In "Style Reveals the Man," Joseph Epstein concludes, "In all serious writing, good character, or the want of it, has a way of revealing itself." He early wrote, "Writing cannot be taught, as I came to realize after attempting to teach it for thirty years to university students, but it can be learned. One can only teach the mistakes bad writers make and provide examples of what makes good writers good. One cannot teach a love of language, the power of observation, a sense of drama, an aptitude for metaphor and simile, the rhythm of a well-constructed sentence or paragraph. Above all, one cannot teach desire—specifically the desire, dominating all other desires, to write something striking and stirring, original and memorable."
This is perhaps unacceptably pessimistic, but I wonder that it took someone as insightful as Epstein three decades to come to the conclusion. I have held this view for some years now, and believe that good writing comes only (yes, only) through extensive and absorptive reading.
There's a complex frustration, then, I feel reading these essays and chapter. The multifarious aspects of "style," the cornucopia of elements bringing bright spectra to an argument—all of these have had their articulation in the classical works of Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Melanchton, and others, as Ray and Duncan/Vanguir et al state. These, of course, are not the only authors who have used litotes or zeugma, nor would I argue that contemporary writing is lacking because it is significantly different from Cicero's orations against Cataline.
The frustration I feel is one of exasperation and perceived impotence. Let me expand. As for exasperation: it is well and good that FitzGerald has such exercises for his students to recognize their use or immersion in ornament (38), yet I ask whether the instruction of style matters (or of composition matter, for that reason) if our students do not use or practice these skills outside the Freshmen Composition classroom. Perhaps an unfair comparison, but there's a reason you should go to a range if you own a handgun. And words, I think, have caused more death in the 20th century than weapons, if we are to trace the origins of murder.
FitzGerald's essay did excite me the most, with its attention to the particulars and examples and exercises of style, and while he says his students have only "lacked a vocabulary" (48), I ask whether 15 or 16 weeks is sufficient for this sort of education. Because in the end I am not yet satisfied that these authors are concerned beyond their students being identifiers of style. I have significant doubts that students will continue with such attunement beyond the classroom, no matter how earnest they appear in class.
"The point to be emphasized is that study of the figures generates intellectual curiosity and practice with the figures generates compositional fluency" (F.itzGerald 52). Yes, agreed. When is it proper for students to shoulder the responsibility for their own education? To foster intellectual curiosity is noble, but in a culture of intellectual malaise, of educational functionalism, do these not necessitate a continental-wide shift in culture?
Greer's exploration of Bakhtinian architectonics has, I think, some promising features. His student example of weak style has some excellent remedies that I would intend on using in a Freshmen Composition course; however, his claim that "Before we can be persuaded that something is true, we need to feel that we have all the facts before us" strikes me as dangerous and untrue (79). A previous author focused extensively on Augustine, and Augustine, Anselm, and Bonhoeffer, while stylistically distinct, agreed that in terms of faith, belief preceded comprehension. When are we to consider ourselves in possession of all the facts? I think part of what is missing from the composition classroom, as pertains to style, is conviction, passion. Emotion has been—at least, in my observational experience—eradicated from students' writing because emotion cannot be "true." Greer's and FitzGerald's approach, it would seem, allow for an exercise in which the existence of the facts and the experience of the facts can co-exist, and an honest investment in writing is more possible from students. But, until they learn to value reading for its own sake, I see for them little practice once the threat of the gradebook, like an impotent angel of death, passes over them.
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