Breathing Life into Words

 

Printed word cast its magic early. I went to it like the children of Hamelin in thrall of Pied Piper’s lute.  In my school years, I mostly read Hindi. I read magazines, comics, and abridged, translated versions of English classics. English books were a luxury we could ill afford.

Public libraries thrived in India of seventies and eighties and I hung on them for life. 

We moved to Bangalore when I finished eighth level in school. In those days, more than forty years ago, each residential hamlet in Bangalore had a public library known as City Central Library. Library in our locality, was quartered in a four-bedroom house. Librarian sat in the small hall at the entrance with his chest of drawers which contained records of the borrowed books. Living room, the dining room, and the bedrooms had tall racks lining every wall, choc-a-block full of books. There was a reading table with a few chairs in the dining room, perhaps the dining table of the house. Books were everywhere. Smell of old books, it felt, had seeped into the walls of the house. 

I took a membership and was introduced to a vast collection of English books for the first time. I came to know Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew stories. As with other class of books, I was a Johnny-come-lately in this genre too. I devoured these, two to three a day. When I remember my school years in Bangalore, they feel like halcyon days of reading. 

I read only fiction those days. I read as if under a spell. I was oblivious of the fact that language of the book was an ineluctable constituent of this magic. My attention was drawn towards the style of writing when I read more of classics and poetry. But I was abysmally ignorant about the ingredients of a good writing. I believed that good writers were naturally endowed with skills to churn out mesmerising prose. Their brains were always busting at their seams with newer stories. They just had to sit down and let this deluge pour out through their pen. 

Then I chanced upon Somerset Maugham. Instantly I recognised that the lure of his stories lay as much in his style of narration, as in the plots of the stories. But what was this style? I hadn’t a clue. Maugham’s exposition on the art of writing in an essay, burst on me like epiphany. I was surprised to learn that a piece of writing that feels inspired to a reader, was less inspiration and more perspiration for the author. 

As I came to nonfiction books, I noticed that prose style mattered more in this genre, where the concepts are often esoteric and lack the natural appeal of a story. I was astonished to read the lucid prose of Bertrand Russel, Carl Sagan, Stephen Halking, Steven Weinberg, Steven Pinker, Richard Dawkins and many others, as they discussed seemingly inaccessible subjects of philosophy, quantum physics, evolutionary psychology, and astronomy. 

Over the years, as I read more intensely, my love for the word deepened. Dictionary had been a favourite book, now thesaurus took its place. I was fascinated by the subtle differences between similar meaning words. I had known these differences for long through their usage in books I had read. To see this knowledge formalised in a volume, gave new joys. 

Of late, I have read a few books on the style of writing. A dense fool as I am in this field, each book spawns newer understanding. These books are as much fun as enlightening. I read accounts of many authors on their metier. I was astounded to learn that all of them worked hard to cultivate the fluent style which characterised their work. I was left speechless when I learned that writers like VS Naipaul, Graham Greene, Maugham – who produced a vast oeuvre of work in their lifetimes – wrote only four to five hundred words a day, in a rigour that lasted four to six hours daily. Books that read effortlessly are produced by a gargantuan effort. 

I randomly excerpt here few lines by various authors I have enjoyed, from the infinite treasure-trove of books, to illustrate the beauty in prose I have alluded to in previous paras. 

‘First I write a sentence. I get a tickle of an idea for how the words might come together, like an angler feeling a tug, on the rod’s line. Then I sound the sentence in my head…Then I tweak, rejig, shave off a syllable, swap a word for a phrase or phrase for a word. Then I sit it next to other sentences to see how it behaves in company. And then I delete it all and start again.’ Joe Moran, The Sense and the Sound of Sentence, his book on the art of writing a sentence.

“How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it [A house]; …to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.” VS Naipaul, A House for Mr Biswas, where Mr Biswas is lamenting the ignominy of dying without owning a house. 

Following is the opening sentence of Charles Dickens’ novel A Tale of Two Cities. It is long, very long, seems to end with every phrase, but then picks up again. Reader is left breathless but still pines for more. There is repetition of the words in each phrase, but instead of rankling the reader, it adds to a terrific rhythm.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.” 

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (A book that is otherwise not known for its scintillating prose) 

“Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.”  Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes, his masterpiece on the origin of Universe.         

I can do no better than end this disparate collection of hazy musings, with a passage from Somerset Maugham’s A Writer’s Notebook. Book ends with this passage where Maugham explains why he does not bother about new books and friends, in the years that remain him in life, which he thought were few. (Though Maugham who was then seventy, lived for two more decades). 

“…I am a passenger waiting for his ship at a war-time port. I do not know on which day it will sail, but I am ready to embark at a moment’s notice. I leave the sights of the city unvisited. …I read the papers and flip the pages of a magazine, but when someone offers to lend me a book I refuse because I may not have time to finish it, and in any case with this journey before me I am not of a mind to interest myself in it. I strike up acquaintances at the bar or the card-table, but I do not try to make friends with people from whom I shall so soon be parted. I am on the wing.” 

Every time I attempt to string thoughts into words, I am reminded of the fable of Sorcerer’s apprentice. Once, during master's absence, apprentice orders the magic broom to do the house chores. Broom springs to action and fetches pale after pale of water. Apprentice doesn’t know the magic to stop the broom and soon the house is flooded with water. Master returns and with a flick of his arm stops the broom. 

In hands of skilled writers pen behaves like sorcerer’s magic broom. In naive hands words act funny. Masters command these same unruly words to serve their purpose faithfully. I only knew the wonderful product of these endeavours. I have now learnt the travails of the process. Though endlessly arduous, it is no less magical.