Style

[lhexa]

"A change in style in philosophy is a profound change, and itself a subject of philosophical investigation." -- Stanley Cavell

My plans for the summer aren't something another person would find interesting: I'll spend most of it studying physics intensely, both for general exams and to fill in perceived lacks in my knowledge before graduate school. On the other hand, I also intend to resume writing here, if only on a narrow set of topics.

One of these topics is, for lack of a less ambitious word, style. I want to be a good writer. However, I'm largely unable to learn about this from contemporary sources, because I don't want to write fiction, and questions of style arise rarely with regard to nonfiction; when they do, the discussions are not often to my liking. One thing that's particularly dismaying is the goal of universal style, the desire to set out guidelines which are to apply to all (nonfiction) writing, or even just a specific example of it, like scientific reports or academic essays. So-called general style is just grammar, where it carries any weight at all.

So instead of following handbooks of general style, I'm going to build a sort of handbook of personal style. The entries in it are going to fall in three rough categories. First, there'll be short descriptions of very specific stylistic matters, giving my reactions to and understanding of them, possibly along with a judgment of their merits; these entries probably won't be of much interest to anyone beside myself. Second, there'll be comments on more general matters, like overall structure, or what one comes away with as an impression of another's style. These'll still be built for my own needs, but I'll try to make them worthwhile to anyone else reading. Third, there'll be mixtures of philosophy and self-analysis, in which I bring up and address the questions that brought me to this project in the first place, such as why I feel style to be important, what relationship I should stand in with the reader, and why I feel contemporary forms of writing to be inadequate for me. These last, hopefully, will be worth reading on their own.

At one point in my life I did manage to develop a distinct, complete style of writing, which I called the "ramble". The way I would write these was so consistent, it almost became dependable: I would wait until some night when I felt restless, then get on my bicycle and ride someplace at random, in the dark. Eventually a place or situation would hit me with a particular emotion, with ideas and theories following in its path, and I would go straight home to put it all into words. The style of the "ramble" was very spontaneous; it was never written with a structure in mind, and yet would always develop a certain internal coherence, a natural progression of ideas and techniques. The biggest virtue of this form of writing was that it suited those ephemeral, nighttime emotions and ideas. The biggest shortcoming was that it was incapable of producing a point-driven work.

I discovered this in a disastrous way when I tried to adapt this style to academic philosophy. The last four rambles I ever wrote, I also showed to professors, in each one attempting more difficult, more comprehensive arguments. The comments I received, while worthwhile, often concerned how difficult it was to discern their structures. This was my first introduction to the demands of an (in this case, academic) audience; it didn't help that the rambles were such personal exercises that I ended up shaking in anxiety when it came time to talk about them. In the end, the near inability to get any ideas across broke something inside me. I would still feel those strange ideas and emotions, but no longer be able to write them, or produce any more rambles.

This might actually have been for the better. There's a certain self-indulgence in writing which is so common in philosophy that many people have taken it to be characteristic of philosophy. I think that if I had continued to adapt the ramble to academia, I would have ended up with such a style. I was inept at the immediate alternative, mind you -- for a few years I wrote essays of greater or lesser mediocrity. But I do think I'm a better writer now than I was then. Nowadays I can use metaphor effectively, I can understand and plan structures, and I can make a point while having people know what that point is. Nevertheless, it's not by choice that I no longer write rambles; it's because I can't. And that fact, as well as the merits of that form of writing, abilities which I haven't reclaimed in full, gives me a drive to understand it better. From this understanding, I hope to develop a new style, which can have such a place in my life as the old one did.

Comments

[wickedorin.livejournal.com]

*can say absolutely nothing about the subject of rambling... unless she starts rambling... which is perfectly possible, because she's really good at it and--*