The last defense

By Randy Koch

I can tell when novice writers aren’t interested in revising, and I cringe when they try to justify the use of some obviously inappropriate diction or convoluted sentence structure by saying, "But that’s my style." They use the word "style" like someone invoking the First Amendment, as if I’m the Gestapo wielding a pen like a blackjack, trying to scare or bully them into saying something other than what they said, taking away their God-given right to express themselves. That defense suggests I’m the kind of guy who opposes blue hair and tattoos, who writes the dress code for Catholic schools, who wants to destroy anything that makes people individuals. Hell, I might even be a Communist. Besides, they probably think as they look at my hair and clothes, how could this guy know anything about style?
The defense is effective primarily because the idea of "style" is so nebulous. "It is," according to poet Wallace Stevens, "something that permeates. It is of the nature of that in which it is found, whether the poem, the manner of a god, the bearing of a man." A definition like this works like an insanity plea because it sounds plausible but is so abstract that it doesn’t help determine if the accused is actually an astonishingly original stylist whose methods are beyond your understanding or a bad writer hiding behind a convenient excuse. More often than not, however, he or she is the latter, and the use of the defense, "That’s my style," comes from a normal fear of change or the reluctance to revise or a misunderstanding of what writing really is.
Style is not an excuse for an aberration in one or two sentences nor is it justification for grammatical, logical, or tonal irregularities that can’t be explained any other way. Style is the quality of voice that runs through a writer’s work and which we recognize both in what the writer says and in how he or she says it. It’s the difference we feel -- even if we don’t understand its source -- in the work of various writers. Take, for example, Raymond Carver, a 20th-century short-story writer, and Henry James, a late 19th-century novelist. Here, first, is an excerpt from one of Carver’s short stories, "Why Don’t You Dance?":

In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard. The mattress was stripped and the candy-striped sheets lay beside two pillows on the chiffonier. Except for that, things looked much the way they had in the bedroom -- nightstand and reading lamp on his side of the bed, nightstand and reading lamp on her side.
His side, her side.
He considered this as he sipped the whiskey.
The chiffonier stood a few feet from the foot of the bed. He had emptied the drawers into cartons that morning, and the cartons were in the living room. A portable heater was next to the chiffonier. A rattan chair with a decorator pillow stood at the foot of the bed. The buffed aluminum kitchen set took up a part of the driveway. A yellow muslin cloth, much too large, covered the table and hung down over the sides.

And here’s the beginning of Chapter 24 from James’s The Portrait of a Lady:

It would certainly have been hard to see what injury could arise to her from the visit she presently paid to Mr. Osmond’s hilltop. Nothing could have been more charming than this occasion -- a soft afternoon in May, in the full maturity of the Italian spring. The two ladies drove out of the Roman Gate, beneath the enormous blank superstructure which crowns the fine clear arch of that portal and makes it nakedly impressive, and wound between high-walled lanes, into which the wealth of blossoming orchards over-drooped and flung a perfume, until they reached the small superurban piazza, of crooked shape, of which the long brown wall of the villa occupied in part by Mr. Osmond formed the principal, or at least the most imposing side. Isabel went with her friend through a wide, high court, where a clear shadow rested below, and a pair of light-arched galleries, facing each other above, caught the upper sunshine upon their slim columns and the flowering plants in which they were dressed.

Anyone can hear the difference in the two writers’ voices, Carver’s much like that of a middle class, blue-collar worker with a high school education, and James’s that of a long-winded, well-educated socialite. This difference results from conscious decisions made by both writers as they weighed the appropriateness of their diction and syntax for the characters and circumstances about which they were writing. Carver’s story is about a man whose marriage has fallen apart and who intends to sell their household furniture from the front yard and driveway; the stripped-down nature of the man’s life is reflected in Carver’s spare prose. In contrast, James’s novel focuses on a wealthy American woman, Isabel Archer, who comes to Europe and turns down two offers of marriage before eventually wedding the dilettante Gilbert Osmond; the wealth and extravagance of the characters and setting are reflected in James’s considerably more ornate prose. Clearly there is a logical and artistic connection between the writers’ styles and their subjects. While readers can almost certainly hear that the two writers’ voices are distinctly different and might even understand -- based on the authors’ backgrounds or subject matter -- why they’re different, understanding how that difference is created is much more difficult. However, one way of identifying and discussing style is by analyzing the writing. Here, then, is a breakdown of some of the most recognizable similarities and differences in the two passages:

