Book Reviews

Searching for a guidebook to help your writing students? Don't look to William Zinsser's latest edition of On Writing Well. Zinsser's "Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction" is long on personal anecdotes and short on practical skills.

The first edition of Zinsser's book grew from his experiences as a writing instructor at Yale. The changes of the second and third editions included new chapters on humorous and business writing, using word processors, and recognizing nonfiction as the new American literature. In his recent fourth edition, Zinsser adds two new chapters, "Writing About Yourself" and "A Writer's Decisions." To make this edition a product for the 90's, he expands his sample writings to include four nonfiction women writers and revises the text to eliminate sexist usage.

The book, divided into three sections, emphasizes simplicity and the necessity of rewriting. The first section, entitled "Principles," covers word choice and usage. Part II, "Forms" discusses the basic elements of nonfiction writing with advice on gathering material. He also surveys the different types of this genre--writing for technology and science, business and education, sports, humor and criticism. The third section, "Attitudes," reveals Zinsser's opinions about editors and his prejudices regarding style and content.

Zinsser uses material from his articles while a writer for the New York Herald Tribune and Life as examples of nonfiction style and structure. In "Trust Your Material," he recalls how he decided not to write in first person in an article about two jazz musicians who visit China, and then he drifts off into an explanation of how this story expanded into his first book. He attempts to get back on the subject by relating how he chose to use first person narration for a piece on baseball, but he quickly digresses into his love of the sport. These personal experiences have potential as examples of writing techniques, but they merely become tedious war stories.

In the chapter "Humor," Zinsser uses the information from a course he created and taught at Yale. He relates that he expected to produce witty writers, not whimsical ones, by adhering to the traditions of humorous writing. But the chapter becomes little more than a compilation of names like Garrison Keillor, Erma Bombeck, James Thurber, etc., and Zinsser's opinions of their work.

The reader must struggle with Zinsser's vagueness throughout the book. In the chapter "Bits and Pieces," he says that taste separates the good writer from the mediocre. But this sage comment becomes useless when he follows it with, "It [taste] can't be defined, but we know it when we see it." This ambiguity also proves troublesome in the chapter on leads. He says that the lead is the most important part of the writing and that the reader must know "very soon" where the piece is going or will become disinterested. But writing students need specific guidelines on how to hook a reader and how much time they have to do it. Without any precise strategies, his advice to inexperienced writers becomes nothing more than platitude.

The book's narrative structure presents the biggest obstacle to the reader. A reader searching for tools and methods to improve writing skills must sift through paragraph after paragraph of personal stories and thoughts before getting to any substantive advice. In the chapter "Nonfiction as Literature," the reader must wade through four paragraphs on an interview Zinsser had with a radio host and two paragraphs on the Book-of- the-Month Club before reaching the point of the chapter--writing nonfiction motivates us. The reader needs motivation to reach the message amid all the clutter. It's these tangents and digressions that detract from what helpful information or advice might be found in the text.

For a reader interested in a personal account of one writer's thoughts and experiences regarding his craft, Zinsser's book provides a satisfying narrative, But the textual and structural obstacles prevent it from being a practical guidebook for the writing teacher or student.

Dianne P. Ledford
Tennessee Technological Univ.