Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose (Second Edition) [Paperback]

Francis-Noël Thomas (Author), Mark Turner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2011 | ISBN-10: 0691147434 | ISBN-13: 978-0691147437 | Edition: 2

For more than a decade, Clear and Simple as the Truth has guided readers to consider style not as an elegant accessory of effective prose but as its very heart. Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner present writing as an intellectual activity, not a passive application of verbal skills. In classic style, the motive is truth, the purpose is presentation, the reader and writer are intellectual equals, and the occasion is informal. This general style of presentation is at home everywhere, from business memos to personal letters and from magazine articles to student essays. Everyone talks about style, but no one explains it. The authors of this book do; and in doing so, they provoke the reader to consider style, not as an elegant accessory of effective prose, but as its very heart.

At a time when writing skills have virtually disappeared, what can be done? If only people learned the principles of verbal correctness, the essential rules, wouldn't good prose simply fall into place? Thomas and Turner say no. Attending to rules of grammar, sense, and sentence structure will no more lead to effective prose than knowing the mechanics of a golf swing will lead to a hole-in-one. Furthermore, ten-step programs to better writing exacerbate the problem by failing to recognize, as Thomas and Turner point out, that there are many styles with different standards.

The book is divided into four parts. The first, "Principles of Classic Style," defines the style and contrasts it with a number of others. "The Museum" is a guided tour through examples of writing, both exquisite and execrable. "The Studio," new to this edition, presents a series of structured exercises. Finally, "Further Readings in Classic Prose" offers a list of additional examples drawn from a range of times, places, and subjects. A companion website, classicprose.com, offers supplementary examples, exhibits, and commentary, and features a selection of pieces written by students in courses that used Clear and Simple as the Truth as a textbook.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[I]n the hands of a good instructor and students who have a solid foundation in writing, the book could be quite empowering. (Choice )

[T]his book has value for the technical communicator who has an interest in style, and teachers who teach style in their classes. Thomas and Turner are right about the current crop of books that essentially ignore this way of writing, and their discussion of styles can be valuable to a fuller understanding of the relationship between thought and dress. (Tom Warren Technical Communication )

Praise for the first edition: "Whether they can spark a revival in classic writing is uncertain, but Thomas and Turner serve their topic well. A good choice for the serious stylist and those learning the craft. (Library Journal )

Praise for the first edition: "Thomas and Turner engagingly delineate the attributes of a classic style of writing. . . . In the second half, Thomas and Turner cite examples of classic style in excerpts from the writing of well-known literary figures. (Booklist )

Praise for the first edition: "Every once in a while a book comes along with the power to alter permanently the view of a subject you thought you knew well. For me this year, that book is Clear and Simple as the Truth. (Denis Dutton Philosophy and Literature )

Praise for the first edition: "[For] the mature student, this is indeed a classic. For the connoisseur, it is indispensable. (Thomas D'Evelyn Boston Book Review )

Praise for the first edition: "An acclaimed new reference manual. (The Chicago Sun Times )

From the Back Cover

Praise for the first edition: "[Clear and Simple as the Truth] has changed the way that I write and think about writing."--Paul Bloom, Yale University

Praise for the first edition: "Far and away the best how-to-write book I've ever read. It puts Strunk and White and everyone else in the shade."--John E. Talbott, University of California, Santa Barbara

Praise for the first edition: "Thanks to Thomas and Turner, the cognitive revolution has finally caught up with the analysis of style--brilliantly, learnedly, and, above all, readably."--David Lee Rubin, University of Virginia

Praise for the first edition: "Clear and Simple as the Truth holds the promise of raising the level of the nation's prose.... The book is full of cogency and insight."--Frederick Crews

Praise for the first edition: "A work of great intellectual elegance and power. I have read it with a lot of pleasure, admiring the wisdom and economy of its reflections and the extraordinary range of its citations."--Claude Rawson, Yale University

Praise for the first edition: "A treatment of the classic style that manifests the virtues of the writing it propounds, expounds, and exemplifies in a wealth of fascinating passages, brilliantly analyzed."--M. H. Abrams, Cornell University

Praise for the first edition: "Could well be the most important discussion of style since the great classical rhetoricians."--Wayne C. Booth, University of Chicago

Praise for the first edition: "One of the best discussions of style that I have recently read."--Richard Preston, author of The Hot Zone

Praise for the first edition: "The authors give one of the best discussions of style that I have ever read. Thomas and Turner juxtapose conventionally thought of as disparate, and thereby suggest possible new avenues of interpretation for critics of individual authors. Clear and Simple as the Truth occupies a niche of its own, as a kind of hybrid between books on writing such as The Elements of Style and The Reader over Your Shoulder, and more theoretical studies of representation, such as Mimesis."--Richard Preston, author of American Steel

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press; 2 edition (February 28, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691147434
• ISBN-13: 978-0691147437
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.9 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #469,496 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Updating a Classic May 20, 2011

By Jonathan Mayhew

Format:Paperback

This is an updated edition of the brilliant "classic" by Turner and Thomas on the classic style, including new material not included in the original volume. The authors have composed their work in the classic style that they describe, a way of positing relations between the writer, the reader, and the truth. They do not explicitly state that the classic style is the only possible way to write well, but they do helpfully distinguish between this and other modes of prose. Reading this book has improved my writing (even though I already considered myself a good writer) by allowing me to clarify my own desired stance toward the reader. It is not a traditional handbook or manual or style, so those who approach it in that spirit might be disappointed. What they find, though, will ultimately be even more valuable than such a manual.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stylistically the Best January 12, 2012

By Joseph Frantz

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Clear and Simple as the Truth has influenced me more than has any other book on any subject. I checked it out of the library after reading a positive review by Denis Dutton. The first sentence was so striking, I can still quote it from memory: "The teaching of writing in America is almost entirely controlled by the view that teaching writing is teaching verbal skills, from the placing of commas to the ordering of paragraphs." I had experienced this sort of teaching firsthand, and so it was just as if I was in the model scene, with the authors pointing me toward a fact that I could instantly recognize as true.

At the time, I had just declared my English major at the University of Washington and was taking a course on introductory writing in the humanities, as we were required to. We learned how to use commas, colons, and semi-colons, and we learned more abstract things, like what it is that we call "close reading." But there was nothing even close to what these authors describe in the first dozen or so pages of Clear and Simple. No discussion of writing, at an abstract level, was performed at all. It sufficed, in their minds, that I knew what a caesura was, not to mention the pathetic fallacy, ekphrasis, and a host of other terms that help you sound like an English professor.

Their way of approaching style--by thinking about its conceptual stands--is not like anything else I have seen. I found the section about styles other than classic style--reflexive, plain, etc--to be perhaps the most eye-opening section. My literary interest lies almost solely in poetry--I read very few works of prose--and so I began thinking about how I could figure out what the conceptual stands were of the poets I read. Does Mark Strand's "Man and Camel" represent truth as knowable? Does language mirror thought in Stevens' "The Man with the Blue Guitar"? These are not questions I have an easy time answering, and I usually succeed only in confusing myself. But I find the questions interesting to ponder nonetheless, and the occasional conclusion reached can be quite gratifying.

If you pay attention to what the authors are saying, your prose style will dramatically improve. Your writing will seem less muddled, less defensive, and more focused than it did before. And the same ideas that help you write better will also help you understand the texts you read at a greater depth.