freetowrite

Writing and Bleeding

Writing is easy. All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until the drops of blood form on your forehead.
~ Gene Fowler

Yesterday, I was chatting with a colleague about how surprised students often are to learn how difficult writing is. Because we speak the language, we assume that writing it should come naturally, easily. Fowler's quote humorously reminds us that even the best writers--especially the best writers--work hard to write well.

Sean Wilentz from The Rise of American Democracy

In The Rise of Democracy, Sean Wilentz offers an interesting definition of democracy (and its vulnerability):

"Democracy appears when some large number of previously excluded, ordinary persons--what the eighteenth century called the many--secure the power not simply to select their governors but to oversee the institutions of government, as officeholders and as citizens free to assemble and criticize those in office. Democracy is never a gift bestowed by benevolent, farseeing rulers who seek to reinforce their own legitimacy. It must always be fought for, by political coalitions that cut across distinctions of wealth, power, and interest. It succeeds and survives only when it is rooted in the lives and expectations of its citizens and continually reinvigorated in each generation. Democratic successes are never irreversible" (xix).

This first sentence, what rhetoricians or cranky English teachers might call a loose sentence (loose, meaning the sentence begins with its main independent clause but then meanders on through a series of dependent clauses or phrases), defies the current conventions of popular writing and the advice of most Engish teachers by piling ideas, clauses, and phrases on after its main clause. What would not work for many lesser writers (myself included), works wonderfully for Wientz because the litany of verbs and the appositive phrase set off by dashes qualify and explain the author's definition of democracy.

The first sentence also works because the writer follows this long, complex sentence with shorter, punchier sentences marked by anaphora ("It must always be faught for...It succeeds and survives...") and energetic verbs: "fought," "cut," "succeeds," "survives," and "reinvigorated." When the clincher sentence reminds us that democracy is "never irreversible," the sudden turn from the rhetorical dynamism of this series of verbs adds drama to the foreboding prediction about the vulnerability of democracy.

In short, the long first sentence and the two short sentences set up the crucial shift of logic and meaning in the clincher sentence. Sentence variety and action verbs work their magic.

Persuasion and Pronouncement

I have been thinking and talking quite a bit lately about rhetoric and poltics. In particular, the difference between the rhetoric of pronouncement--a mode of discourse that announces, castigates, and alienates--and the rhetoric of persuasion--a mode of discourse designed to persuade others who disagree with you to consider and perhaps adopt your view.

On the micro level of the classroom experience, the rhetoric of persuasion allows a shift from a relationship with others based on separatation and difference to a relationship based on mutual respect and a search for at least the possibility of some common grounds. While the rhetoric of persuasion opens up possibilities and invites compromise and exchange, the rhetoric of pronouncement asserts boundaries and imposes absolutes. The rhetoric of persuasion encourages us to listen to each other; the rhetoric of pronouncement requires us to talk at each other.

This line of thinking opens up some interesting connections for me between what I do in the classroom and what I feel is happening in the world. More later...