On Stylistic Freedom

This is what one of my A-level teachers wrote about me in the summer of 1989, shortly before I took my A level in English literature:

'He will impress the examiners by the quality of his information on the various texts and his ability to marshall evidence, both textual and critical, to support his interpetation. He will be less impressive in his own expression which still sometimes slips into excessively pompous and obscure phraseology. I hope that he'll manage to write simply, clearly and directly.' (my italics).

I have enjoyed looking back over alot of my old school reports. I highly recommend the experience. It yields an insight into the person you used to be of a type different and more objective than the one provided by the inscape of memory.

I wonder if my writing style is any less convoluted and stilted today, in the eyes of my readers.

Actually, if I can be frank, I only partially care, since I am happy with the way I write. But then, to me, the way I write is an expression of the way I think, a vehicle for the conveying of the content I want to put into the world. To me, style is not an end in itself, it is the servant of content. Content is key. I write because my mind and my heart and my spirit need to breathe, and want to aspire and because I feel I have things to say. Whether or not others think I have worthwhile things to say is ultimately irrelevant. Though I would prefer happy to unhappy readers, I write not plotting and scheming for approval but because I feel I have things I want, indeed sometimes need, to say.

In this way, to an extent, by articulating a vision and conceptually responding to my interrelationship with the universe, I carve out and mould for myself a self I can the better inhabit in this bizarre and mysterious world.

From birth overwhelming forces called parents, teachers and other children shape and shock us into a form of their own devising. For those compelled towards, or those who choose, the path to self-awareness, something must be done to wrestle back the pearl of authenticity, of soul, from the world. Having been compacted into yet one more brick in the wall, we must make real our innermost knowledge that we are no brick and that there is no wall. Lifting our eyes, and spreading our wings, needs to be done in reality too, not just in dreams.

Struggling to find ones own voice, in language, is a central way in which this can be done, perhaps the only way for those cerebrally disposed. Expressing one's own voice, in one's own style, in the privacy of diary and private notebook, or else, in a slightly less sheltered way, in letters to close friends, who will preferably love one, are two ways that one can give free vent to the expanse of one's soul in a benign and sympathetic context.

But it is when one must assume the public voice, which the world of schooling expects, and trains one for, that delicate decisions must be made about the degree to which one is willing to sacrifice authenticity of expression for the sake of conforming stylistically to the straightjackets of conventional form in the harsh and impatient public arena.

Was I really able to write what I wanted to say about Shakespeare's "A Winter's Tale", and Narayan's "A Vendor of sweets", and Tony Harrrison's 'V' in a form of phraseology less apparently stilted and pompous? Well, since I hadn't sought verbosity and the prolix as ends in-themselves, the answer must be no. I used the style I did because I felt it the appropriate vehicle to express what I felt and what I thought. I could have written in a simpler, plainer, less circuitous manner perhaps....but had I done so, would I have been able to say the same things, that is the question; and been able to say them, moreover, in the prescribed finite number of words?

I did not feel that I could, and also now, I do not know how my content can wear another dress than it does.

A question is this: what matters most - imitating conventional styles at all costs, in order to conform, and jump through someone else's formulaic hoop; or that we express what we really want to say..using the various devices and potentialities of language in the most suitable way we feel for our task?

Personally I love idiosyncrasy of form since I do not think it can exist, except there be an idiosyncratic mind and soul behind it.

I make no claims about the objective quality of my writing. This is for others to decide, since I am not objectivity. What matters to me is that I write what I mean, which I always try to do. For this task style is my servant, not my master.