Anti-writing: writing sans communication

What I am is an essay. — Jasper Neel

 

According to Genesis 11:1-9, God disrupted the Babylonians’ plan to construct a tower reaching the heavens when He garbled the language of the workers that they could not communicate among themselves. Similarly, in writing too the absence of communication alone razes down the whole edifice of writing into debris of inane words.

A writing without effective communication is declared anti-writing. When we don’t have anything meaningful to communicate, our language will be abstract and ornate. Ken Macrorie, the composition specialist, coins the term “Engfish” for such a bloated and pretentious language: “A feel-nothing, saying nothing language, dead like Latin, devoid of the rhythms of contemporary speech.”

Communication in writing is two-pronged: what to say and how to say. When we know what to say, how to say does not remain elusive.

The sentences brimmed with semantic profundity gain more appeal and impact because of consummate syntactic alignment. In The Philosophy of Rhetoric, George Cambell writes that some sentences put the main thought (subject and verb of main clause) at the beginning, others near the end. The difference matters. The former branches out to the right after putting the main thought at the start, while the latter puts the dependent clauses at the start to build up to the independent clause or main thought at the end.

The former suits best for the kinds of public writings that are intended to be quickly digested: the essay, the letter, the moral tale. The latter that puts the gist near the end is harder to digest, but worth the chewing. The latter brings the writer and his craft to prominence. It is used in literary and intellectual genres: philosophy, history, political theory.

Sentences that make a point early seem more natural and conversational. Reading those sentences, the reader is more likely to focus on the content and less on the writer. The most effective communication, however, blends both types of sentences to ward off the ennui of style.

Obviously, to write lucid and meaningful sentences, the clarity of thoughts is a sine qua non. George Orwell states: “The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

A student must be vigilant enough to choose the topic for his essay at competitive exams. When he writes what he believes, he experiences unlimited supply of thoughts on the topic. He will not only draw upon his life experiences but also ride on the flight of his imagination. He will discover new connections between and among his thoughts, leading to moments of serendipity and epiphany.

The sincerity of thought lends originality, clarity, coherence and unity to our writing. Students must not confuse coherence and unity. Coherence requires the seamless movement of thought from sentence to sentence or paragraph to paragraph whereas unity means sentences and paragraphs must be related to the topic. For this, one must resort to the topic every time one embarks on a new thought or paragraph.

Let’s understand it through an analogy: brick-to-brick linear order is called cohesion; vertical alignment of one course of bricks to another brings coherence; while the level of straightness from the first course of bricks to the last one in a wall endows unity to the whole brickwork of the wall. And communication is the plumb line used to judge the straightness of wall.

Coherence is achieved differently in different types of writing. In narration, chronological ordering of thoughts is followed. Supporting sentences tell the events of a story in the order of time they happen. Description attains coherence when spatial ordering describes an object or scene as it appears in space: top to bottom, left to right or front to back, or vice versa. Logical ordering of major supporting sentences and minor supporting sentences bestows coherence to an expository paragraph.

Cohesion exists where sentences are connected with cohesive devices: connectors (conjunctions); transitions (first, however, consequently); definite article; prepositions; personal pronouns. For instance, without cohesion: “I bought a history book yesterday. I needed a history book for my classes.” With cohesion: “I bought a history book yesterday. I needed the history book for my classes.” Cohesion absent: “Mangoes are not available throughout the year. Apples can be bought all year long.” Cohesion comes alive: Unlike mangoes, apples can be bought all year long.

Mostly, the writing guides prescribe the use of simple language to make writing communicate. Simple language doesn’t mean the kindergarten language. Also, it doesn’t imply always using simple words at the expense of the most accurate. It signifies a language that communicates without fail.

Novelty and innovation happen to be the fountainhead of learning a language. The search for a more suitable word or construction keeps the passion alive in the learner who can get bored because of the tedium of language learning. Roy Peter Clark in Murder Your Darlings exhorts to discard the writing saturated with words and phrases that come to mind impulsively and effortlessly, and can stymie linguistic growth.

In Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea, the fisherman Santiago’s religious devotion to the precision of his craft makes it difficult for him to catch ordinary fish, reserving himself instead for the extraordinary, mythic creature whose quality equals Santiago’s purity of art. In fact, Santiago’s struggle with the great fish reflects Hemingway’s own difficulties in writing the story itself. The act of catching the great fish only to lose it in the end may suggest the combination of triumph and failure, that comes with attempts at artistic perfection. Hemingway acknowledges: “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”

The antidote to anti-writing is free-writing: write anything that comes to mind, re-read it and discover your authentic voice — the source of truth telling. Always write more the way we self-talk. Media critic and theorist James Carey in his 1992 book Communication as Culture posits that we define our reality via sharing our experience with others.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2024.

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