On Graceful Writing
Rachel Toor has a fine essay at The Chronicle of Higher Education, “The Problem Is: You Write Too Well” (full text for subscribers only), which outlines a complaint that is heard with amazing frequency: your writing is too easy to read. As Toor states,
“People on my dissertation committee,” explained several young scholars, “said that I write too well.”
I personally had one of these experiences. One of my professors met with me about a seminar paper and he gave me what I thought was going to be a compliment. He complimented my writing and then told me to stop writing so well. He said something like this:
“Gene, your writing style is very clear and concise. Very muscular. But it is not academic writing. It is popular writing. If you persist in writing clear prose, you will never get far in academic writing. Academic writing must be turgid and convoluted. You must force your reader to read your sentences four and five times before she can understand what you are trying to say. You must obscure the concepts that just anyone can understand. You must, as literally as possible, grab your reader by the throat and pull her face into the text, holding her captive until she can escape by understanding the essay in full after struggling and wrestling with your words.”
You can imagine my thoughts as I received this comment. This advice ran contrary to everything I had been taught by previous professors and contradicted the advice I gave to my own students in composition classes. I was really confused and brought it up to someone else in the department who clued me in.
“Oh, he’s a total Marxist, through and through. You have to understand, Marxists do not like consumerism. And he believes that writing that is too easy to read is complicit in passive consumerism. What he is doing is criticizing the larger culture of consumerism. He wants your prose to fight passive consumption. And if you write like that, you will signal to other Marxists that you are in their club. At their hearts, Marxists are actually elitists who thrive within a private club populated by self-referencing winkers.”
When my next paper came due, I anticipated his concerns and wrote a painfully complicated essay which he liked very much. After all, I’m a big believer in the concept of audience and wanted to communicate effectively with him, my sole audience for that paper. But after that course, I went back to what I believed to be a superior rhetorical style. I believed, and still do, that effective communication is an attempt to overcome the brokenness of language that is the result of fallenness. In this way, clear writing is a foretaste of grace, that wonderful concept that reminds us that something must bridge the gap between us and perfection, the gap that divides us from other persons as well as God.
Worldview affects everything, doesn’t it? Even the way we approach our writing.
September 10th, 2011 | 10:27 pm | #1
I think you missed the point of the essay (which is apparently now available to non-subscribers). While cases like the peculiar Marxist whom you discuss exist, in general I, like Toor, tend to suspect that those who claim that their writing/ideas/research are or were “just too good” for their academic mentors are attempting to turn their own deficiencies into strengths. Pride, combined with the strange psychological warping of human memory that so often occurs, can lead to remarkable self-deception; and, for the most part, those who claim that academics/intellectuals aren’t all that bright are expressing something like ressentiment.
That being said, certain politically-distorted sectors of academia do pretty much promote awful and unclear writing. In that regard, Judith Butler, Lacan, and Derrida come to mind (along with thousands of misguided graduate students and professors who are more interested in using the right jargon than in expressing ideas). That tendency also bleeds into political speech in forms like political correctness when it becomes a means of expressing superiority over those who don’t adhere to it rather than of showing simple respect.
September 11th, 2011 | 3:20 pm | #2
This has been going on for some time. My first year in graduate school, in the late 70s, I was just out of the Army. Wrote papers that were short, concise, and in English. My professor gave me Cs in the class. I went to an English professor who told me that my papers were fine grammatically. At the end of the semester, knowing I would flunk the course because graduate students did not get Cs, I wrote my final paper sacastically, and generally incoherent. I even read parts to my fellow grad students, who laughed along with me. I turned it in and got an A on the paper. From that point on, my graduate career was secure.
September 11th, 2011 | 4:49 pm | #3
Alas, I must commiserate with S Smith. Having finished my undergrad in Philosophy and then having entered grad school in IT, I too, found my nicely written and properly organized papers being graded as average. Realizing my mistake (as S Smith had his) I endeavored to rely on buzz words and run-on sentences. Sadly, my grade also improved.
Who knew Marxists could teach IT as well?
Thank you, Dr. Fant, for your very interesting post.
