This is a review of a book that was written over 20 years ago by an eccentric lover of cities, a social activist concerned with preserving city neighborhoods, a woman adored by the N.Y. Times, yet today not much studied or consulted. This is a book about the 1930s and about today, so I am looking at it afresh.

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“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” Nietzsche

“If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.” J.S. Mill

“All the principles of sceptics, stoics, atheists, etc., are true. But their conclusions are false, because the opposite principles are also true.” Blaise Pascal

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Published in 2008, the political fable Cry Wolf by Paul Lake is indeed the self-proclaimed “Animal Farm for the 21st century.”

Like Animal Farm, in the opening chapters of the book, “Green Pastures Farm” is described as being completely run by domesticated animals who have assumed power after their master’s death. It is reported that a year has elapsed in which they have organized themselves and, through wise planning, have created a self-sustainable lifestyle without the machines and hands of men.

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“Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason.” —Benjamin Franklin

G.K. Chesterton is perhaps the greatest forgotten intellectual from the early twentieth century. (more…)

Inside Higher Ed recently had an interesting article, written by Lindsay Waters, called “A Call for Slow Writing.” The article is an adaptation from a talk so, ironically, it is terribly written. However, the message it presents is important.

Mr. Waters is the executive editor for the humanities at the Harvard University Press and a member of the editorial board of the Duke University Press journal boundary 2. He calls for the university to return to the essay as the criterion for tenure acceptance. He says that the modern university has bucked historical precedent and has accepted the book over the essay as the gold standard for tenure.

The book became the accepted form of academic scholarship because scholars lost the art of constructing good sentences, Mr. Waters argues. The publishing world tried to make up for this lack of quality with a higher quantity of that poor writing. Slowly this form of scholarly work became the norm and then the expectation. We are now at the point where the bad writers are the ones judging the writing of potential journal contributors and the ones who are deciding to which professors to give tenure.

Mr. Waters has made it his goal to turn this sinking academic ship around. Logically, he plans to start with the rediscovery of the proper sentence. He says, “What I’m saying is that the first step to re-establishing the essay as the standard in humanistic writing is to reinvigorate the sentences we write, so that, when one reads an essay, one feels it.” Later, he continues, saying, “As we prepare for the next thirty years, we need to refind our foundations to re-establish learning on the best foundations, and the best one of all is the sentence that the Renaissance reinvigorated. A sentence is not like a laundry line on which we pin words so they can flap in the wind. No, a sentence ‘is a sound in itself on which other sounds called words may be strung.’” The art of writing has declined because the fundamental tool has been stripped of its usefulness. Just as an exquisite painting is impossible to produce with a damaged brush, so an eloquent book is impossible to write with a denuded sentence.

Mr. Waters never explains why the return to the sentence is important, but the context of the article as a whole suggests an answer. He seems to say that by focusing on the sentence rather than the larger paragraph or even the work as a whole, the writers are forced to write slower. This slower writing produces smaller, better thought out works.

Mr. Waters presents the procedure of the editorial staff of boundary 2 for making the return to slow essay writing a reality. He says, “We decided to serve our readers more than our contributors.” This is being done in four ways: first, “ordinary language, not jargon” is demanded from all writers; second, all works must be “essays first, [and] scholarly articles second;” third, is the requirement of the “application of the ‘cui bono?’ test to all submissions;” and, fourth, the “contents of [the] journal must educate the readers and serve the audience, not the careers of the writers.”

He alludes to the danger in this approach, saying, “We need to do what we might fear will be dumbing down our publications by insisting upon clearer language set forth in rhythmical sentence.” However, he feels this is a risk worth taking for two reasons. First, the insistence upon clearer writing will produce better thinking. He elaborates, saying, “The reason for the persistence of gobbledy-gook is that it’s a lot easier to hide mediocre thinking under the cloak of gobbledy-gook.” By removing the “gobbledy-gook” scholars will be forced to produce better scholarship. The second benefit of works that are more accessible to the layperson is that the writing, and the corresponding ideas presented in the writing, will be read by more people and will have a greater impact on the world.

At its core, Mr. Waters’ concerns are legitimate. One of my professors is apt to say that professors are the worst writers of us all. He says that their books should be journal articles and their journal articles should not be written at all. His point is that the more words professors use to express an idea the worse writers they become. Further, the more they string out their ideas the more those ideas get lost.

There is a lot of truth to that sentiment. Many of the academic books I have read in college could have very easily been compacted into an essay of article length. Two influential works of recent years quickly come to mind that illustrate the opposite of this process. Francis Fukuyama produced an article version of “The End of History” before the book was published, and Samuel Huntington penned “The Clash of Civilizations” as a scholarly article before writing a larger tome. These and other examples prove that important ideas can be expressed in an essay.

Oftentimes, these ideas can be better expressed in essays. In the writing of my own undergraduate thesis, I am finding it much more helpful to read scholarly journal entries than the books written by the same experts on the same topics as those essays. The articles provide all the meat in a fraction of the reading time. Additionally, in the book versions the main thesis tends to get lost in all the verbiage. Sometimes forced brevity will compel a change in the writing style of some of the thickest academicians and would, hopefully, make their works more readable.

Forcing that brevity is not an easy task. Professors often enjoy the competitive shield that comes with erudition. It is infinitely harder to attack a theory you cannot quite grasp due to the inane amount of technical jargon and ill written sentences it contains. As Mr. Waters says, bad writing can create an illusion of superior intelligence, so many professors will resist the removal of the lax literary clothing that hides their pseudo-academic nakedness underneath.

Mr. Waters makes another valid point: professors should be disseminating ideas that actually encourage positive change in the real world. When most of their academic work spends years collecting dust on library shelves and is only accessible to the twelve other experts of that same particularly narrow field of scholarship, then there is a problem. Unfortunately, this is the sad state of much of the collegiate writing of today.

On the other hand, there is the danger of dumbing down the writing. Part of the job of the educated is to create a tide that lifts all the boats of a society. If the most educated of our society are not pushing the vocabulary envelope, then who will? If the professors of the world are not prodding us to expand the literacy of our minds, then who will? If the scholars of today do not encourage us to step out of our instant gratification, microwave world and enjoy the struggle of a 500 page tome, then who will?

Mr. Waters’ intentionally provocative suggestion “that anyone who publishes a book within six years of earning a Ph.D. should be denied tenure” is taking things too far. There is still a place for good books, and there is still a place for good academic books.

The key, though, is that they be good academic books. There is no such thing as content without form. Or, as my professor would say, your ideas do not matter if they are not communicated well. Maybe Mr. Waters’ suggestion that professors write slower and return to the era of essay writing is the way to accomplish the proper synthesis of thought and word. Maybe writing smaller is the way to thinking bigger, for the teacher and the learner both. It is an interesting thought for the collegiate world to ponder.

Originally published by Campus Magazine Online. Slightly revised version republished with permission.