Let the Dead Bury the Dead

Today I would like to discuss a particular complaint about something that doesn't seem to bother everyone: dead phrases and clichés. (Is that redundant? Well, I want to net the whole stinking lot of fish in one go.)

It disheartens me every time I read one of them in a book I am otherwise enjoying. In my review of Ron Chernow's generally excellent Washington: A Life, I found myself tripping over them disturbingly often, and it detracted from the pleasure I was experiencing as a reader.

Why? Because it demonstrates that the writer is not thinking about each word—not choosing them for freshness, vividness, and effect. As George Orwell wrote in "Politics and the English Language," one of the finest essays on writing ever written, if you simply slap in stock phrases, those phrases will do your thinking for you. To paraphrase Jesus, leave the dead behind.

Of course, not all metaphors and similes are clichés or dead phrases. If you can conjure a fresh image, then that is simply wonderful. It's good writing. But it still has to work. If it doesn't evoke what you're trying to evoke, then all you've done is demonstrate how damned clever you think you are. In which case, it would have been better to use an unevocative cliché.

And it's important to remember that this is only a subset of style, and of narrative craft. Chernow, for example, does so many things so well that in the end I forgave him for his stylistic lapses. He crafted characters brilliantly, paced his book wonderfully, and provided true insight into his subject, George Washington.

In my own writing, though, I want to get it all right—to be a storyteller and a stylist and a historian. No, I do not think I have attained perfection. I am sadly aware of shortcomings, and prepared to be hit in the future with new knowledge of my limitations. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that I don't know as much as I think I do, and I don't do things as well as I think I can.

But I hope to move in the direction of perfection. That means every word must be chosen specifically, every metaphor deployed with care. It isn't easy. But, in the stock phrase of my late high-school wrestling coach, "If it was easy, everyone would be doing it."

Setting the Record Straight (without sounding like a broken record)

Sorry for not posting for some time—I was under the weather there for a while. Today I'm going to address something that is a part of every biography, yet can easily be mishandled: Setting the record straight.

I mentioned briefly in a previous post that I reviewed H.W. Brands's American Colossus for the San Francisco Chronicle. (You can read it here). As you can tell, I had problems with the book. For our purposes here, in this blog about writing biography, the one that matters is that he got everything about Cornelius Vanderbilt wrong.

It sounds a little churlish to complain that someone didn't consult MY book (though I'm not the only one complaining—see John Steele Gordon's review in the New York Times.) But I went to great lengths to set the record straight. Cornelius Vanderbilt is someone who left behind no manuscript collection; his letters are scattered around in other people's papers. For generations, historians have been working with apocryphal sources, which include quotes that were simply invented. Brands didn't bother to check the old nonsense against my more careful version, and it shows. I've done all I can do, by writing a book and then reviewing his. Unfortunately, the nonsense he dredges back up is now in circulation again, as other reviewers quote his inaccurate quotes from Vanderbilt.

But how should we approach record-straightening within a biography? This is a tough one, because it is often necessary, yet it can diminish your work, and turn it into tedious debunking. What I tried to do was ask interesting questions about what the mythical, inaccurate stories tell us about how Vanderbilt has been perceived. I also tried to do more than simply provide the correct version—I tried to show how the truth exemplified something deeper about the man. 

For example, Brands repeats the nonsense that Vanderbilt had a "scornful antipathy" to trains until he was a very old man, and couldn't deny their importance any longer. The truth is that he was continuously, and deeply, involved in the railroad industry from its very formation. The rumor that he hated trains was spread by young brokers on Wall Street during the Civil War. The truth demonstrates how much older Vanderbilt was than his business contemporaries at that time; in an era of short life spans, he outlived nearly everyone he had worked with in youth and middle age. Those wartime brokers simply hadn't been around for the earlier phases of Vanderbilt's career. The truth also shows how quick he was to understand the importance of new developments on the economic scene. More than that, Vanderbilt almost never took things personally. He had been nearly killed in 1833 in a terrible train accident, but that didn't stop him from investing in—and riding—trains almost immediately afterward. By 1847 he took the presidency of his first railroad, the Stonington.

It's easy to mishandle the process of setting the record straight. Some readers don't care about how my version differs from the old tales—they just want the true story, period. But emphasizing how you're challenging received wisdom can underscore the significance of your contribution, and, handled correctly, make your new version even more interesting.

