If The Elements of Style is a paean to expressive austerity, this is hardly the compositional philosophy on display in White’s children’s books, which are nothing if not celebrations of verbal élan. Like Ernest Hemingway, who mocked his fans’ enthusiasm for the writing tips he dispensed, White had mixed feelings about being anointed a master of plain prose.
It might seem self-evident that White the author practiced what Strunk and White the style gurus preached, but the truth is more complicated. The Elements of Style-“Strunk and White”-has sold more than 10 million copies and is still a staple of higher-education syllabuses, although it is assigned far more often than it is read. The result was the most successful composition guide of all time. In addition to being an acclaimed essayist and children’s author, White had the curious fate to have written the book on how to write, or at least part of it, when he updated and expanded a pamphlet his former teacher William Strunk Jr. White.” 1 Throughout his six-decade career, White was widely celebrated for his mastery of “the plain style.” His columns and anecdotes for the New Yorker, his longer essays, and his immensely popular trio of children’s books ( Charlotte’s Web, Stuart Little, The Trumpet of the Swan) were invariably praised for their clarity and unadorned directness, not to mention their pithy gestures of tasteful irreverence. “No one,” declared James Thurber, “can write a sentence like E.
0 kommentar(er)
