Stanley Fish, How to Write a Sentence, 2011.

Fish’s book is a paean to good writing. He believes that all good writing starts with writing good sentences, and that we don’t do a good job of teaching our students how to write such sentences; we get bogged down in confusing grammatical points or offer vague descriptions instead of offering good ways into good writing. Fish proposes that “(1) a sentence is an organization of items in the world; and (2) a sentence is a structure of logical relationships” (16). The essential problem with his book is revealed in this definition: the book will be appreciated and enjoyed by those people who already like sentences, and have a handle on how they work, while those who do not will neither profit much from the book nor enjoy it.

Throughout, he offers studies of good sentences and describes why they work. Fish is engaging and readable, and even entertaining at time. Where the argument wobbles is in the presentation of exercises to help the prospective writer (his audience) learn to write sentences as good as the superlative examples being studied: Fish’s own sample responses to his prompts aren’t in the same league as the originals, and feel both woefully imitative and wan in comparison. He points this fact out himself, too frequently, and both weaknesses distract from the argument. Yet his examples! And his close-readings that so wonderfully explicate why his examples are as good as they are! Fish produces an unexpected study of excerpts of some of the best writing I have ever encountered, and this book is worth reading for these choices alone.

When he moves in the final four chapters from form to content, Fish offers a few brilliant and constructive ways to think about writing. Perhaps most significant of these is his way of describing how first sentences should work. Instead of thinking about “topic sentences,” writers should remember that “First sentences know all about the sentences that will follow them” and thus “First sentences have what I call an ‘angle of lean’; the lean forward, inclining in the direction of the elaborations they anticipate" (99). This idea is still one for people who already grasp the concept, but it is as elegant a way of thinking about how to begin a piece of writing than any I have encountered.

It is a book to read if one loves both reading and writing, and I’d advise the prospective reader to anticipate both felicities and disappointments in their time with How to Write a Sentence.

Stan Persky, Topic Sentence: A Writer’s Education, 2007.

I started reading this one based on the Globe’s review of it (I should really start recording when I add things to my to-read list; I think I acquired the book shortly after it came out, and have only just finished it). It’s been bed-time reading—most of its sections are sufficiently short that I culd read one or two before going to sleep—and with my earlier bedtimes of late, I’ve been doing more of such reading.

Topic Sentence is an intriguing collection. Almost every piece therein is at least partially a memoir. Organized into “Before,” “During,” and “After,” the collected thoughts examine what it is to write well—poetry, memoir, and essays. They describe relationships with some of the most prominent poets of the twentieth century. One of my particular favourites, “The Horses of Instruction” is one of the best pieces of writing about education and philosophy that I’ve encountered. The pieces in the “During” section revolve primarily around Persky’s sexuality—both his life experience, and his making sense of society and culture—and comprise some moving and insightful writing. The epilogue to “Eros and Cupid” is genius.

As you read this collection, your own sense of writing is likely to shift: whether it’s a renewed appreciation for words in “The Translators” or the attempt to survey aspects of what it is to read the times one lives through—and especially the work of Orwell, Isherwood, Miłosz, Creeley, or contemporary music—Persky’s clarity and thoughtfulness are well worth the read. Like some of my other favourite writers, he is clearly interested in everything and wants to think deeply about what he encounters: it’s been nice having him as a teacher while I’ve read his book.

Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat and More: How to Use Latin to Your Own Advantage and to the Astonishment of Others, 1985.

A cute little book with every Latin phrase you're likely to encounter in English use. Dated idiom, but a useful reference book. The kind of thing that's fun to dip into from time to time, rather than to read from cover to cover.

Robert Bringhurst, The Solid Form of Language.
Bringhurst writes elegantly about scripts, alphabets, and written language, and how written language lives in a world slightly differently than the oral language from which it springs. He shows how different languages evolve different scripts according to their different characters, and how scripts can be uniquely suited to a particular language--and how other scripts can be so incredibly mutable as to allow many, many different languages to use the same script.

This book is slight, but elegant. It illustrates a number of scripts in principle and in use, and while a quick read is an eminently enjoyable little book.

