Every time I come across that William Zinsser line about how you can cut 50% of the words in a draft and not lose any meaning, I imagine him reading a draft of Swann’s Way and having a vein in his forehead burst. Imagine being unable to appreciate one of man’s greatest artistic achievements because of a silly aesthetic ideology.
But of course, people like this are not unable to appreciate Proust. Theirs is not a rule that’s intended to apply to the Prousts or Faulkners of the world. It’s a rule for MFA programs, where pretentious wannabe writers submit boring, uninspired drafts of stories no one cares about. I don’t like being the type of person to tell others not to write, but if anything, Zinsser probably underestimates how much could be cut from these drafts by a factor of two.
Somebody needs to tell these talentless wannabe writers (MFA hopefuls) that their time could more profitably be invested elsewhere. Like buying a paint-by-numbers kit and cosplaying as painters. Paris could cordone off an entire section of the Left Bank for these fools and their professors. I mean, history reenactors do it. Why not the arts?
You are echoing thoughts I have had for a long time. Regarding my own work in The Wild Sonnets: What's the point of being a poet if you are just going to sound like everyone else?
This is shocking, but doesn’t surprise me - and probably why I read practically no modern writers. I’d never thought about it in such technical terms but I had noticed that so many contemporary writers are basically just writing lists of events. Personally, I have no problem with long sentences and use the semi-colon to the point of perversity. But then I learnt my trade from reading books not creative writing classes.
Stylistic conformity is a bane of literary fiction today. But even more so is the conformity of sensibility. I am bored by literary fiction because I am not interested in the emotional navel-gazing of MFA graduates or in the goings-on in academic lounges where I spend a lot of time anyway. The most interesting stylistic and narrative experimentation today is happening in genre fiction where writers need to engage their audience regardless of what the MFA Machine says. Horror and science fiction are where new styles are being tested.
One thing that's also important to note is the quality of literature being curated and selected for K-12 students. I've been managing elementary schools for years, but when I switched to managing high school programs and principals, I was appalled by the text selection. In fact, one afternoon, I went through the curricula and the course descriptions and learned that most of the literature was written after the 70s and most of it was simplistic. There was even a really bad poem by a rapper.
In some ways, the text selection in K-12 really does create the taste of a generation. In my opinion, it's done nothing but force writers to dumb down their prose so that a market can digest it.
I write lots of satirical pieces for a humor magazine, for which I have developed several alter egos. They all use complicated, often choked prose, but complicated in different ways and choked by different obsessions. You don't get that with the gleaming chrome and well-lit antiseptic prose of the contemporary MFA drudges.
Thanks for writing this - you've identified something I've been finding annoying for a while but couldn't put my finger on!
One publisher I wrote fiction for banned semi-colons as a house style, and I found it frustrating having to interrupt my flow in order to sort it out. They mostly wanted the sentence tweaked and chopped where the semi-colon fell, but I sometimes uses dashes where I would've put the semi-colon. I thought the lack of them made the prose look bland and not very sophisticated. We were also told - no adverbs! And I noticed the pseudo-Hemingways avoiding them too.
I'm writing fiction in a very commercial genre and they want semi-colons and adverbs, because they help to ramp up the emotion and irresistibly keep the reader in the world of the book. Thank goodness! But I find it sad that there's a high v low culture thing going on here, where subclauses and adverbs are apparently low culture. Is emotion really so offensive to the intellect?
“…where subclauses and adverbs are apparently low culture.”
I think of “Married with Children” as low culture. A lot of 60s and 70s budget/exploitation films, porn?!! But subclauses and adverbs? That’s really, weird!
Chester Himes was so low culture they made cheap Blaxploitation flicks from his novels!
I don’t think Hemingway is to blame so much as social media and shortened attention spans. I think people are writing for digital audiences, who struggle to pay attention to the likes of Henry James. And/or modern writers raised on smartphones have shortened attention spans themselves and therefore struggle to write complex paragraphs.
