Leonardo Da Vinci once said “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” and nowhere does this hold more true than in writing. The best written works aren’t those that are the longest or use the biggest words– writing a work that is concise, lucid and fluent requires much more skill and dedication, and achieving that balance is something that I’ve struggled with in my writing. The following is a brilliant essay by English author and journalist George Orwell, expanding on the mantra “Keep it simple, stupid!“. While the essay is targeted to political writing, the principles laid out are important for any writer (to have hammered in his/her brain).

Politics and the English Language

George Orwell (1946)

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible.

Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step towards political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.
Continue Reading »

The past few days Montréal’s temperature has averaged a cool -20°C, otherwise known as nostril-hair freezing cold. This kind of cold is not really a great motivator for hanging out outside. So I’ve been occupying myself with the news (a mix of alarming and horrifying), drinking tea and re-reading some Vonnegut. I find myself coming back to these books year after year, and every time finding them more powerful, more truthful… and myself crying like a baby. This is from Timequake, his answer to… why bother?

“Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.‘”

ps. This blog has a new look and a new name!
pps. How awesome is that door garden gnome? I want one.

This story is just precious.

How it Happened
Isaac Asimov

My brother began to dictate in his best oratorical style, the one which has the tribes hanging on his words.

“In the beginning,” he said, “exactly fifteen point two billion years ago, there was a big bang and the Universe–”

But I had stopped writing. “Fifteen billion years ago?” I said incredulously.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I’m inspired.”

“I don’t question your inspiration,” I said. (I had better not. He’s three years younger than I am, but I don’t try questioning his inspiration. Neither does anyone else or there’s hell to pay.) “But are you going to tell the story of the Creation over a period of fifteen billion years?”

“I have to,” said my brother. “That’s how long it took. I have it all in here,” he tapped his forehead, “and it’s on the very highest authority.”

By now I had put down my stylus. “Do you know the price of papyrus?” I said.

“What?” (He may be inspired but I frequently noticed that the inspiration didn’t include such sordid matters as the price of papyrus.)

I said, “Suppose you describe one million years of events to each roll of papyrus. That means you’ll have to fill fifteen thousand rolls. You’ll have to talk long enough to fill them and you know that you begin to stammer after a while. I’ll have to write enough to fill them and my fingers will fall off. And even if we can afford all that papyrus and you have the voice and I have the strength, who’s going to copy it? We’ve got to have a guarantee of a hundred copies before we can publish and without that where will we get royalties from?”

My brother thought awhile. He said, “You think I ought to cut it down?”

“Way down,” I said, “if you expect to reach the public.”

“How about a hundred years?” he said.

“How about six days?” I said.

He said horrified, “You can’t squeeze Creation into six days.”

I said, “This is all the papyrus I have. What do you think?”

“Oh, well,” he said, and began to dictate again, “In the beginning– Does it have to be six days, Aaron?”

I said, firmly, “Six days, Moses.”

-Source

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

- Kurt Vonnegut

Oh my god… one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century… Kurt Vonnegut is dead! Heart pain. :(

I don’t know what to say. On personal level I am sorry I never had the chance to write to him to tell him that somewhere in the world another person was absolutely inspired by his work. There are only a few writers who I can say have transformed my being and helped defined my views about life and the world. He was one of them. I am just glad, grateful that he lived in at time where his visions, his writings, his art, his satire was needed the most. He’s not gone forever, his legacy, his flame… he will always be here.