Elemental Stylism

Jonathan Yardley at the Washington Post wrote a lit­tle praise for Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style a cou­ple of days ago, which drew some crit­i­cism from Jan Freeman at the Boston Globe and some follow-up crit­i­cism from var­i­ous blog­gers across the Web.

It make me think about the “lit­tle book.” I’ve owned a copy since my fresh­man year at col­lege. It was the fourth edi­tion then, as it still is, with its intro­duc­tion by Roger Angell. It’s a lit­tle gray paper­back that I read through back then and though was great — not as great as Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace by Joseph Williams (a book that has inspired me for years) but still pretty good nonethe­less. When I “retired” from news­pa­per report­ing, my edi­tor gave me a first-edition, a copy that I’ll prob­a­bly trea­sure until the day I die.

But that’s just it. I’ll trea­sure it; I prob­a­bly won’t use it much. In fact, I don’t think I’ve seri­ously cracked open the Elements since that first read­ing a decade ago. My love for that lit­tle book is like my love for base­ball. It’s a pas­sion that I have when I’m feel­ing poetic and deep, when I feel like I should be cul­tured, but it gets laid aside when prac­ti­cal con­cerns arise and force me to get real work done, rather than sit back and admire the watchmaker’s perfection.

I under­stand Yardley’s love for the book. I have it myself, in spurts. Do I rec­om­mend peo­ple read the book? Absolutely. I also rec­om­mend they read the King James Bible. I just don’t advo­cate die-hard belief.

Related posts:

1. Joseph M. Williams, 1933–2008
2. Why Read?
3. No, Amazon doesn’t owe authors money for audio­book rights
4. You’d think they’d know better