Subject: Re: The snow covered the fields
From: Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 02 2001 - 16:21:27 GMT
On Tue, Jan 02, 2001 at 06:57:09PM +0000, Scottie Bowman wrote:
> I might have let it go when the whole lot of you ignored
> me the first time, but here it is again in this morning's paper.
> 'How to write a best seller.' No 4 of George Orwell's
> rules for good writing: 'Whenever possible, use the active
> rather than the passive voice.'
>
> Can the hierarchy offer no enlightenment?
Sorry, I intended to answer this but must have become distracted.
Scottie, I think your use of the start of A FAREWELL TO ARMS only
demonstrates that rules are there for masterful writers to break.
(The beginning also contradicts all who would say that Hemingway
writes in short, choppy sentences ... the rhythm of the first two
pages is like a lullaby.)
I would say, and this is me speaking for myself, not as an authority
or a teacher or a master of anything (I'm none of the above), that the
rule against the passive voice is for people who would ordinary write
prose that has the consistency of dead fish.
We all know the type:
Decisions were made as the meeting flowed on. One objection
was raised to the subject at hand, and very little dissent was
had. The meeting as judged a success.
If you're still awake after that soporific, I would say that it could
be rewritten more actively in these ways:
FIRST PERSON:
We held a short but productive meeting. Twelve people
attended. We considered and passed eight resolutions
during the official meeting; only one person strongly
objected to one of the votes. Several of us discussed it
in the hallway afterward, and we felt that it was a
successful meeting
or THIRD PERSON:
They held a meeting, which was short and orderly and
well-focused on the topics on the agenda. Only twelve people
attended. They voted in favor of eight items, with only one
person objecting to one of the votes. Some attendees
discussed the meeting after its adjournment, and those who
had an opinion declared it a success.
The problem we often see is that when individuals are asked to write
text -- a report of a meeting, for instance -- they either naturally
(from reticence) or unnaturally (from years of grade-school
brainwashing) omit the word "I" from the text. This leads to all
kinds of distortions and contortions as they attempt to find ways of
expressing the events without using the first person. It's as if the
report were being presented by an amoeba. My favorite amoebic
sentence that shows up in reports about events is (don't laugh; I come
across it a couple of times a year!): "A good time was had by all."
Anyhow ... Scottie, I don't pretend to be a writing teacher and I
don't claim that Strunk & White is now a trinity with me attached at
the end, but that is my take on why in so many texts (The Elements of
Style, by Strunk and White, being perhaps the most famous) there is an
exhortation to avoid passive language. It is so much easier to write
vividly if you take charge of the language rather than let the
language take charge of you. Now, why the first two pages of
Hemingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS works as well as it works, it is
written in a hypnotic voice, one that grabs you by the arms and
enchants you in its near-singsong rhythm. It would make a dazzling
bit of avant-garde music, I think, to transform those two pages to
music. Because they are music, in text form. They have rhythm and
melody and they have a beat.
I regret that I can't quote examples, but that one volume is missing
from my shelf of Hemingway and I don't know where it has gone. I
agree with Scottie and highly recommend it to anyone who wants to see
how moderately passive third-person writing can work brilliantly.
Ironically, in his long essay in The Elements of Style, E.B. White
lapses in a couple of minor places into passive voice, though he never
once uses the dreaded construction "the fact that." One of the book's
cardinal rules is that writers should avoid using the passive voice.
--tim
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