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“The diff erence

between the

right word and

the almost-

right word is

the diff erence

between the

lightning and

the lightning

bug.”

— Mark Twain

ABOVE THE FOLDA NEWSLETTER ON WRITING AND EDITINGStar Tribune

Minneapolis, Minn.March/April 2006

Vol. 6, No. 2

2Mark Twain takes James Fenimore Coo-per to task for not eschewing surplusage, and other sins.

6Recommended reading: Belinda Rath-bone kept a journal during her 10 years married to a Scottish laird. It’s good to come across a memoir we can believe.

Writing tips fromMark TwainWhen I was a high school know-it-all —junior editor of the literary magazine, writer of poetry for the yearbook (please God), and all-around snoot — I thought that Mark Twain’s essay about the bad writing of James Fenimore Cooper was just about the funniest thing I had ever read. It was like a big inside joke between Twain and me — yes, yes, what was Cooper thinking, doesn’t he know how bad he is? You tell it, Mark. (Ask me if I’d actually read any Cooper at that point.)

I’m much older now, less obnoxious and less sarcastic (ask any Strib manager), and not quite so much of a know-it-all. Twain’s essay now strikes me as mean-spirited and willfully ignorant of the di≠ erence in style of the 1840s, when Cooper wrote, and the turn of the century, when Twain wrote. It’s still awfully funny, though. And, more important, his advice remains sound. Mean or not, the guy had a point. Eighteen of them, actually.

Turn inside.

Mark Twain’s essay is too long to reprint here, but it’s in the public domain and readily available on the Web. If you want to read the whole thing and gu≠aw like a high school junior, go here: http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html

Here are Twain’s 18 points for strong writing from that essay. (Number Seven contains an o≠ensive phrase and I have edited it.) These points apply as much to what journalists do as to what Cooper or any writer of fiction does; good writing is good writing. The occasional parenthetical notes at the end are mine.

Twain writes:

Fenimore Cooper’s literary offenses

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Cooper’s art has some defects. In one place in “Deerslayer,” and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 o≠enses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in domain of romantic fiction — some say twenty-two. In “Deerslayer,” Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:

1That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the “Deerslayer” tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in air. (In other words, your story must have a point.)

2They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the “Deerslayer” tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop. (Your story must have a logical framework, and the actions should move it forward.)

3They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

4 They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a su∞cient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the “Deerslayer” tale.

5They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the “Deerslayer” tale to the end of it. (In other words: use

The reader

shall be able to tell the

corpses from

the others.

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strong quotes, ditch the bad quotes.)

6They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the “Deerslayer” tale, as Natty Bumppo’s case will amply prove.

7They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s O≠ering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like somebody else in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the “Deerslayer” tale.

8They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as “the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest,” by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the “Deerslayer” tale. (This is in reference to a quote elsewhere in the essay. Don’t worry if it doesn’t make complete sense to you.)

9They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the “Deerslayer” tale. (No deus ex machina; no convenient plot twists.)

10They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he

shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the “Deerslayer” tale dislikes the good people in it, is indi≠erent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the “Deerslayer” tale, this rule is vacated.

The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the person- ages of his tale.

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In addition to these large rules, there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:

12 Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.13 Use the right word, not its second cousin.14 Eschew surplusage.15 Not omit necessary details.16 Avoid slovenliness of form.17 Use good grammar.18 Employ a simple and straightforward style.Laurie Hertzel writes: In my estimation, those last seven rules are the best. They’re more valuable than Twain’s first 11, with all their humor and potshots, combined. Say what you mean, don’t just come close. Use the right word. Don’t be wordy. Use good grammar. Be clear. All as true today as they were in 1895.

Say what you mean,

don’t just come close.

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RECOMMENDED READING

Marrying the man...and the house“The Guynd: A Scottish Journal,” by Belinda Rathbone. (Quantuck Lane Press, 289 pages, $23.95.)

In 1990, American writer Belinda Rathbone fell in love with John Ouchterlony, a Scottish laird, and went to live with him in his manor house in Scotland. It sounds terribly romantic, but she knew better. “I knew when I married the man that I married the mansion,” she wrote.

Lairds are landowners. It is their responsibility to maintain the house and lands and to look out for the tenants who live there. “In Scotland, a man of John’s class is himself less important than his name, his ancestral home, and his estate,” Rathbone explains. “He is merely a link in the long family line stretching before and after him, and his duty is clear: to keep it up.”

Life in the Scottish countryside was utterly di≠ erent from Rathbone’s life in New York City. She could easily have been overwhelmed, had she not been so strong-minded and resourceful. The Guynd was in a remote corner of Scotland, so far north that the winter days brought only a couple of hours of sunlight and the big stone house was always cold and damp.

Her fi rst impression was not encouraging: an immense, crumbling house, and room after room of junk. Nearly every stick of furniture, every piece of clothing, every doorknob or toaster or fl owerpot or pair of Wellingtons that had ever come into the Guynd was still there. John’s late mother’s makeup and clothes, diaries, receipts, pieces

of string, draperies, 64 broken chairs (Rathbone counted), teetering stacks of egg cartons, a whole array of broken toasters, an envelope full of pieces of picture frames (if only she knew which piece went with which frame, she wrote).

She set her mind to cleaning out the house and repairing the crumbling plaster, repainting the cracked, chipped rooms, peeling up the WWII-era linoleum and restoring the great stone fl oors underneath — but time after time, John got in her way. “This could be useful,” he’d say, confi scating the ripped stockings, or stack of ancient suitcases, or hideous

brown linoleum that she was trying to throw away. “Lots of life left in this.”

And just when you start getting exasperated with him, Rathbone steps back and puts things in perspective. Scots, she writes, often are hoarders for reasons that date back hundreds of years to when the English drove them from their land. Everything was taken from them — their homes, their belongings, their traditions — and they had to live by their wits and ingenuity. In that context,

John’s hoarding makes perfect sense. It’s something she knew she needed to work with, not fi ght against. (And indeed, as the book goes on she fi nds that those egg cartons do come in handy, and those Wellingtons, and those drapes.)

It’s great to read a memoir that is so utterly believable. Rathbone maintains a measured, intelligent tone as she tells an interesting story. It’s a quiet book. No histrionics, no wild drug abuse, no extended, dubious stays in prison … just life in the Scottish countryside, well-documented. And that’s enough.

Laurie HertzelSta≠ writer

An immense, crumbl- ing house, and room after room of junk.

ABOVE THE FOLD is a monthly newsletter produced for the employees of the Star Tribune. Unless otherwise indicated, its contents are the work of Laurie Hertzel, projects editor and writing coach. Copy editors: Jim Foti and Nancy Lo. Designer: Chris Clonts

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