Is not the “No Style” style, in which most fiction is written, these days, what has been left us after the “keep it simple” demands of editors, publishers, and the influence of writers such as Hemingway, Orwell, and Camus?
And does that not leave us with works of fiction that read like film treatments more than literary endeavors?
Maybe the answer to the second question is a No, but sometimes I wonder whether it be better answered with a Yes. Hence my query.
Before 1950, the No Style style (hereinafter “NSs”) was not prevalent, even with popular fiction. F. Marion Crawford, for instance, had a “literary style” that attempted some subtlety in the prose, on a sentence by sentence basis (first novel, 1882; last, 1910). Jack Woodford, the “sex novelist” whose modus was never to mention a body part of an, um, intimate nature, sported sentences and paragraphs that can run circles around most of today’s bestselling authors (heyday, ’30s and ’40s). Even the initial run of the Hardy Boys (1927-1947) could boast more individuality in the literary presentation than nine tenths of what we get today.
Still, the NSs makes for easy and fun reading. As in the science fiction novel I opened up today (see cover, above).
Indeed, you can see the contrast in sf, where even today you are more likely to come across interesting writing qua writing than in most other genres.
Philip K. Dick wrote in the NSs, but Jack Vance certainly did not. Robert Heinlein wrote in the NSs, except in the prose failure (but story success) of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Alfred Bester was definitely not an NSs practitioner; A.E. van Vogt should have wished he had been. Terry Bisson writes beautifully, but close to NSs; Gene Wolfe is as close to a great literary artist the genre has produced, and writes far from the all-too-standard NSs pop fiction prejudice — and is not very popular because of it. I’ve read a lot of NSs authors. But my favorites tend to be those who did not and do not write quite that simply:
- Ray Bradbury
- Thomas M. Disch
- Michael Moorcock
- Harlan Ellison
- Brian Aldiss
- George Alec Effinger
- Lucius Shepherd
- J. G. Ballard
Any thoughts?
twv
Wirkman Comment 