Longest Piece of English Literature? At least American English? William Faulkner? Tersest Sentences? Hemingway? Style or content, which is the most important?

‘We are fond of separating style and content for the purposes of analysis, and so on, but they aren't separable, they come from the same place, and style is morality, style judges.’

This is a quote taken from Martin Amis’s essay on Saul Bellow’s ‘The Adventures of Augie March’.

And if as he maintains, ‘style is morality, style judges’, and if, indeed, this is not content produced just for stylistic effect, then this is an idea with interesting implications.

Now there are many different aspects to style, such as The use of Creative devices, Diction, Grammar, Tone, Rhythm, Cadence - and this is not an exhaustive list.

So then, according to Amis, Grammar is Style, Tone is Style, but also - character is style, and even, setting and plot, is Style, and all the Literary tools available to and employed by the writer, taken as a whole, are,, style.

In studying the History of Literature - you find that some of its meatiest and most appealing aspects are - Literary Feuds - enter William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Two, outstanding writers with very different, and in fact, antithetical styles. So following the thread, these are two writers whose writings contained two very different Moralities and Judgments of the world.

This short video essay then leads up to a brief but finely crafted paragraph taken from ‘100 ways to improve your writing’ by Gary Provost, which stands unique as it employs the very form that it is trying to teach, about the art of writing, and how sentences can be stylised for greater impact and musicality.


RECOMMENDED READING:

Absalom, Absalom! By William Faulkner (Vintage Classics): https://amzn.to/3muyV6f

The Sun Also Rises: Fiesta By Ernest Hemingway (Arrow Classic): https://amzn.to/38ic88y

100 Ways to Improve Your Writing By Gary Provost: https://amzn.to/2J0u9jp

The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 By Martin Amis: https://amzn.to/3h1X96L


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