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08/11/2004 Archived Entry: "Style"

Ben Yagoda starts with a nice Chronicle critique on the importance of style, drawing attention to the "please bury this book once and for all" popular Elements of Style. But he errs in saying:

But the traditional purpose of writing is communication, equally true in an e-mail message and a published book; if it leaves the person on the other end bored, bothered, or bewildered (or if it permanently remains bound in a journal), it is of extremely limited use.

That statement doesn't mesh with his fawning over Charlie Parker's style - remember, California audiences hated Parker and Gillespie when they toured post-War. The hard bop sound was deemed "noise" and "un-danceable to." Audiences were, in fact, bewildered. So bewildered they booed the band off the stage (and remember crowds booing Dylan: “JUDAS” because they were so confused by the message – but Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home has style, man).

And then Yagoda makes the big mistake - reducing everything to "our students can't write":

Of course, anyone who's ever been hired to turn a couple of dozen undergraduates into competent writers will discern at least two problems with the notion of putting individual style on the syllabus. To put it bluntly, not just students but a vast number of our citizens are poor writers. A sort of triage is clearly called for: Sloppiness, mistakes, clichés, jargon, and obfuscations need to be addressed before one moves on to finer points of style and voice.

Oops. First – too snotty a comment. Second, you can't critique Strunk and White for over-emphasizing petty grammar points then turn to "the finer points" as ultimate goal. "Finer" - itself a word referring to a vision of refined English (and grammar efficiency) may have little to nothing to do with '"style." Are you telling me the dissonance of Ornette Coleman has “finer points” of style and voice? And Sun Ra? And Funkadelic turning this mutha out? Don’t like music examples? Here’s my old favorite: Burroughs. Or Ballard’s Crash. Or Kathy Acker. Looks like the finer points issue falls flat on its face, eh?

If we take seriously the Parker example of style Yagoda throws at us from the get go, we see that it doesn't mesh with his argument. "Style is expressed unconsciously, but shaped consciously, in revision." Not necessarily with Parker. The improv (yeah, maybe not always it was true "improv") mentality in bebop was not about revision. It was in your face, break up order, deconstruct convention, make you uneasy music. Today, Parker doesn't sound that wild. But imagine yourself in 1940 whatever listening to him and thinking: "What the hell is this crap?" Audiences thought that.

And that makes hip hop a nice analogy. Wu Tang Clan is (or I guess, was) the Charlie Parker of the last decade. Finer points? Not when they're singing "Wu Tang Clan ain't nothing to fuck with." But there’s style there. That’s why I love it when Strunk and White make the big mistake and write:

By the time this paragraph sees print, uptight, ripoff, rap, dude, vibes, copout, and funky will be the words of yesteryear, and we will be fielding more recent ones that have come bouncing into our speech. (Strunk and White 82)

Posted by Pedro @ 08/17/2004 12:22 AM EST