Great piece — I wonder if Hemingway rolls over in his grave every time a writer is forced to use the Hemingway App to get their prose down to a 6th grade level (something I've had to do for freelance articles)
When I was writing for various pubs on Medium, some editors would refuse to review a piece unless it was run through the Hemingway app before submission, like a gutted fish. At least Hemingway's own work had characterization, setting, and plot, but so much MFA writing is simply "this happened, then this happened, then this happened, the end." In other words, fish guts but no meat. WTF, young readers can't focus long enough to get through a compound sentence, so does it really matter?
I hope profs in MFA programs read this. How can I share to a lot? Reading used to be so much more fun. I wish I didn't agree with the sameness but this is so resonant. Great post.
These examples of recent literary fiction feel empty and clipped. A format to prevent messy thoughts and feelings from leaking out all over the page, a manifesto that declares that literature is no place for catharsis. If these examples faithfully express a writer’s vision, the voice of a character whose caged sensibility will be unfolded psychologically by the unfolding story, fine, so be it. We desperately need more self-examination. But I suspect that the writers reflect the soulless types who mouth slogans, types who populate our cultural horizons these days. For me, literature succeeds mainly because it is enchanting: it transports the reader into a deeper sensibility, a new awareness. A writer finds the voice they need to express their passion to write, welcoming in their ideal reader with open arms.
You can see the same sort of conformity in the Pushcart Prize of best short stories. It's important to read foreign writers who aren't so subject to American literary influences. Like the Han Kang short story, "Heavy Snow" that may be written in short sentences but long paragraphs that suggest heavy snow. It's difficult to know because Han writes in Korean. But the styling of the story is so delicate and yet so strong like steel. She's probably much closer to Faulkner than Hemingway but her voice is very distinct and compelling.
Every time I come across that William Zinsser line about how you can cut 50% of the words in a draft and not lose any meaning, I imagine him reading a draft of Swann’s Way and having a vein in his forehead burst. Imagine being unable to appreciate one of man’s greatest artistic achievements because of a silly aesthetic ideology.
But of course, people like this are not unable to appreciate Proust. Theirs is not a rule that’s intended to apply to the Prousts or Faulkners of the world. It’s a rule for MFA programs, where pretentious wannabe writers submit boring, uninspired drafts of stories no one cares about. I don’t like being the type of person to tell others not to write, but if anything, Zinsser probably underestimates how much could be cut from these drafts by a factor of two.
Somebody needs to tell these talentless wannabe writers (MFA hopefuls) that their time could more profitably be invested elsewhere. Like buying a paint-by-numbers kit and cosplaying as painters. Paris could cordone off an entire section of the Left Bank for these fools and their professors. I mean, history reenactors do it. Why not the arts?
You are echoing thoughts I have had for a long time. Regarding my own work in The Wild Sonnets: What's the point of being a poet if you are just going to sound like everyone else?
Salman Rushdie is one of my favorite crafters of long sentences. His word choice and unexpected flourishes often leave me laughing with delight.
This is shocking, but doesn’t surprise me - and probably why I read practically no modern writers. I’d never thought about it in such technical terms but I had noticed that so many contemporary writers are basically just writing lists of events. Personally, I have no problem with long sentences and use the semi-colon to the point of perversity. But then I learnt my trade from reading books not creative writing classes.
Keep calling ‘em, Liza!
Stylistic conformity is a bane of literary fiction today. But even more so is the conformity of sensibility. I am bored by literary fiction because I am not interested in the emotional navel-gazing of MFA graduates or in the goings-on in academic lounges where I spend a lot of time anyway. The most interesting stylistic and narrative experimentation today is happening in genre fiction where writers need to engage their audience regardless of what the MFA Machine says. Horror and science fiction are where new styles are being tested.
One thing that's also important to note is the quality of literature being curated and selected for K-12 students. I've been managing elementary schools for years, but when I switched to managing high school programs and principals, I was appalled by the text selection. In fact, one afternoon, I went through the curricula and the course descriptions and learned that most of the literature was written after the 70s and most of it was simplistic. There was even a really bad poem by a rapper.