It's also quite poetic. Here's the beginning:

"Drop a word in the ocean of meaning and concentric ripples form. To define a single word means to try to catch those ripples. No one's hands are fast enough. Now drop two or three words in at once. Interference patterns form, reinforcing one another here and canceling each other there. To catch the meaning of the words is not to catch the ripples that they cause; it is to catch the interaction of those ripples. This is what it means to listen; this is what it means to read. It is incredibly complex, yet humans do it every day, and very often laugh and weep at the same time. Writing, by comparison, seems altogether simple, at least until you try.
Writing is the solid form of language, the precipitate. ..." (Bringhurst 9)

Mark Morton, The Lover's Tongue: A Merry Romp Through the Language of Love and Sex, 2003.

Morton is a prof at the University of Winnipeg, and is the language columnist for CBC's Definitely Not the Opera. Herb recommended this book to me back at the end of May, and I stuck in a hold request then. Apparently, it's a popular book.

It's an odd book, really. I love etymology--from the Greek ετυμον (one who discourses) + λογος (words) = thinking about words--so I placed the hold back then, disagreeing with Herb's assessment of a sexual theme. The book is wonderful at exposing the play of words, the way they emerge, adapt, are played with, and are loved. It's fun because Morton obviously loves paying attention to where words come from, and because this is an area of the language where there are a lot of words, even if many of them are of quite recent coinage.

Where the book is lacking is that it's hard to sit down and to read it; it's a book with which the reader is best off dipping into, and enjoying piecemeal. Morton does advocate reading it a chapter at a time, and one might even prefer to read smaller chunks. I found myself smiling and being amused both at the stories behind some words and by Morton's own linguistic exuberance and love of language; for these reasons alone, it's a worthwhile read. I'm not sure, though, that it's one for which I'd pay: for me, it's excellent use of the HPL hold system.

Thomas Lynch, Bodies in Motion and at Rest: On Metaphor and Mortality, 2000.

I've mentioned Lynch's earlier book, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade. I quite liked the earlier one, and while this newer book doesn't seem nearly as startlingly original as The Undertaking, I enjoyed the time that I spent reading this book.

This book is a collection of essays that muse about what it means to live, and what part death plays in life. The same concerns of the earlier book are reproduced, perhaps with yet more careful reflection about Lynch's position. Given that, then, why read this book? My answer to that question is that Lynch spends more time thinking about and talking about language, and its role in life and death. While that concern was far from absent in The Undertaking, it's front and centre here: he conveys his deep respect for language and what it can accomplish. And that's an idea I'm always happy to read about.

From "Y2Kat":
"I am a slave to words. I am their servant. The acoustics and meanings, their sounds and sense, sometimes make me shiver--the precision, the liberties, the health and healing in their meanings. Language is the first among God's many gifts. To name and proclaim makes us feel like gods. To define and discern, to clarify and articulate, to affirm--surely this is what our maker had in mind when we were made in that image and likeness. Not the beard or lightning bolts or bluster. It was no big bang. It was a whisper. It was a word made flesh--our Creation. And the real power of Creation is the power of words to guard us like angels, to protect and defend and define us; to incite, and excite, and inspire, to separate us from the grunting, growling, noisome, wordless, meowing things. ..." ( 217-18)

I like reading Lynch's pieces not because of any concern of my own about mortality, but because his own sober reflections encourage reflection on my part--about words, about life, about death, and about what it is to think.

Jean-Benoit Nadeau & Julie Barlow. Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong: Why We Love France But Not the French.

Silly titles notwithstanding (and no one really minds the odd Cole Porter reference), I quite enjoyed this book.

The basic premise advocated by Nadeau & Barlow is that North Americans expect the French to behave just like North Americans:

The typical traveller to Japan, China, or Africa is more open-minded than the typical traveler to France. The fascinating rites of the Chinese, Japanese, or Zulus may cause travelers considerable discomfort and inconvenience, but travelers in these countries tend to accept the obstacles stoically, reasoning (rightly) that things are just done differently in foreign cultures. For some reason, when it comes to the French, North Americans drop this reflex. (9)

After putting aside my aversion to their paternalism, I agree with their point.

What the book attempts to do is to explain to a North American audience what those differences are, and how they’ve emerged from the history, culture and territory of France. The authors do this in three sections: “Spirit,” exploring concepts like grandeur, eloquence, conceptions of private/public spheres; “Structure,” exploring the institutions, laws, and politics of France, and the development of those structures; and “Change,” exploring how France is changing and relating to the world’s increased globalization.

