'It Bubbles and Chuckles Along'

“Persistently obscure writers will usually be found to be defective human beings.” 

A truth I had been waiting to hear for much of my life. Willful obscurity (which is not the same as complexity) is favored by writers contemptuous of readers. Avant-gardistes often fancy themselves superior to people who merely like reading books. The sentence above and the slender volume in which I found it -- On Philosophical Style (1954) – were my introduction to the American philosopher Brand Blanshard (1892-1987), which in turn introduced me to Dave Lull, who is more deeply read in Blanshard’s work.

 

In the July 4, 1953 issue of The Saturday Review, Blanshard wrote about H.W. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage, originally published in 1926. His review begins:

 

“The story is told that a friend of an old lady who was known as a great reader gave her a copy of Johnson’s Dictionary. Meeting her later, he asked what she thought of it. ‘Very instructive indeed,’ said she, ‘but I did seem to notice a trifling want of connection.’ That objection would veto all dictionaries I know as general reading matter—all, that is, except one.”

 

That would be Fowler’s, of course, and Blanshard tells us he read it sequentially, start to finish. Dictionaries, especially Johnson’s and the OED, are good, addictive reading. One entry leads to another and then the afternoon is shot. Blanshard explains some of Fowler’s charm:

 

“[I]t is not written like a dictionary at all, but like a letter. It bubbles and chuckles along as if it were so much wayward talk, indulging in little digs and naughtinesses, and breaking out into little ‘whoops of blessing’ as it goes. Yet none of this is really irrelevant. Fowler swam about so easily in linguistic learning and so delighted in it that it made him feel like cutting capers to get back into his element; he wrote on other things, but never with the ease and mastery he showed in discussing usage.”

 

I’m puzzled by writers who show little interest in their medium and remain indifferent to the stuff  they're working with. Subject matter is inert without the fizz of language. Polonius: “What do you read, my lord?” Hamlet: “Words, words, words.” Blanshard reminds us that language is fun:

 

“Did it ever occur to you that isle and island have no connection with each other etymologically? Are you under the illusion that that and which are to be used in the same way? See also his articles on Cannibalism, Love of the Long Word, Sturdy Indefensibles, Hyphens, and Wardour Street.”

 

Joseph Epstein is a contemporary admirer of Fowler:

 

“On usage nothing surpasses H. W. Fowler’s Modern English Usage, first published in 1926 and, mirabile dictu, a modest bestseller when it first appeared in America. Good writing is about more than mere correctness, yet without correctness no good writing is possible. Fowler everywhere offers specific instructions. He was what is known in the business as a prescriptivist, believing in standard English (rather than a descriptivist, who believes that popular use should set the standard), but he is never rule-bound, often technical, but never stuffy. On split infinitives, as on ending sentences with prepositions, his sensible line is to avoid both if possible, but always break both rules rather than write anything awkward.”