The Peculiar Business of Writing Like a Human Being

Commentary

Now, as we go about changing the garments of editing, reporting, and writing, much like a man changing collars to see if the second one offends the neck less than the first, it has been suggested that we pause and consult a certain authority on the matter of style. That authority, for reasons not entirely suspicious, answers to the name of Mark Twain.

Mr. Twain, as understood, had a habit of writing as though language were not a sacred museum piece locked behind glass, but something a fellow might actually use while leaning on a fence, watching the world misbehave.

He favored colloquial speech, in which he allowed his characters to talk like people who hadn’t gotten trained in the art of sounding like they were afraid of their own sentences. In his more famous river stories, he let dialect run loose across the page like a hound that had finally slipped its leash and remembered it could run and bark.

He also had a fondness for humor, which is a polite word for telling the truth in a way that does not immediately cause a riot. Twain’s humor often came dressed as exaggeration, irony, and the occasional well-placed absurdity, usually aimed at the solemn faces of those convinced they had life properly arranged.

His tone, if one can call it that without sounding too academic for one’s own good, was conversational. He wrote as if he were speaking directly to the reader, perhaps across a porch rail or over a questionable cup of coffee, frequently implying that the reader might already suspect what he was about to say but would enjoy hearing it confirmed.

Beneath all this agreeable chatter, however, he was a man with a strong suspicion that civilization was not as civilized as it claimed and had a talent for pointing at hypocrisy, social pretension, and moral posturing, and then pretending he was only remarking on the weather. Twain also knew how to describe a landscape well enough that you could almost feel the dust, which is no small trick for a man who spent so much time describing human foolishness.

And so, Twain’s great innovation was not merely in how he wrote, but in what he allowed writing to be: less a parade of polished ornaments, and more a conversation between a sensible observer and a world that rarely behaves itself. Which, come to think of it, may still be the most modern idea in American letters.

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