Plainspoken vs. Poetry
& Minimalism

96}WATER FROM WINE:
IN PRAISE OF THE PLAINSPOKEN

That last passage shows us style being played for all it’s worth by a master who’s not afraid to take risks.

You may not want or need to take such risks. To achieve style, or even poetry, you do not need fancy words or phrasing, or even complex ideas or imagery.

Simple thoughts expressed in plain language will do, as in this opening of a short story by Big Fish author Daniel Wallace:

As sad as it was, I guess it was about time my mother died. She had become so old. Who knew a person could live so long? Her body looked like it had been soaked in water for a week, then dried out on an asphalt parking lot on the hottest day in August. She had no teeth, and her tongue could hardly move at all. A far cry from the tongue that could tie cherry stems in a knot with her mouth closed (the only trick she knew).

Few would argue that this passage isn’t poetic. And yet any search for “poetry” within the individual lines will turn up nothing. It’s the arrangement of simple thoughts, the clarity of images, and the honest earthiness of the narrator’s voice, along with his attention to details and generosity with information (“the only trick she knew”) that charms the reader while striking a poetic chord.

A plainspoken style has much to recommend it. At the very least it doesn’t get in the way. Witness this passage from Charles Simmons’s novel Salt Water:

Father and I used to fish off the shore for king, weak, blues, and bass. The bass gave the best fight and were the best eating. We pulled in a lot of sand sharks too, small, useless things we threw back. Sometimes we went for real sharks, with a big hook, too heavy to cast. We’d fix on a mackerel steak, and I’d swim out with the hook and drop it to the bottom. I did this even when I was small, except then I’d float out on my inner tube, drop the hook, and Father would pull me in with a rope.

“The best technique,” Henry Miller once remarked, “is no technique at all.” Which is probably true. But Miller might have added that to attain “no technique” takes years of study and practice. Plainspoken writing looks easy. But to write plainly, transparently, takes modesty, discipline, and saintly restraint. The result goes down like a glass of clean cold water, and is as hard to argue with.

The popularity of the plainspoken style owes much to Hemingway, who owed much to Sherwood Anderson, and to the wire service reporting that taught him to be thrifty⁴⁴ with words.

97}LESS IS MORE—OR LESS:
MINIMALISM

When severity of language and description is taken to extremes and applied to unexceptional characters in banal situations, we call the result minimalist fiction. Of the so-called “minimalist school,” Raymond Carver, Amy Hempel, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Ann Beattie are considered leading exponents. Unlike Hemingway’s prose⁴⁵ —which cuts to the bone while implying worlds of unstated sensations and ideas—minimalist prose emphasizes superficial qualities:

The kitchen was filled with specialized utensils. When Dale Anne couldn’t sleep she watched TV, and that’s where the stuff was advertised. She had a thing to core tomatoes—it was called a Tomato Shark—and a metal spaghetti wheel for measuring out spaghetti. She had plastic melon-ballers and a push-in device that turned ordinary cake into ladyfingers.

I found pasta primavera in the refrigerator. My fingers wanted to knit the cold linguini, laying precisely cabled strands across the oily peppers and beans.

This passage—from an Amy Hempel short story, in her collection Reasons to Live—exemplifies “kitchen sink realism.” I’m no big fan of minimalism, but in her writing Hempel achieves a perfect balance of brevity and density, richness and rigor, and her short, spare tales play like sad, catchy tunes.

My problem with most so-called minimalist fiction is that its economy isn’t achieved through a process of elimination. What’s left out was never there to begin with, and is therefore not implied: Less is simply less. If I use the “m” word to describe a story, I mean that the author implies more than what is stated.

Minimalism, too, has its risks. And you may want to take them. But such risks should not be taken blindly.

Moby-Dick and Herzog notwithstanding, the emphasis in this section will be on clarity, logic, accuracy, and consistency: in other words, on rules. The fearless among you will break as many of them as they wish. One definition of a fearless person is someone who needn’t be told to be fearless.

For the less brazen I present the following injunction—written in monumental letters across the blackboard:

THERE ARE NO RULES

Following which I add, in smaller letters:

However ...