In some ways, the text selection in K-12 really does create the taste of a generation. In my opinion, it's done nothing but force writers to dumb down their prose so that a market can digest it.
“We do not think in clear, linear sentences, nor should we write in this way.” Yes, exactly!
I write lots of satirical pieces for a humor magazine, for which I have developed several alter egos. They all use complicated, often choked prose, but complicated in different ways and choked by different obsessions. You don't get that with the gleaming chrome and well-lit antiseptic prose of the contemporary MFA drudges.
Maybe good for newspaper writing. It’s not literature.
Thanks for writing this - you've identified something I've been finding annoying for a while but couldn't put my finger on!
One publisher I wrote fiction for banned semi-colons as a house style, and I found it frustrating having to interrupt my flow in order to sort it out. They mostly wanted the sentence tweaked and chopped where the semi-colon fell, but I sometimes uses dashes where I would've put the semi-colon. I thought the lack of them made the prose look bland and not very sophisticated. We were also told - no adverbs! And I noticed the pseudo-Hemingways avoiding them too.
I'm writing fiction in a very commercial genre and they want semi-colons and adverbs, because they help to ramp up the emotion and irresistibly keep the reader in the world of the book. Thank goodness! But I find it sad that there's a high v low culture thing going on here, where subclauses and adverbs are apparently low culture. Is emotion really so offensive to the intellect?
*I'm writing fiction for another publisher now in a very....
(Sorry, just to be clear!)
“…where subclauses and adverbs are apparently low culture.”
I think of “Married with Children” as low culture. A lot of 60s and 70s budget/exploitation films, porn?!! But subclauses and adverbs? That’s really, weird!
Chester Himes was so low culture they made cheap Blaxploitation flicks from his novels!
I don’t think Hemingway is to blame so much as social media and shortened attention spans. I think people are writing for digital audiences, who struggle to pay attention to the likes of Henry James. And/or modern writers raised on smartphones have shortened attention spans themselves and therefore struggle to write complex paragraphs.
Fair points!!
Great piece — I wonder if Hemingway rolls over in his grave every time a writer is forced to use the Hemingway App to get their prose down to a 6th grade level (something I've had to do for freelance articles)
There’s a Hemingway app? Will the madness never end!!??
When I was writing for various pubs on Medium, some editors would refuse to review a piece unless it was run through the Hemingway app before submission, like a gutted fish. At least Hemingway's own work had characterization, setting, and plot, but so much MFA writing is simply "this happened, then this happened, then this happened, the end." In other words, fish guts but no meat. WTF, young readers can't focus long enough to get through a compound sentence, so does it really matter?
I hope profs in MFA programs read this. How can I share to a lot? Reading used to be so much more fun. I wish I didn't agree with the sameness but this is so resonant. Great post.
Don't forget about Raymond Carver/Gordon Lish! Both were heavily influential on incorporating the minimalist style into the modern MFA.
These examples of recent literary fiction feel empty and clipped. A format to prevent messy thoughts and feelings from leaking out all over the page, a manifesto that declares that literature is no place for catharsis. If these examples faithfully express a writer’s vision, the voice of a character whose caged sensibility will be unfolded psychologically by the unfolding story, fine, so be it. We desperately need more self-examination. But I suspect that the writers reflect the soulless types who mouth slogans, types who populate our cultural horizons these days. For me, literature succeeds mainly because it is enchanting: it transports the reader into a deeper sensibility, a new awareness. A writer finds the voice they need to express their passion to write, welcoming in their ideal reader with open arms.
You can see the same sort of conformity in the Pushcart Prize of best short stories. It's important to read foreign writers who aren't so subject to American literary influences. Like the Han Kang short story, "Heavy Snow" that may be written in short sentences but long paragraphs that suggest heavy snow. It's difficult to know because Han writes in Korean. But the styling of the story is so delicate and yet so strong like steel. She's probably much closer to Faulkner than Hemingway but her voice is very distinct and compelling.