Character, character

In my recent review of Ron Chernow's Washington: A Life, I didn't give full enough credit to the many things Chernow does well. One of them is the creation of character.

Character is enormously important. Characters are, of course, people. An author largely succeeds or fails by the believability of his characters—the degree to which they seem to be full, real, human. This is as important in nonfiction as in fiction. But, of course, the nonfiction writer must work with evidence.

In using evidence to sketch a character, it's important to pay attention to details that speak to defining characteristics. Getting dressed every day is not a telling detail; insisting upon dressing in formal wear for every occasion, on the other hand, would be an interesting fact. But not every detail is obviously pertinent; we must immerse ourselves in the evidence to develop an intuitive feel for who someone is, then identify what details illuminate that essence.

When it comes to action, we should focus upon how it flows from who the characters are. This is successful writing, when even surprising developments seem perfectly believable, because they reflect the sense that the reader has been developing of a character's, er, character. And that's something Chernow does extremely well. We all could learn from his example.

Now an E-Book: My First Biography

You can now buy my first biography, Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, as an e-book. Amazon has it for sale here. Barnes & Noble has it for sale here.

Why now? After all, the book is eight years old. Because I urged my publisher to release an electronic edition, and the company agreed. I mention this because some may have formed the impression that I am some kind of Luddite, thanks to my posts about e-book pricing. No, I am not opposed to e-books. If anything, the rapid rise of e-books shows that interest in books remains alive and well, despite our click-click short-attention-span digital culture. That's good. I like people reading, no matter what format.

Do I still have qualms about digital pricing? Oh, yes. I can't stand blather on Amazon customer reviews about how "it stands to reason" that packaging, warehousing, and shipping comprise the bulk of a book's cost. That's simply uninformed nonsense. If that's so, why does Microsoft charge $150 for its Office product, when its cost of packaging, etc., is radically less than that of a heavy $35 hardcover? More important, why do you pay $150? Why pay $55 or more for a video game? Both software and books are intellectual property—what gives them value is not the delivery system, but the fact that they embody creations of the human mind. You don't imagine that you're mainly buying CDs when you buy software, nor should you imagine that you're mainly buying paper when you buy books. I've never heard of anyone who was enjoying a good book looking up and saying, "Gosh, honey, this book is printed on such nice paper! You should see this—the ink is fantastic!" No, you quote the passages that you like.

The value is in the content. And the content is the same no matter what the format, e-book or physical book.

Of course, I recognize that, under current conditions, digitization will tend to depress the price of books. Currently, the main force is downward. Yes, there are some savings with digital books, though nowhere near as much as people think. But most of the downward pressure is exerted by competition among retail outlets, particularly Amazon, which is willing to absorb losses in return for market share. Be warned: This downward pressure is building up resistance, which will spring back upward before too long. For one thing, Amazon cannot continue to absorb losses forever. But even if it succeeds in setting all e-book prices at $9.99, the spring back up will inevitably occur. That, or certain books will disappear from the marketplace.

A research-intensive book of the kind I write requires an upfront investment from the publisher in the form of an advance. Then comes a major investment of time and money on the part of the author, followed by lots of product improvement by the publisher—editing, copy-editing, design, etc.—as well as marketing. Unless a radically larger number of units sell at Amazon's magical $9.99 price point than have been selling in physical form, that $9.99 price will lead to a loss for the publisher, and ultimately the author. Already there is intense downward pressure on advances, and it will only grow worse as revenue from books falls. The inevitable result will be that serious, research-intensive nonfiction will be abandoned to academics (who are not rewarded professionally for writing well), or else book prices will go up. It's the fierce law of the market.

I couldn't have written The First Tycoon in my spare time. Nor could I have undertaken it if the list price on all copies sold was $9.99. It wouldn't have been possible. Self-publishing? I'm sorry, but that doesn't fly with my kind of work. For multi-year, research-intensive books, the self-publishing business plan goes like this: "First, be rich. Then, live off your wealth while you write."

But my point is this: Books are not interchangeable. The effort and process of writing them, let alone the experience of reading them, is radically different from book to book. None of that has anything to do with whether the book appears on paper or in digital form. There is no earthly reason why a one-size-fits-all price should apply to e-books. Yes, I want books to be cheaper, too, but readers should accept varied prices, and not be fooled into thinking $9.99 is a natural price for all e-books.