American men like comparing -- height, weight, shoe size. Simply to see how we match up against one another.
Of course, we lie about two of those.
So do women -- but a different two -- and for different reasons.
Writers do the same thing. We say we read to learn. But we are always comparing. Just to see where we rank in the pecking order of hunters and peckers.
I have been reading Deja Reviews: Florence King All Over Again -- a collection of her essays and book reviews from the 1990s. That may not sound like a tantalising summary. But Florence King could write copy for toilet tissue covers, and I would guarantee that it would captivate you.
The woman knows her craft. In a 1997 review of Sylvia Morris's Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Booth Luce, Miss King (as she insists on being addressed) noted that Clare Booth Luce's newspaper columns were successful because they "were models of the personal-essay form -- arresting opening paragraphs, strict adherence to a single topic, closely reasoned arguments leading to neatly turned conclusions."
She could have been writing about her own style. Perhaps, she was.
I decided to put together this post after reading one of her recent magazine columns. Columns require not only that the application of good writing principles, but that they be applied in a set amount of space. And Miss King is the master (because she was quail at "mistress") of the art.
In "Flowering Industry," she writes about how "community colleges are suddenly doing a land-office business" and that training is trumping education.
The entire piece is an exercise in the Lucian principles she described in her review. I found myself laughing through most of it. Thought I: I need to share some of this with my readers.
So, I lifted the paragraph that I enjoyed most. She compares her liberal education with what she now reads in community college course catalogs:
Of course, we lie about two of those.
So do women -- but a different two -- and for different reasons.
Writers do the same thing. We say we read to learn. But we are always comparing. Just to see where we rank in the pecking order of hunters and peckers.
I have been reading Deja Reviews: Florence King All Over Again -- a collection of her essays and book reviews from the 1990s. That may not sound like a tantalising summary. But Florence King could write copy for toilet tissue covers, and I would guarantee that it would captivate you.
The woman knows her craft. In a 1997 review of Sylvia Morris's Rage for Fame: The Ascent of Clare Booth Luce, Miss King (as she insists on being addressed) noted that Clare Booth Luce's newspaper columns were successful because they "were models of the personal-essay form -- arresting opening paragraphs, strict adherence to a single topic, closely reasoned arguments leading to neatly turned conclusions."
She could have been writing about her own style. Perhaps, she was.
I decided to put together this post after reading one of her recent magazine columns. Columns require not only that the application of good writing principles, but that they be applied in a set amount of space. And Miss King is the master (because she was quail at "mistress") of the art.
In "Flowering Industry," she writes about how "community colleges are suddenly doing a land-office business" and that training is trumping education.
The entire piece is an exercise in the Lucian principles she described in her review. I found myself laughing through most of it. Thought I: I need to share some of this with my readers.
So, I lifted the paragraph that I enjoyed most. She compares her liberal education with what she now reads in community college course catalogs:
If I had known enough about real life to complain, someone would have said: "You might not make a living out of it, but it will make life worth living." This is what people say to poets. There's some truth in it, but not enough to make up for the misery I knew before I hit the writing jackpot, when I worked at Manpower office jobs. There is nothing worse than being surrounded by machines when you can define deus ex machina ("The Flowering of Greek Classical Drama").
It is witty. Just a bit sly.
But if you are puzzling over the paragraph, there is a good reason. Taking a paragraph out of a Florence King piece is like taking a panda from the wild and plopping it in the faculty lounge at Tulane.
That is because her pieces are so tightly written (what The Cosmo Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, herself called "warpy and woofy"), one paragraph cannot stand alone. It would be similar to cutting a corner off of the Bayeux tapestry, and asking someone to appreciate its beauty.
That parenthetical hanging at the end of her paragraph is a running gag about the courses she took in college. "I was a sucker for any lit course described as 'the flowering of,' or any history course about the era in which epaulets protected the shoulders from saber cuts."
But to explain the process is to lose its mastery. And she is a writer better read than analyzed -- the mark of a master craftsman.
But if you are puzzling over the paragraph, there is a good reason. Taking a paragraph out of a Florence King piece is like taking a panda from the wild and plopping it in the faculty lounge at Tulane.
That is because her pieces are so tightly written (what The Cosmo Girl, Helen Gurley Brown, herself called "warpy and woofy"), one paragraph cannot stand alone. It would be similar to cutting a corner off of the Bayeux tapestry, and asking someone to appreciate its beauty.
That parenthetical hanging at the end of her paragraph is a running gag about the courses she took in college. "I was a sucker for any lit course described as 'the flowering of,' or any history course about the era in which epaulets protected the shoulders from saber cuts."
But to explain the process is to lose its mastery. And she is a writer better read than analyzed -- the mark of a master craftsman.
I know I am taller than Miss King. I weigh more. My shoe size is larger.
But she can write circles around me. The best I can do is read -- and learn ("The Flowering of Greek Philosophy").
But she can write circles around me. The best I can do is read -- and learn ("The Flowering of Greek Philosophy").
