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Wed 15 Sep, 2004 11:17 am
Grammatically and rhetorically speaking, do you think the writing of My Life is excellent?
Honest remarks highly appreciated.
FYI -- exerpt
Quote: When I was a young man just out of law school and eager to get on with my life, on a whim I briefly put aside my reading preference for fiction and history and bought one of those how-to books: How to get control of Your Time and Your Life, by Alan lakein. the book's main point was the necessity of listing short-, medium-, and long-term life goals, then categorizing them in order of their importance, with the A group being the most important, the B group next, and the C the last, then listing under each goal specific activities designed to achieve them. I still have that paperback book., now almost thirty years old. And I'm sure I have that old list somewhere buried in my papers. Though I can't find it. However, I do remember the A list. I wanted to be a good man, have a good marriage and children, have good friends, make a successful political life, and write a great book.
Judging from the excerpt, no. 'Readable', perhaps.
Grammatically, i find no faults which i do not suspect to be the product of faulty transcription. Rhetorically, however, i find it pedestrian. I am not fond of autobiographies however.
It was a dark and stormy night . . .
I just bought a hardcover My Life from a bookshop in China. The Chinese version My Life seems okay. I could not find its English version in China while shipping fee would be very high if I decided to buy it from the US. However, I googled it, and found its text in some websites. Why I posted this thread is because I am preparing to consider My Life as an good example for English writing. As an example, the grammar and rhetoric skills of the book should be highly excellent, or else I fear I would be misled.
So I ask you for your kind ideas about the book's writing skills because my ability of properly appreciating an original English work is very limited for the time being.
Thank you.
Some of the finest, lucid, simple expository prose which i have read in recent years was written by Simon Schama. I have a predilection for history, which is why i have read him, but i also studied English, American and French literature at university, and am not exactly ignorant of other authors or of style.
Hi Setanta,
Schama has taught at Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard. Professor Simon Schama, who has been made a CBE, has taken British history to a wider audience?
Yes, one of his finest writing efforts is Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations. I cannot recommend that book too highly. Some of his finest expository writing is to be found in The Embarrassment of Riches.
Dead Certainties: Unwarranted Speculations
By Simon Schama
The acclaimed historian of the French Revolution and of the Dutch Golden Age here turns his attention to America, with imaginative reconstructions of the death of General Wolfe at Quebec, and of the gruesome murder in the family of Wolfe's great chronicler, the Bostonian Francis Parkman. What Schama reveals is a history he cannot classify, an anarchic and unpredictable history, a history of stories.
Format: Paperback
Retail Price: £8.99
Web Price: £6.74
http://www.granta.com/shop/product?usca_p=t&product_id=135
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The price seems acceptable.
But I don't want to pay that shipping fee that is horribly higher than the book itself. 
Have you no access to an English-language Dictionary there in the Middle Kingdom, Oristar? What about getting it through Hong Kong?
Well, I haven't read the book, nor do I have any desire to, but from the first excerpt you posted, "Though I can't find it" is not even a complete sentence. "And I'm sure I have that old list buried in my papers" which precedes "Though I can't find it", well, you never start a sentence with 'and'. It should have read like this:
"I still have that paperback book, now almost thirty years old, and I'm sure I have that old list somewhere buried in my papers, though I can't find it."
This is not a good example of fine writing, grammatically or rhetorically.
Why cannot you start a sentence with "And"? Do you think Clinton hasn't read the Bible? But he said:"Whether I'm a good man is, of course, for God to judge."
Starting a sentence with "And" is dangerous, but it is not a forbidden fruit. You hate Clinton started a sentence with "And", so you abandon all his work?
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