While the authors frequently seem pretentious, portraying themselves as amateur ethnographers, they do present a coherent—if occasionally repetitious—view of what France is like, and why it’s like that. They even manage to be funny, from time to time. While I’m (sadly) unable to comment on the veracity of their assessments, I’m sufficiently convinced by their presentation that I’m going to read a couple of other books to which they refer. The book was a good read, and what it says makes sense in light of recent events (The book refers in passing to the UN Security Council disagreements, but doesn't treat them in depth; it doesn't need to, because its explanation of the French view of how issues and relationships should be considered explains in turn the French viewpoint that so annoyed those Americans.)
I'm happy to recommend this book to others.

And wish that I could go to France. Or at least that my French was in better shape.

So there are nice things about having a mother who's a librarian. She brings me home books. On the other hand, there are some bad things: she brings home books.
This week's "Matthew, I thought that this might interest you" is called God's Bestseller: William Tyndale, Thomas More, and the Writing of the English Bible--A Story of Martyrdom and Betrayal, published this past August by St. Martin's press, and now widely available.
Short version? Don't buy it.
Longer version?

The author--Bryan Moynahan--seems to be confused as to whether he's trying to write a hagiography, a biography, a thriller, etc. ad inf. This lamentable fact is almost certainly due to a desire to make the book appealing in as wide a variety of circles as is possible. After all, a book about a guy who was persecuted by the Roman Catholic church for having the audacity to translate the bible into a language that people actually spoke? It's a story that sells as well today as Foxe's book of martyrs ever did. And why not capture the biography market, too, without appearing stuffy? So. Quite a nice attempt to cover all the bases at once, but please, hire another 8 guys.

So. I mentioned John Foxe's Book of Martyrs [yes, it can also be spelled Fox, but Foxe looks cooler.]. Nifty book, btw, that details the early Protestant martyrs. For quite a long time, it was this book beside A Pilgrim's Progress and a bible as one of the first that nice English Protestants would want in their homes. What's the problem with this being the source that seems to get the most prominence in Moynahan's study of Tyndale? Oh right, the fact that it's polemical, anti-catholic, and tends to invent stuff to fit its needs for proselytizing &c. Now, of course, Moynahan does use other sources, but Foxe is the one who seems to be kept constantly in view of the reader.

The hagiography, as mentioned above, annoys me. The book sets up a fairly vicious Thomas More against Tyndale, and celebrates Tyndale with hardly more than the occasional equivocation. Now, was more ruthless in routing out heresy? Sure. And it wasn't a nice time back then, so yeah, heretics got burnt. I don't mean to minimize how we all should rightly be appalled at that fact, but it's history. A more balanced presentation of Thomas More would have helped [throw in some nice details, make him look a little appealing], as would have a more balanced presentation of Tyndale done for him.

um... forgetting that Latin is an inflected language, and that syntax isn't crucial to meaning? Kind of a big thing to forget, and indicative of the lack of full understanding about how languages are used to convey meaning. Yes, the Vulgate was written in a particular style. But that's just one possible translation.

Perhaps a little less waxing rhapsodic about how gorgeous Tyndale's phrasing is? Yes, the man had a way with words. Maybe a little bit of explanation about why, rather than bludgeoning the poor reader with interminable lists of examples of nice turns of phrase. Y'know, maybe some talk about scansion? explaining How latinate cadences--the cursus tardus, the cursus planos, the cursus velox--work to make it sound good, rather than just saying--well, Tyndale studied rhetoric at Oxford, so, man, he knew what he was doing? I dunno, stuff like that? If you're going to talk about language, make a freakin' effort to do it decently!

There are quite a number of decent comments about word choices. I like the discussion (73) about why Tyndale chose "love" instead of "charity" for the greek 'αγαπη from the text for 1 Cor. 13.13, basing his decision on the Old English "lufu" rather than on the Latin "caritas."

The book, on the whole, does not seem overly well organised. Moynahan bounces from one idea to another; the book could use a decent editor's hand in reshaping and reordering most of the material.

Ok, I'm done complaining. The book entertained me, at least. I didn't have too many overpowering urges to throw it down in disgust. Just a general feeling that the book could be a lot better, had the author picked an audience and written to that audience. And maybe been a smidgen more balanced... fortunately, not something a cursory review like this one has to attempt to do.