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Title: Simple & Direct by Jacques Barzun ISBN: 0-06-093723-8 Publisher: Quill Pub. Date: 18 December, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the Triumvirate
Comment: Barzun has written one of the best guides to prose composition, one to be set on the shelf with Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" and Graves & Hodge's "Reader Over Your Shoulder" and consulted often. All three of these books adhere to the Strict Taskmaster method and demand that the writer PAY ATTENTION to what he (or she) is doing. Prissy? Perhaps. Overbearing? At times. But such discipline is the first essential step towards becoming a real writer.
Only after one has internalized the Taskmasters and made their advice an ingrained habit can one then go on to profit from such excellent books as Joseph Williams's "Style," Thomas Kane's "Oxford Essential Guide to Writing," and Arthur Quinn's "Figures of Speech".
Rating: 4
Summary: A good guide to good prose
Comment: I taught newswriting as an adjunct in the journalism department of a state university for a couple of years, and Barzun's "Simple and Direct" was on a list of books and essays I strongly recommended to all my students.
As a news and documentary producer and news director, I found Barzun's prescriptions on prose style a reliable guide for editng my own work and others as well.
Barzun's approach can be a bit irritating at first because he tends to be fairly prissy about style, but if you can get past that, you begin to perceive the prissiness as a tight focus on precision of the type that is lacking in much modern prose writing.
His main rule is one I paraphrased at the first meeting of every newswriting class...that there are only two reasons for producing bad writing; either you don't know what you're writing about, or you don't know how to write about it.
I lost my copy of Barzun years ago. I think one of my students walked off with it. If so, I hope he or she is using it. I'm glad to know it's still available.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Excellent Guide
Comment: I read this book - twice. I am not an academic; I am a writer, and I find book to be not only useful but entertaining (as are most of Barzun's writings). As a writer he is careful and exact if not always concise. But even his lack of brevity has its merits; there is no misunderstanding what he is saying. I believe that only someone who has difficulty understanding the English language could call this book ". . .one of the worst books on English composition. . ." It is well written, well organized, and, although not always simple and direct, always complete, grammatically correct, and understandable.
As to another review, modern linguistic research has little to do with learning to produce a composition in English? Additonally in that review, the not-so-thinly veiled ad hominem attack on Barzun as being "pompous" and "nasty" has little to do with the merits of the book and do not constitute a review.
I certainly recommend the book for some excellent insight on how to write properly. Be prepared to work at it a bit, but that's as it should be; correct English writing requires some effort.
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Title: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun ISBN: 0060928832 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 15 May, 2001 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Culture We Deserve : A Critique of Disenlightenment by Jacques Barzun ISBN: 0819562378 Publisher: Wesleyan University Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 1989 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning by Jacques Barzun, Morris Philipson ISBN: 0226038475 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 1992 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
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Title: The House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun ISBN: 0313200718 Publisher: A Greenwood Press Reprint Pub. Date: 21 March, 1978 List Price(USD): $73.95 |
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Title: A Jacques Barzun Reader: Selections from His Works by Jacques Barzun, Michael Murray ISBN: 0060935421 Publisher: Perennial Pub. Date: 08 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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