Blog 8 - "Plain Style"

Of the four writers examined this week, the art of “plain style,” writing with simple diction, simple sentence structure and clear images, and as described by Jimmy Breslin might best be exemplified by Breslin himself in “It’s an Honor.” The power behind the short, meaningful sentences in “It’s an Honor” serve to speak to the reader in a profound way, both in their descriptive quality and their emotional impact. For example, describing Jacqueline Kennedy’s stance on the day of her husband’s funeral, Breslin writes:

“She walked straight and her head was high. She walked down the bluestone and blacktop driveway and through shadows thrown by the branches of seven leafless oak trees. She walked slowly past the sailors who held up flags of the states of this country. … Even though they had killed her husband and his blood ran onto her lap while he died, she could walk through the streets and to his grave and help us all while she walked.”

The heart-wrenching image is clear and is clearly written for any audience. These are “simple, declarative sentences that people can read” but that also pack a punch, so to speak. For example, the following excerpt speaks of Pollard, the grave-digger:

“He is an equipment operator, grade 10, which means he gets $3.01 an hour. One of the last to serve John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who was the thirty-fifth President of this country, was a working man who earns $3.01 an hour and said it was an honor to dig the grave.”

Throughout “It’s an Honor,” the descriptions are evocative and the dialogue is expressive, yet both are done in a simplistic manner, an approach well suited for Breslin’s aim of “It’s an Honor”: to capture with dignity and poignancy the nation’s overwhelming loss.  

In the opposite spectrum, Truman Capote in “In Cold Blood,” perhaps, least follows Breslin’s description of powerful but plain writing. Capote cherishes the language, ranging his complex vocabulary from words such as agoraphobic to septuagenarian. His sentence structure and diction are arguably not done in plain style, but, instead, generate power in their complexities and the sheer amount of knowledge (see: detail) that went into the creation of “In Cold Blood.” While Capote’s writing does not make up “plain style,” it is, nonetheless, effective and successfully captures both the reader’s mind and heart throughout. An example of his eloquent, yet complex writing style is as followed:

“Christ!,” said Perry, glaring at the landscape, flat and limitless under the sky’s cold, lingering green – empty and lonesome except for the far-between flickerings of farmhouse lights. He hated it, as he hated the Texas plains, the Nevada desert; spaces horizontal and sparsely inhabited had always induced in him a depression accompanied by agoraphobic sensations. Seaports were his heart’s delight – crowded, clanging, ship-clogged, sewage-scented cities, like Yokohama, where as an American Army private he’d spent a summer during the Korean War.”

Another example of this deep-rooted, expressive style is:

“But secrets are an unusual commodity in a town the size of Garden City. Anyone visiting the sheriff’s office, three underfurnished, overcrowded rooms on the third floor of the county courthouse could detect an odd, almost sinister atmosphere. The hurry-scurry, the angry hum of recent weeks had departed; a quivering stillness now permeated the premises. Mrs. Richardson, the office secretary and a very down-to-earth person, had acquired overnight a dainty lot of whispery tiptoe mannerisms, and the men she served, the sheriff and his staff, Dewey and the imported team of K.B.I agents, crept about conversing in hushed tones. It was as though, like huntsmen hiding in the forest, they were afraid that any abrupt sound or movement would warn away approaching beasts.”

Capote, in the above previous example, exhibits his intellectual talent of setting a grand scene using captivating adjectives (quivering, angry hum, etc.) before hitting home a rather simple point in his characteristic articulate and expressive manner: the agents were afraid that they would mess up their lead if they did not keep things under wrap.

[Note: I was not sure what to make of Wolfe’s example in this scenario – “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” is clearly not plain style, however, it isn’t exactly complex, either. Wolfe seems to be outside of the range of the styles used by Breslin, Greene and Capote in the context of this question, as he captures the psychedelic experience using bouncy, auditory writing much like that of the bus setting in which the story takes place.]

Discussion question:

How do you feel about the all-encompassing way in which Tom Wolfe captures the “community narrative voice,” that reads almost directly inside the minds of those hallucinating on acid – does he go too far? Is it possible for Wolfe to write statements such as “a Cassady monologue on automotive safety is rising up from out of his throat like weenie smoke, as if the great god Speed were frying in his innards” and expect his audience to see it as journalism?