The Sound on the Page by Ben Yagoda

Author:Ben Yagoda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

DAVE BARRY: There is a lot of what I call “God writing” in the newspaper. We’re taught to sound authoritative and impartial and professional, and often to sound boring. I always wanted my column to look more like it was a total mistake that I had gotten hold of the word processor.

ANDREI CODRESCU: Somebody said to me one time, “I always get the impression when I read one of your stories that there is another story behind it.” Well, sometimes that’s literally true because I will write part of a story but won’t write the rest of it. But sometimes there’s a feeling that there’s something else. I think that’s true to an extent for all writers, because the language really does know more than you do. There is a sense that you write outside the words, that there is this other thing that now and then you come close to.

Today there is a required seriousness or gravitas in writing—it feels immediately threatened by humor and lushness and breaking up the rule of directness. It’s certainly evident in writing programs—the old “write what you know, be direct, don’t use adjectives.” I go very much against the whole thing. In fact, I think the more games and the more bafflement and joy, the better. Lucian Blaga, who was my favorite poet when I was growing up, said, “I’ve always felt that my duty when faced with a mystery was not to explain it but to increase its mysteriousness.”

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