A couple of weeks back I got to chatting with Sara and Joshua Seely at the big retirement shindig for our department. The conversation eventually got around to birthdays, and it turned out that Joshua shared his birthday with my oldest niece, Morgan—May 18th. I of course made the comment that it was clear that awesome people are born on that day, and Joshua then proceeded to rattle off a few famous names that shared the day as well (Tina Fey is the one I remember). My birthday was coming up (and has since passed), and I admit that I was curious about with whom I shared my birthday. Wikipedia comes quite in handy for such deep questions. A quick search led me to a list of births and deaths on my birthday—May 22. I scrolled through the list not really recognizing any names that seemed worthy to drop into conversations at social gatherings. That was, of course, until I came to one name: Theodore Kaczynski—the Unabomber. I paused, not sure how to feel about such a fact.
So…how does this piece of trivia fit into the mission of this blog? Well, as I sifted through Devan’s journals, one title beyond “Rhetoric and Bullshit” stood out to me in a recent issue of College English: “The Unabomber’s Strunk and White.” So, to celebrate my 30th birthday, I read this article about the Unabomber’s copy of The Elements of Style on the plane ride home from the Computers and Writing conference (which very well might be the nerdiest and most awesome conference hosted by our field). Being that’s how I spent my 30th birthday, I think the only thing missing from my nerd repertoire is a tattoo of a Tolkien quote somewhere on my body. So here’s it is, folks:
Article 2:
Prendergast, Catherine. “The Fighting Style: The Unabomber’s Strunk and White.” College English 72.1 (2009) 10-28. Print.
The title, of course, caught my attention in light of the recent discovery of my weak link to the Unabomber. But beyond that, I’ve also been thinking of issues of style recently. In the fall I’ll be teaching English 201: Nonfiction Writing for the first time, and one of the features that makes this course different from English 102 is the greater emphasis on style. I’ve dug through many style manuals over the past few years, but I’ve never spent much time with Strunk and White (though before reading this article, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned that for fear of having my Comp/Rhet card taken away).
The connection between Strunk and White and the Unabomber is this: after his shack in the woods was raided by the FBI, they discovered a well-used copy of this style manual. Prendergast then goes on to provide a historical accounting of how The Elements of Style came to be (and this was interesting information to me, as I did not know that White came on board many years later to revise Stunk’s work). After reading through the historical accounting of this manual and its use by the Kaczynski, one thing became quite clear: White and the Unabomber are both assholes. They seem to both use language as way of berating people and declaring their intellectual superiority (or so they perceive).
This all brings me back to the larger discussion of style and grammar. I have yet to find a grammar book that I totally love. The book I’ve read the most and tend to agree with the most is Kolln’s Rhetorical Grammar. Her discussion of grammar as another rhetorical tool in a writer’s tool belt was revelatory for me, and I have often used that metaphor in teaching and consulting with writers. Students respond well to the idea that grammar is often a set of choices rather than a steadfast list of rules that no one understands (other than crazy assholes like the Unabomber). I also enjoy reading Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves, and Prendergast mentions this book as one that follows Strunk and White’s “warlike, exhortative style” (13), and while I do recall that Truss made a strong stand against the misuse of apostrophes, I don’t think she was as big of an asshole as Strunk and White. I remember thinking that she backed off considerably from her strong stance and seemed to be having some fun (which would have completely stroked out Strunk and White). In grad school I took a class on the theory and practice of teaching grammar (from Devan, no less!), and we sifted through many books about grammar. I found myself often dissatisfied, particularly by books that seemed to make a strong stance in their titles. Grammar Alive!, I remember thinking, should have been titled Grammar…Alive?. Another grammar book we read was Breaking the Rules, and it rarely seemed to actually call for breaking the rules. Ugh. Would somebody please write a style guide that is interesting, often entertaining, and perhaps even user/student-friendly?
So…my search for a non-asshole style/grammar guide continues. Devan uses Adios, Strunk and White, and while I haven’t read it yet, the title is catchy in light of my new knowledge about The Elements of Style—I say adios, indeed. I plan on checking it out soon, and I hope the authors don’t disappoint.
More tomorrow!
mk
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