When I discovered the inadequacies of school writing, I took this as a sign from above that content always trumps style. I hadn't yet realized that the problem with school writing is that it lacks style. On the other hand, Hazlitt, Orwell, and Shaw are overflowing with style. They were able to bring the writer into the essay-directly or indirectly. Their styles are infused with their own personality. School writing replaces style with “filler.” I take this to mean all those little phrases which I used to sprinkle throughout my essays in high school. “The fact is that,” is a good one. “It cannot be denied that,” is another. “Therefore, however, we are left with the impression that, undeniably.” All of these are ways of writing words without actually saying anything. When teachers set length requirements, “it cannot be denied that,” students will always fall back on these devices. Jeez! Four pages due Friday! I'd better write: “Well, the fact is that, it cannot be overemphasized that…”
It was this empty writing which I associated with style. That is why I had such a dislike for the concept. But eventually, I came to realize that such writing is the opposite of style. I had such a revelation when it came to drama. Whenever I read or see a play, I usually look for two things. First of all, the play should either make me laugh or cry. (Well, I don't cry very often, but you catch my drift.) Just as important, the reader or playgoer should be able to see exactly why each line was added to the script. Every word which is said on stage should add something to the meaning or atmosphere of the play. Otherwise, you are simply sitting in a darkened room watching people have an irrelevant discussion. I think that David Mamet is a hero of witty, sparkling dialogue. As is Shaw.
Ibsen is more of the gloomy variety, but the reader or viewer still understands why each word finds its way into the play. Brecht, particularly in Mother Courage, is able to be both heart-rending and funny at the same time. One playwright who doesn't measure up to either of my requirements is Samuel Beckett, particularly in Waiting for Godot. I don't remember thinking any line of dialogue between Vladimir and Estragon needed to be there. Or even thinking that the play itself needed to be written. Nothing sparkled, nothing came alive.
Not that I'm saying all works need to be straight-forward. For instance, absurdism works incredibly well in some of Harold Pinter's plays-particularly in the short political pieces such as Mountain Language and One for the Road. But the absurdity on stage bears out the meaning of each play. Each word is being said for a reason.
At one point, I thought all of this proved that content-having something interesting to say-was more important that style. Beckett is a “style” writer, after all, but because his characters do not say anything important, his dialogue lies dead on the page. But of course, if content is having something interesting to say, then style is the ability to say it in a convincing way. The two are both necessary.
It's harder to tell, in novels, which is more important. I've definitely spent the vast majority of my time as a reader with novels. And I couldn't help but notice that it wasn't the passages of beautiful description or the moments of poetic grandeur that I remembered years after I had put the book down. What I lived for were those few moments when I felt I was reading something about myself. When a character expressed thoughts that I might have thought. When the experience of someone in the novel echoed my own experience. Not that I'm so narcissistic, it's just that such passages break down the loneliness in which we all live. That, to me, is the greatest thrill of being a reader.
Is that thrill due to content or style? Oddly enough, it has to do with style. For instance, let's say we want to see expressed in a novel the experience of being humiliated. A writer could simply offer us this: “I felt so humiliated that day.” Direct, simple. All the necessary content is there. Or we could look at this passage from Great Expectations: “I set off on the four-mile walk to our forge; pondering, as I went, on all that I had seen, and revolving that I was a common laboring-boy; that my hands were coarse; that my boots were thick; that I was much more ignorant than I had considered myself last night, and generally that I was in a low-lived bad way.”
It's the same content. But it is the style which makes the second example believable while the first is not. So style is a good thing after all.
