travel the complete route from author to printing press in the digital realm without materializing, corporeally speaking, until they emerge from the bindery" (77). There's more to that sentence, but this excerpt alone reads like the left-hand, pre-revision sample from "Omit Needless Words." Why "routinely" travel? Why "complete" route?

But note, I'm not singling out Garvey. He represents a trend we are all part of now, even when we think we're being stylistic contrarians. One of the contributors to this book, Damon Lindelof, illustrates the state of prose composition today:

"One thing from _Elements_ that has stuck with me is the phrase 'omit needless words.' Why use fifteen words when four words will do? That's the thing that really struck me. And now, when I look over some of the creative writing I did in college, I can barely get through it; it's so unnecessarily and egregiously verbose" (88).

We see that Lindelof wants to be a good writer; he imagines he is a good writer. But he lacks the clarity or confidence to let the one word do its work, to call his juvenilia verbose. Like Lindelof, most of us reading this book will glide past the fact that we don't know, or can't trust, that verbose--already denoting the unnecessary and egregious--is enough. This has become the unremarked norm of our thinking and writing.

The elegiac quality of _Stylized_ comes from this unintended and unrecognized surrender to the prose conventions of today. One point of contention has been the effort of academic linguists to impose gender neutrality by abandoning the use of the masculine *he* as a generic English pronoun. A great pleasure of reading Garvey's book is encountering E. B. White's refusal to submit to this sort of thing. (See his immortal letter to Jack Case, p. 101: "I do know that this book is the work of a dead precisionist and a half-dead disciple of his, and that it has got to stay that way....I cannot, and will-shall not, attempt to adjust the unadjustable Mr. Strunk to the modern liberal of the English Department, the anything-goes fellow.")

Well, after White's death the publishers of the 4th edition of _Elements_ did indeed adjust the unadjustable Mr. Strunk. On the subject of *he* as the generic pronoun for expressions like "everyone" (having "lost all suggestion of maleness in these circumstances"), we move from this in the 3rd edition: "It has no pejorative connotation; it is never incorrect," to this in the 4th: "Currently many writers find the use of the generic *he* or *his* to rename indefinite antecedents limiting or offensive....Consider these strategies to avoid an awkward overuse of *he or she* or an unintentional emphasis on the masculine" (60). The de-emphasis of the masculine, performed by an unnamed committee of revisers, permeates the 4th edition.

White knew as well as anybody that revisions would be necessary. The trick for us, in his absence, is discerning whether the change enhances the precision, even the honesty, of our writing. Revision might, after all, constitute something else, like submission to what Orwell called "the smelly orthodoxies" contending for our souls. I think White's Introduction to _Elements_ as it appears in the 4th edition helps us discern rightly. Consider this excerpt:

"Will [Strunk] felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get the reader up on dry ground, or at least to throw a rope" (xviii).

The editors of the 4th edition appended this note: "E. B. White wrote this introduction for the 1979 edition." But this is not true. What he actually wrote can be dug out of used copies of the 3rd edition. Here it is:

"Will felt that the reader was in serious trouble most of the time, a man floundering in a swamp, and that it was the duty of anyone attempting to write English to drain this swamp quickly and get his man up on dry ground, or at least throw him a rope" (xvi).

You can object to the revision on two counts: first, stylistically, it chills the human warmth of the original and falsifies English idiom in order to advance a social agenda; second, morally, it is profoundly dishonest. Future generations will have no clue that the words they find in post-3rd-edition versions are not White's, that they are misconstruing White's attitude to his subject and to its stylistic treatment. The implications of this for Garvey's book are significant. _Stylized_ purports to be a history of the composing and editing of _Elements_ within the frame of White's conception of the plain style. Moreover, Garvey reinforces continually White's view of writing plainly as writing morally. It would be inexcusable to ignore the 4th edition's violation of White's fundamental stylistic and moral principles. To his credit, Garvey acknowledges the problematic aspects of the 4th edition. But then his nerve fails. He maintains that the publisher, in altering White's text in this controversial way, "made the right decision, the only decision they could have made, and they handled it neatly" (163). Approval like this is miles apart from White's own independent spirit, and it suggests an anxious accommodation to the Zeitgeist that White loathed: "the flagging spirit, the moistened finger in the wind, the examination of entrails, and the fear of little men" (_Stylized_ 101).

On this point I return to my opening claim about _Stylized_. It illuminates the rich cultural and personal backdrop behind _The Elements of Style_. Very readable, in its way, and enjoyable. But a poignant recognition forms an inescapable part of that enjoyment: "Strunk & White" impresses us with a stylistic clarity and moral firmness that we cannot claim for ourselves or for the edition published when White was too dead to speak for himself.

Sylized is simply a good read! Whether or not you're a fan of Strunk and White's Elements of Style, you're sure to enjoy Mark Garvey's Stylized. His extensive research, interviews with authors, letters of Strunk, White, and others provide highly entertaining insight into the publishing and continued success of Elements of Style, the core values it espouses, as well as a look at the personalities of the two genetlemen responsible for the book. The letters alone are reason enough to read this book; the rest is icing on the cake. It's a well-written, entertaining, and smart book that would appeal to anyone who enjoys reading and/or writing.

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