Week of 2008-07-12 17:00 to 2008-07-19 16:59

Thanks to Merlin (via MetaFilter) for linking to a great essay by Kurt Vonnegut: “How to Write With Style”.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead —- or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No.

He sums up:

1. Find a subject you care about
2. Do not ramble, though
3. Keep it simple
4. Have guts to cut
5. Sound like yourself
6. Say what you mean
7. Pity the readers

Well, last week it was a prime minister likening himself to Heathcliff. This week, it’s a former deputy of the Bush Administration, the controversial Karl Rove, comparing himself to…Grendel?

In Forbes, “Karl Rove Speaks Up”:

Perhaps the only accusation Rove didn’t—and couldn’t—deny regarded his role as a public punching bag. “A lot of people beat up on me every day,” he said with a it-doesn’t-bother-me shrug. “I read The New York Times every day. Have you read some of the ugly things they say about me?”

“I’m like Grendel in Beowulf,” he continues. “People talk about me … and there’s nothing I can do about it.” Except to keep talking, which is precisely what the Fox News network is paying him to do.

You gotta wonder. From Wikipedia:

As noted in lines 106-114 and lines 1260-1267 of Beowulf, Grendel’s mother and Grendel are described as descendants of the Biblical Cain. Beowulf leaves Geatland in order to find and destroy Grendel, who has been attacking Heorot, killing and cannibalising anyone he finds there. Barring his lineage, all motives for his attacks are left up to the reader. Usually in most film or literature adaptions, Grendel attacks the hall having been disturbed by the noise the drunken revellers have made. One cryptic scene, in which Grendel sits in the abandoned hall unable to approach the throne, hints that his motives may be greed or revenge. After a long battle, Beowulf mortally wounds Grendel by ripping his arm off. Grendel dies in his cave under the swamp. Beowulf later engages in a fierce battle with Grendel’s mother, over whom he triumphs. Following her death, Beowulf finds Grendel’s corpse and removes the head, keeping it as a trophy.

Now, I didn’t see the recent movie, so maybe there’s some connection there I don’t know about, but if so, that’d be the same problem Gordon Brown apparently had remembering Laurence Olivier and not the real Heathcliff.

Unless Rove is really big on the killing, cannibalizing, greed, and revenge. Which, to hear tell, might not be too far from the truth. ;)

Via The Lede.