Some basic measures of style Carver James
# of words in excerpt 153 169
# of sentences in excerpt 11 4
Average # of words / sentence 13.91 42.25
# of words in longest sentence 30 80
# of words in shortest sentence 4 22
# of one-syllable words 116 122
% of one-syllable words 75.8 72.2
# of two-syllable words 29 27
% of two-syllable words 18.9 15.98
# of words with 3 or more syll. 8 20
% of words with 3 or more syll. 5.23 11.8
Total # of adjectives 17 28
% of adjectives 11.1 16.57
Total # of adverbs 3 5
% of adverbs 1.96 2.96
Total modifiers 20 33
% of modifiers 13.07 19.5

These two excerpts of approximately equal length have a couple of similarities: both make almost equal use of one- and two-syllable words, something that surprised me since Carver’s language struck me as simpler, more common, and more direct than James’s, which it is but not because Carver uses simple language more often. Rather, it results from James’s more frequent use of words with three or more syllables, proportionately over twice as many as Carver. James also is more inclined to use long sentences; his on average are three times longer than Carver’s and his longest sentence -- a breath-taking 80 words -- contains more than two times more words than Carver’s longest. I’ve also always considered the work of Henry James flowery and ornate, a quality that seems especially apparent when compared to Carver’s. And this analysis identifies at least one source of that impression -- the use of modifiers. Carver uses 33 percent fewer adjectives than James and nearly 40 percent fewer total modifiers. In descriptions of place James relies more heavily on adjectives to create the picture, whereas Carver lets the precise nouns do more of the work. Even when Carver uses adjectives, they often identify types, which are factual labels -- a type of chair ("rattan"), a type of heater ("portable"), a type of room ("living"), a type of set ("kitchen"), etc. James, on the other hand, is more likely to use adjectives that identify qualities, which are labels based on opinion -- "a soft afternoon," "the full maturity," "the enormous blank superstructure," "the fine clear arch," etc. This difference in the type of adjectives used by each writer also contributes to the impression that James is subjective and the world he affectionately describes is, according to him, luxurious and elegant, whereas Carver is objective and the world he portrays from an emotional distance is spare and plain. Notice again that the way that good writers write is a reflection of their subject and their attitude toward it.
Style is the pattern of voice that we nurture and the regular use of techniques sometimes selected consciously and at other times arising from within us as the voices of our reading, listening, and speaking pasts converge on the page. While it may be impossible to explain why Carver started writing in a stripped-down style, it’s obvious he chose to continue to use simple language, short sentences, and minimal modification as he did in this excerpt. Read his work, and you’ll discover that stylistically he does much the same thing in all of the short fiction he wrote over a career that spanned nearly 30 years, from 1960, when he published his first story, until his death in 1988. Granted, most writers’ styles fall somewhere between the minimalism of Carver and the extravagance of James, and consequently the differences may not be as evident as they are when comparing these two writers, but close reading and careful analysis of other writers whose work you admire are the best ways to recognize and understand style.
I agree with Wallace Stevens that style "is something that permeates," though I’m suspicious of his claim that "it is of the nature of that in which it is found." "Nature" implies that it’s something we’re born with, and "found" suggests it’s discovered, not developed. However, style, while occurring as a natural outgrowth of the experiences that affected our voice, results primarily from nurturing and through hard work, the way endurance develops in a runner -- not so much by thinking about it but by taking one step at a time, over and over again, and taking each one as well as you can.

(Randy Koch teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Texas A&M International University.)

Local Writers at Work

After the South Texas Writing Project Fall Conference on Saturday, Oct. 26, Austin poet and musician José Flores Peregrino joined a group of writers from Laredo, McAllen, San Antonio, and Fort Worth at Carlos and Dora Flores’ home for an evening of food, conversation, and poetry. Among the writers who read from their work were Carol Brochin, Lucinda Farrokh, Carlos Flores, Dora Flores, Olga Valle Herr, jesse g. herrera, Toni Howell, Lee Howell, and Raquel Valle Sentíes.