Notes (very
brief please) on English and
American Style
by Raymond Chandler
|
We have really everything in
common with America nowadays except, of course, the language.
|
Oscar
Wilde
|
to
Dawn
The merits of
American style are less numerous than its defects and annoyances, but
they are
more powerful.
It
is
a
fluid
language,
like
Shakespearean
English,
and
easily
takes
in
new
words,
new
meanings
for
old
words,
and
borrows
at
will
and
at
ease
from
the
usages
of other languages, for example, the German
free
compounding of words and the use of noun or adjective as verb; the
French
simplification of grammar, the use of one, he, etc.
Its
overtones
and
undertones
are
not
stylized
into
a
social
conventional
kind
of
subtlety,
which
is
in
effect
a
class
language.
If
they
exist
at
all,
they
have
a
real impact.
It
is
more
alive
to
clichés.
Consider
the
appalling,
because
apparently
unconscious,
use
of
clichés
by
as
good
a
writer
as
Maugham
in
The Summing up, the deadly repetition of
pet words until they almost make you scream. And the pet words are
always
little half archaic words like “jejune”
and “umbrage” and “vouchsafe,” none of
which the average
educated person could even define correctly.
Its
impact
is
sensational
rather
than
intellectual.
It
expresses
things
experienced
rather
than
ideas.
It
is a mass language only in the same sense that its
baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language,
which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet
be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a
natural growth,
much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared
with it at
its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and
decay.
It
has
disadvantages.
It
overworks
its
catchphrases
until
they
not
merely
become
meaningless,
like
English
catchphrases,
but
sickening,
like
overworked
popular
songs.
Its
slang,
being
invented
by
writers
and
palmed
off
on
simple
hoodlums
and
ballplayers,
often
has
a
phony
sound, even when fresh.
The
language
has
no
awareness
of
the
continuing
stream
of
culture.
This
may
or
may
not
be
due
to the collapse of classical
education and it may or may not happen also in English. It is certainly
due to a lack
of the historical sense and to shoddy education, because American is an
ill-at-ease language, without manner or self-control.
It
has
too
great
a
fondness
for
the
“faux naôf,”
by
which
I
mean
the
use
of
a
style such as might be spoken by a very
limited
sort of mind. In the hands of a genius like Hemingway this may be
effective,
but only by subtly evading the terms of the contract, that is, by an
artistic
use of the telling detail, which the speaker never would have noted.
When not
used by a genius it is as flat as a Rotarian speech.
The
last
noted
item
is
very
probably
the
result
of
the
submerged
but
still
very
strong
homespun
revolt
against
English
cultural
superiority.
"We're
just
as
good
as
they
are,
even if we don't talk
good
grammar." This attitude is based on complete ignorance of the English
people as a mass. Very few of them talk good grammar. Those that do
probably
speak more correctly than the same type of American, but the homespun
Englishman uses as much bad grammar as the American, some of it being
as old as Piers Ploughman, but still bad
grammar. But you don't hear English professional men making elementary
mistakes
in the use of their own language. You do hear that constantly in
America. Of
course anyone who likes can put up an argument against any other
person's ideas
of correctness. Naturally this is historical up to a point and
contemporary up
to a point. There must be some compromise, or we should all be
Alexandrians or
boors. But roughly and ordinarily and plainly speaking, you hear
American
doctors and lawyers and schoolmasters talking in such a way that it is
very
clear they have no real understanding of their own language and its
good or bad
form. I'm not referring to the deliberate use of slang and
colloquialisms; I'm
referring to the pathetic attempts of such people to speak with
unwonted
correctness and horribly failing.
You
don't
hear
this
sort
of
collapse
of
grammar
in
England
among
the
same
kind
of
people.
It's
fairly
obvious
that
American
education
is
a
cultural
flop.
Americans
are
not
a
well-educated
people
culturally,
and
their
vocational
education
often
has
to
be
learned
all
over
again
after they leave
school and
college. On the other hand they have open quick minds and if their
education
has little sharp positive value, it has not the stultifying effects of
a more
rigid training. Such tradition as they have in the use of their
language is
derived from English tradition, and there is just enough resentment
about this
to cause perverse uses of ungrammaticalities – "just to
show
'em."
Americans,
having
the
most
complex
civilization
the
world
has
seen,
still
like
to
think
of
themselves
as
plain
people.
In
other
words
they
like
to
think
the
comic-strip
artist
is a better draftsman than
Leonardo – just
because he is a comic-strip artist and the comic-strip is for plain
people.
American
style
has
no
cadence.
Without
cadence
a
style
has
no
harmonics.
It
is
like
a
flute
playing
solo,
an
incomplete
thing,
very
dexterous
or
very
stupid
as
the
case may be, but still an incomplete thing.
Since
political
power
still
dominates
culture,
American
will
dominate
English
for
a
long
time to come. English, being on the
defensive, is
static and cannot contribute anything but a sort of waspish criticism
of forms
and manners. America is a land of mass production, which has only just
reached
the concept of quality. Its style is utilitarian and essentially
vulgar. Why
then can it produce great writing or, at any rate, writing as great as
this age
is likely to produce? The answer is, it can't. Men who are, or at some
time
were, cosmopolitans, have done all the best American writing. They
found here a
certain freedom of expression, a certain richness of vocabulary, a
certain
wideness of interest. But they had to have European taste to use the
material.
Final
note
out
of
order:
The
tone
quality
of
English
speech
is
usually
overlooked.
This
tone
quality
is
infinitely
variable
and
contributes
infinite
meaning.
The
American
voice
is
flat,
toneless, and tiresome.
The
English tone quality makes a thinner vocabulary and a more formalized
use of
language capable of infinite meanings. Its tones are of course read
into
written speech by association. This makes good English a class
language, and
that is its fatal defect. The English writer is a gentleman (or not a
gentleman) first and a writer second.
©
– 5/7/2010 – edited by michael
sympson, 1,150 words,
all rights reserved