September 11th, 2011 | 5:37 pm | #4
I’m not an academic, just the spouse of a recently retired PhD. I am a veteran of business, however, and have noticed over the past forty years or so a marked deterioration of writing ability. Almost always this symptom accompanied an inability to think and reason well. This costs.
Methinks Western higher education has started on an inexorable downward path in which the value of excellence is being forgotten and knowledge lost.
September 11th, 2011 | 10:07 pm | #5
I’ve never heard that this phenomenon was specifically Marxist. At any rate, it made for a lot of agonizing hours in college trying to read unnecessarily convoluted essays. I remember once being told by a professor that my sentences used too many active verbs, and that I needed to be more passive to qualify as an academic writer. The funny thing is, that’s the exact opposite of “good writing” as taught in any English, grammar, or writing class.
September 12th, 2011 | 1:45 pm | #6
Stephen: I meant to make it clear that the Toor essay moved, as you said, to “clear writing” being a euphemism for “simplistic” or even “poorly researched.” Sorry for that fallen bit of miscommunication. What’s even more ironic about that, though, is that academic writing seems to elevate obfuscation to amend for the same weaknesses in methodology and execution. Alas, the brokenness of language creates challenges for all of us.
September 12th, 2011 | 5:44 pm | #7
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September 14th, 2011 | 10:07 am | #8
Richard Feynman, the great physicist, tells the story of serving on an education committee and reading one of the staff reports. After reading and re-reading the first lengthy paragraph of the report, he found that it said, “People talk”.
September 15th, 2011 | 10:01 am | #9
[...] On Graceful Writing Evangel, Gene Fant [...]
September 15th, 2011 | 10:55 am | #10
It’s so quaint to read of people who have the experience of actually being taught grammar. Double irony points!
For the contrary folks who can’t be bothered to adjust their reason and their well-honed writing skills, let me recommend the Postmodernism Generator, here: http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/ as a means to impress your academic friends.
September 15th, 2011 | 1:25 pm | #11
“You must force your reader to read your sentences four and five times before she can understand what you are trying to say.”
I had to snortle at the pc assumption that an academic reader would be a woman.
September 16th, 2011 | 1:29 pm | #12
“Gene, your writing style is very clear and concise. Very muscular. But it is not academic writing. It is popular writing. If you persist in writing clear prose, you will never get far in academic writing. Academic writing must be turgid and convoluted. You must force your reader to read your sentences four and five times before she can understand what you are trying to say. You must obscure the concepts that just anyone can understand. You must, as literally as possible, grab your reader by the throat and pull her face into the text, holding her captive until she can escape by understanding the essay in full after struggling and wrestling with your words.”
When I was in academia I received the same scolding.
I left academia.
September 16th, 2011 | 3:09 pm | #13
I write proposals and grant requests for a University, and I can make effective arguments though I am not always eloquent in my choice of words. And I always have at least one person proof and edit my work. I am a believer in having the person who will give me the most feedback critique my work. The end of your post brings greater purpose to what I do. I sincerely believe that I am using my gifts to raise money for a worthy cause (education), but I appreciate how you say that “clear writing is a foretaste of grace.” I never thought of that before, and that idea resonates with me–and makes me want to be a better writer!
September 22nd, 2011 | 2:27 pm | #14
Caveat lector! http://politickles.com/blog/?p=4450
September 23rd, 2011 | 9:05 am | #15
[...] I ain’t no damn academic and never will be, thank God. “Gene, your writing style is very clear and concise. Very muscular. But it is not academic writing. It is popular writing. If you persist in writing clear prose, you will never get far in academic writing. Academic writing must be turgid and convoluted. You must force your reader to read your sentences four and five times before she can understand what you are trying to say. You must obscure the concepts that just anyone can understand. You must, as literally as possible, grab your reader by the throat and pull her face into the text, holding her captive until she can escape by understanding the essay in full after struggling and wrestling with your words.” [...]
September 29th, 2011 | 7:47 pm | #16
Reminds me of Robert Jenson’s recent criticism of a fellow theologian: “If there is a way to lay out a sentence so as to hide its import, he often finds it.”
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