The Elements of Eloquence

Fun reading that will enhance your ability to write and read. The chapter on versification alone is worth the price of admission. One caveat - the second half of the book is different from the first half; particularly, I wondered why the author didn't bother to explain and sound out the rhetorical terms in the beginning, as he does in the end.

The experience of reading this book was both completely enlightening and completely maddening.

Let's talk about the good first. I've never learned much about classical rhetoric, so it was kind of a revelation to get such a quick introduction to some of the analytical vocabulary of phrasing. I'd never really understood why the study of music was part of rhetoric in classical education, and this book opened up the similarities between some speech devices and the small details of melodies and progressions.

The bad is that Forsyth uses an extremely regular structure, where a hybrid phrase is used as both the last example in a chapter and the first example of the next. This is clever the first time, and increasingly monotonous as the book goes on.

The ugly...ugly? Maybe that's too harsh. A warning: Forsyth adopts a tone that is somewhat playful and irreverent, part mockingly self serious. I appreciate the attempts to include a fairly catholic assortment of examples from both high and low culture. This hipness by being too cool to care about being hip backfires as often as it lands, giving the impression of, as a New Yorker writer said of Malcolm Gladwell, “a young person's idea of an old person.”

If you love language, and aren't turned off by ironic mansplaining, I highly recommend it.

The strange title almost turned me off, but I'm glad I gave it a chance. This is less of a how-to guide and more of an overview of the different tools used by English writers. This is entry level, so I knew some of the things discussed, but I think having someone elaborate on the different subjects gave me a more natural understanding. Rhetoric is a tool that should be used wisely, otherwise your words will sound forced. This was a good brush up for when I pick up writing again very soon.

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I listened to this an audiobook while driving back and forth from Fresno to Sacramento. There was a point where I was laughing so hard that I feared for my safety.

Mark Forsyth did a brilliant job of taking the listener/reader through the “figures of rhetoric” by way of great literature and popular music. Certain rhetorical styles simply work, whether they be alliteration (the repetition of sounds) or repetition of the final words or phrases (Epistrophe) or the repetition of the beginning words or phrases (Anaphora). This stuff works and we know it does and we are exposed to it on a daily basis, but we will never remember the technical terms and we barely notice them as they occur all around us.

I am a lawyer and I think that knowing the technical terms, and the ideas behind those terms, might help me do intentionally what I am doing unintentionally. I think that others might have a similar experience, but this book is not a technical handbook. It is an enjoyable voyage through the English language, literature and lyrics. Here is an example:

“The second kind of pleonasm is quite different. It's the lazy adjective noun. This is a world of personal friends, added bonuses and free gifts. They are annoying for two contradictory reasons: first of all nobody talks like that, and secondly everybody talks like that.
I have never said the words “free gift.” It would seem a sinister thing to say when gathered around the Christmas tree. “Here's my free gift, and, as an added bonus, here's a festive Christmas card.” People would think I'd gone mad. Yet, if you wander into a shop or make the terrible mistake of turning on the television or radio, you will hear of havens that are safe, cooperation that is mutual, and prizes that are, it turns out, to be won.
Such phrases lumber about the language like zombies. They were created long ago by insanely evil marketing executives who were desperate to progress forward and sell their foreign imports to the general public. But, like Frankenstein's monster, they could not be stopped. They still lurk in shops and howl from televisions; even though their original inventor is past history.”

Likewise:

“There are people who would find that line inspiring. They would read it and run off to live better lives of purity and holiness up a hill somewhere. There are others who would find it infuriating. Twice. They would read it and as they did so the veins would stand out on their furious foreheads, the saliva would drip from their maddened mouths, and they would take a big red marker pen out of their pockets and delete two words.
First, there's the word “up.” What other direction can you lift something? It's almost as bad as “fall down” or “enter into.” It is (some would say) an insult to the intelligence and an abuse of the English language. But it's not nearly as bad as “from whence.” Whence means from where. So what does “from whence” mean? “From from where”? It's enough to make you shoot yourself, and then write an angry letter to the paper.
People who think like this lead terrible lives. They have never married, simply because they couldn't bear to hear the words:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God, and in the face of this congregation, to join together this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony . . .
They can't enjoy Hamlet because of the unnecessary “that” in “To be or not to be, that is the question.” And they can't even throw themselves in front of a train and put an end to their lives of misery and woe, because they're not sure about railway tracks.”

Pleonasms can be fun.

Language can be fun.