Writing about Writing

Him kerosene b'long Jesus Christ by'm-by all done, b--r up, finish.

It would appear, however, that in the conditions prevailing, this contention would hardly be regarded as justifiable.

The first sentence is in the vivid pidgin of a West African tribesman, means "The sun is due for a total eclipse." The second is officialese for "We disagree."

Between the two lies the vast, changeable, luxuriant expanse of the English tongue. Out last week was a lively approach to that area: The Reader over Your Shoulder--A Handbook for Writers of English Prose, by Robert Graves & Alan Hodge (Macmillan; $3). Graves's books (over 60) now outnumber his years (48). He collaborated on The Reader with a 28-year-old Oxonian official of the British Ministry of Information.

Their book is less a handbook than a lively, disorderly, hair-splitting collection of obiter dicta. In an agile linguistic commando raid Authors Graves & Hodge survey the terrain of English prose and map its modern contours. Armed with 25 "principles of clear statement" they blast at 54 recent writers.

Graves & Hodge believe that four main causes make for bad English writing: hurry (dictating bigwigs "use a ragged, conversational style that in the leisured '80s would have been attributed to drink, mental decay, or a vicious upbringing"), flurry (modern writers face many distractions), worry (about becoming definitely committed) and mild schizophrenia (people who must "write from a point of view . . . not their own . . . betray this by hedging, blustering . . .").

Application of Graves & Hodge's principles leads to astringent criticism. Examples:

>"When it comes to rendering the dignity and sobriety of [Spanish] speech, Hemingway invents an artificial and pompous English. ..."

>Sir James Jeans, like most scientists writing about anything but science, "seems to feel relieved of any further obligation to precise terminology."

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