Last updated on November 8, 2015
Courtesy of one of the students in the second-year qualifying research paper seminar I am co-teaching this year, here is an article by John Kenneth Galbraith–the most famous Canadian agricultural economist–published in the March 1978 issue of the Atlantic, in which Galbraith discusses the things he would like to teach about writing.
Everyone who writes as part of their job should read the article in full, but here is a précis in case you are too busy to read the whole thing:
- “Inspiration” is bunk: “It’s a total illusion. And the danger in the illusion is that you will wait for those moments … I am persuaded that most writers, like most shoemakers, are about as good one day as the next.”
- Writing is rewriting: “[A]ll first drafts are deeply flawed by the need to combine composition with thought. Each later draft is less demanding in this regard. Hence the writing can be better.”
- Brevity is the soul of wit: “The gains from brevity are obvious; in most efforts to achieve brevity, it is the worst and dullest that goes. It is the worst and dullest that spoils the rest.”
- Intoxicants don’t help: “Nothing is so pleasant. Nothing is so important for giving the writer a sense of confidence in himself. And nothing so impairs the product. … [I]t is, quite literally, very sobering to reflect upon how many good American writers have been destroyed by this solace — by the sauce. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Thomas Wolfe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner–the list goes on and on.”
- Just the facts: “Nothing is so hard to come by as a new and interesting fact. Nothing is so easy on the feet as a generalization … My advice to all young writers is to stick to research and reporting with only a minimum of interpretation.”
- No jokes: “Avoid all attempts at humor … Humor is an intensely personal, largely internal thing. What pleases some, including the source, does not please others. One laughs; another says ‘Well, I certainly see nothing funny about that.'”
- Armchair quarterbacks: “Any specialist who ventures to write on [his specialization] with a view to making himself intelligible works under a grave moral hazard. He will be accused of oversimplification. The charge will be made by his fellow professionals, however obtuse or incompetent … Complexity and obscurity have professional value—they are the academic equivalents of apprenticeship rules in the building trades. They exclude the outsiders, keep down the competition, preserve the image of a privileged or priestly class. The man who makes things clear is a scab. He is criticized less for his clarity than for his treachery.”
ht: Austin Sandler.