The Beauty of the perfect words positioned perfectly

Not many of us have heard of the Pulitzer prize winning writer Kathryn Schulz. As an occasional contributor to New Yorker magazine she is not prolific but that doesn’t diminish her extraordinary talent. To date she is a non fiction writer and one of the very best. I’ll go even farther and say that, to my eye, only the iconic F. Scott Fitzgerald has taken me to equal or greater heights with words and sentences.

There are several ways to distinguish greatness in non fiction writing. There is content: the writer discusses interesting and compelling subject matter, exposes unearthed truth, or challenges commonly held beliefs. Another is the ability to articulate exactly what the writer wants to convey, and maybe even a step beyond. This skill requires that the the writer have almost magical ability at picking the exact, best word to describe the subject matter. It requires that these words be juxtaposed with other words in sentences that sound, when played correctly, like a great melody. It becomes both a celebration of the subject matter and, inadvertently, a celebration of the English language itself. We rarely see the English language the way we once did. Children aren’t taught to value writing like in previous generations. Communication is often done through shortcuts and symbols….speed is valued and details and poetry are as rare as a rotary phone.

Some writers of fiction are minimalists; they use very few words and even fewer “big” words to tell their stories. Ernest Hemingway was famous for being very stingy with adjectives, and even syllables. He liked verbs, simple ones and he used one or two syllable words whenever he could. Consider this passage from one of Hemingways’s most famous short stories, “Big Two Hearted River”:

Nick was happy as he crawled inside the tent. He had not been unhappy all day. This was different though. Now things were done. There had been this to do. Now it was done. It had been a hard trip. He was very tired. That was done. He had made his camp. He was settled. Nothing could touch him. It was a good place to camp. He was there, in the good place. He was in his home where he had made it. Now he was hungry.

By stark contrast his contemporary, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in less simple terms. As a writing style I would consider it to be deeper, more committed to careful articulation; Consider this paragraph from the last page of his classic “The Great Gatsby”:

Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

Fitzgerald might use 20 words to describe a physical place. Hemingway might use 7. Fitzgerald is more Shakespeare and Hemingway is more John Wayne. Fitzgerald spoke to the upper class….Hemingway more to the working class. You can decide for yourself which style you prefer.

Kathryn Schulz wrote an essay critical of Henry David Thoreau for the New Yorker in 2015. Ever since I stumbled across it the following year it has been my gold standard. It was a very compelling essay, challenging, as it did, the entire notion of Thoreau as Nature’s pre-eminent moralist. She was intellectually brilliant making her case in the same way that a Supreme Court Justice would write an opinion for the Court. But, the characteristics that keep bringing me back are the style, the words, the articulate-ness that ran throughout; the sarcasm and humor are equally indispensable.

I can think of no better way to celebrate her artistry than to quote several. Speaking of Henry David Thoreau:

“it is impossible not to feel sorry for the author of “Walden,” who dedicated himself to establishing the bare necessities of life without ever realizing that the necessary is a low, dull bar; whose account of how to live reads less like an existential reckoning than like a poor man’s budget, with its calculations of how much to eat and sleep crowding out questions of why we are here and how we should treat one another.”

“However sham his own retreat was, however pinched and selfish his motives in undertaking it, he understood why the wilderness matters, and he was right that there is something salutary, liberating, and exhilarating about living in it with as little as necessary.”

“Although Thoreau is insufferable when fancying himself a seer, he is wonderful at actually seeing, and the passages he devotes to describing the natural world have an acuity and serenity that nothing else in the book approaches."

“Why, given Thoreau’s hypocrisy, his sanctimony, his dour asceticism, and his scorn, do we continue to cherish “Walden”?

“Granted, it is sometimes difficult to deal with society. Few things will thwart your plans to live deliberately faster than those messy, confounding surprises known as other people. Likewise, few things will thwart your absolute autonomy faster than governance, and not only when the government is unjust; every law is a parameter, a constraint on what we might otherwise do.”

“A nation composed entirely of rugged individualists—so stinting that they had almost no needs, so solitary that those needs never conflicted with those of their compatriots—would not, it is true, need much governance. But such a nation does not exist.”

“His claim that he doesn’t want others to imitate him can’t be taken seriously. For one thing, “Walden” is a guide to doing just that, down to the number of chairs a man should own.”

I can only dream of writing like this; it is, no doubt, rather effortless for Schulz, the way that it was effortless for Pavarotti to sustain the highest notes or for Fred Astaire to float on air.

For the rest of us we are challenged with picking compelling content, and massaging it adequately to instigate thought and digestion in others. That is the best we can hope for….that and an occasional magical sentence that stumbles on all of us who labor long enough.

Years ago a documentary featured the letters of Confederate soldiers written during the Civil War. The letters don’t seem real because their literary acuity, both grammatically and esthetically are often sublime. These were often teenage soldiers during the 1860’s, many from barefoot divisions. They barely had the chance to finish high school in one room school houses.

“Camp near Lanjer, Ark.

Sunday night, Nov. 1 [1863]

My dear Mollie

I rcd a letter today from a very handsome lady to play cupid. Although not accompanied by her likeness yet her image was so indelibly impressed upon my mind that the likeness itself could not recall the features more vividly than they are impressed. I first met her in a village in Western Va when I was about 17 years old and she 13. I afterwards saw her frequently and occasionally was in her company, and notwithstanding the disparity of our ages, I became so favorably impressed with her fair face and gentle manners that I frequently said to myself that I wished she was older or I younger.

In 3 to 4 years she had grown so much that the disparity in age seemed to grow less. Never did a man witness the budding of a flower with more requisite pleasure than did I the budding of that pretty little girl into womanhood.

How did this skill, a compulsory academic requirement at the time, get totally watered down to an illiterate tweet? How did the “writing” part of “reading, and writing, and arithmetic” get left out of the triad? It seems a huge loss; the ability to describe emotions, physical environments, and opinions in a way that can inspire, uplift, and inform seems like one of civilized society’s most necessary skills.

The following is an excerpt of a letter written by a U.S. President 155 years ago. It’s nothing short of a shock to see how much we, as a nation, have devolved in both verbal and written communication.

Executive Mansion,

Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.

Dear Madam,--

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln

Food for thought....