I was reading a grammar thread when I started thinking about classic literature. Which literary figures had the worst and best grammar? (Let’s exempt avant-garde writers like James Joyce.) I know Jane Austen has been criticized for her heavy use of double negatives. Which classic authors would have received straight A’s in English class, and which would have to do remedial classes.
Stephen King taught high school English and his book “On Writing” is part memoir and part a seminar in how to write.
A’s to Mr. King.
I’m guessing Shakespeare would probably rate mediocrely by the more hard-core prescriptivist standards, as it seems every old time these overly pedantic “grammar” threads come up, the ol’ Bard is one of a list of many celebrated writers who have broken the “rule” under discussion.
Are we judging by their published works, or by the manuscripts they turned in to their editors?
This is probably just an archaism instead of a grammatical error, but it irritates me when Anthony Trollope uses “eat” as the past tense of “to eat”. E.g. writing “He sat down and eat his dinner” instead of “He sat down and ate his dinner”.
Even if that’s an acceptable past tense, I still haven’t seen any other 19th century authors who used it.
Mark Twain’s grammar was wonderful, though he was a descriptivist to the core.
EB White managed to write simply and meaningfully at the same time, and that’s why his stuff was so wonderful.
Good question. I’ve heard that Samuel Delany’s manuscripts were legendarily awful but I have no examples to back that up.
Thomas Wolfe was much mocked for his bad writing in his day, but whether that specifically includes grammar I don’t know.
I don’t see how any printed manuscript can tell us much. Editors and copyeditors and proofreaders would have had their fingerprints all over every sentence. Fiction especially depends on effect and tone and voice. A first person narrative may have all sorts of errors and all of them may be deliberate. And what was considered correct has changed radically over the past century, now that we’re recovering from the damage that 19th century language pedants did.
Jane Austen also had an addiction to unresolved pronouns, meaning that by the end of one of her lengthy paragraphs you can easily lose track of whom all the “shes” “hims” and “hers” refer to. There’s a great example in Pride and Prejudice:
Had Miss Bingley known what pain she was then giving her beloved friend, she undoubtedly would have refrained from the hint; but she had merely intended to discompose Elizabeth, by bringing forward the idea of a man to whom she believed her partial, to make her betray a sensibility which might injure her in Darcy’s opinion, and perhaps to remind the latter of all the follies and absurdities by which some part of her family were connected with that corps. Not a syllable had ever reached her of Miss Darcy’s meditated elopement. To no creature had it been revealed, where secrecy was possible, except to Elizabeth; and from all Bingley’s connections her brother was particularly anxious to conceal it, from that very wish which Elizabeth had long ago attributed to him, of their becoming hereafter her own. He had certainly formed such a plan, and without meaning that it should effect his endeavour to separate him from Miss Bennet, it is probable that it might add something to his lively concern for the welfare of his friend.
Good luck resolving all the references in that. By my count, seven different people are referred to, with the references switching back and forth. The paragraph is so confusing that it has an annotated version at Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice -- Notes on Random Topics .
New Testament scholars find polite ways to say that Mark was barely literate. Mark’s horrendous Coine Greek proved to be a great clue to piecing together the history of the compilation of the Gospels since Matthew and Luke seemed to not only [del]plagiarize[/del] incorporate most of Mark’s Gospel into their own Gospels, but they cleaned up his bad grammar to boot.
Samuel R Delany is dyslexic. He doesn’t come across as grammatically challenged either in interview transcripts or in person so I suspect the reputed problems would stem from his problems with getting stuff written down. Having said that I am a bit dubious that this would be true of someone so particular about word use.
Uncle Rheemus was pretty sketchy.
Does anyone really notice these things? I mean, when I read it’s like watching a movie in my head, and I’m usually not really paying attention to the actual words on the page in a conscious directed sort of fashion.
That’s why I tend to look at a friend of mine blankly when he says he couldn’t finish a book because of the “writing style” or grammar or whatever. It just doesn’t come into play for me when I’m reading, unless it’s absolutely so hard to understand what they’re saying for me to flip into mental-movie mode. (James Joyce, I’m pointing a finger at you!)
It was a piece of backstage gossip, basically that they were surprised at how bad his manuscripts were. Delany would hardly be the first writer, dyslexic or not, to turn in manuscripts that had to be cleaned up by the editors; it’s a cliche. And there are many different aspects to bad manuscripts. Joyce is famous for never finishing writing. He would scribble changes to his manuscripts, and changes to his proofs and galleys, and changes to the changes. That’s one reason why every edition of his works is slightly different. Not only did he change his words, but editing errors by the hundreds crept in. He’s an extreme case, but not unknown, perhaps even not unusual.
Nobody ever said Delany was in any way a bad writer because of this, assuming it’s true. Just that he was at one end of the curve.
This is almost a disease for writers. It becomes hard to read anything without analyzing it sentence by sentence. Many fiction writers find they can’t read fiction after a while. They can never lose themselves on the page.
Not everybody does, but quite a few readers certainly do pay attention to a writer’s use of language, and enjoy and appreciate it when it’s particularly good or are turned off by it when it’s particularly bad.
Plus, I remember someone—I think it was Isaac Asimov, whose writing falls into the first category—likening some writers’ prose to a clear glass window, where if it’s done well the point is to be as transparent as possible, while other writers’ prose is like a stained glass window, to be looked at for its beauty or artistry rather than just looked through.
Knowing that Frank McCourt taught English makes me want to break things.
Much as I enjoy John Irving’s dirty family sagas, I do think that he wildly overuses italics. It can be surprisingly tiring to read with so many words emphasised like that.
Not sure if you can count Frank Herbert in with “classic” authors at this point, but his grammar was often terrible. It worked well for me, but others find it very distracting and awful.
Bad grammar or syntax in a novel is like bad lighting or shot composition. If you’re into the narrative, not ‘watching’ analytically, you may not immediately recognize it–but it weakens the transportive power of the medium. If it goes on too long or is bad enough, it takes you right out.
Now it’s been a bunch of years since I read his books, but I recall him being pretty effective. Can you quote a sample you find problematic?
I always thought Thomas Hardy’s books were beautifully written. Same for Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh. I’d be interested in hearing their grammatical shortcomings.