Style

Why do so many writing courses, with their earnest handbooks and narrow focus on "clarity," bore students and fail to teach them how to write well? Richard Lanham provides answers, and an antidote, in the seven witty and provocative chapters of Style: An Anti-Textbook. 1 The prose problem and "the books", 2 The uses of obscurity, 3 The opaque style, 4 The delights of Jargon, 5 Poetric prose, 6 Essential hypocrisies, 7 The ultimate morality of mind. A new program, one that emphasizes writing as "pleasure rather than duty" and allows "words to escape from the penalty box and get back to skating" is Lanham's goal with this updated and expanded edition of his classic. The Anti-Textbook is back! Book jacket.

Richard A. Lanham is professor emeritus of English at UCLA and president of Rhetorica, Inc.