Booth on Rhetoric

Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (London: Blackwell, 2004), 206pp.

Since the 1961 publication of his now-classic book, The Rhetoric of Fiction , Wayne Booth, an Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Chicago, has been one of the nation’s leading authorities on rhetoric. As Booth sees it, rhetoric is not confined to speechifying. It is all-pervasive, in fiction as well as in the “rhetrickery” of the media, education, and politics. The Rhetoric of Rhetoric reviews the remarkable “flowering” of rhetoric in the past half-century, and offers a plea for more systematic attention to rhetoric throughout the culture. Booth’s latest is not so satisfying as some of his earlier books, particularly his wonderful The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988). His advocacy of “listening rhetoric” that communicates openness and toleration is not as fresh an approach as he appears to think. Listening rhetoric might well reduce the intensity of our Kulturkampf , but Booth does not show sufficient awareness that there are ultimately cultural ideals worth fighting for. Still, Booth’s sensitivity to rhetoric and rhetrickery is unparalleled, and he is a nearly ideal guide through the new world of rhetorical studies.