Behind every writer lies a theological drama of truth. The prophet, for example, positions himself as one with divine knowledge imparting it to those without. The orator presumes to speak the truth of and for a unified crowd. Romantic poets create their truth by expressing themselves in words, personal essayists uncover it by reflecting on experience.
The commonest reason for bad prose in America, according to Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, is not understanding how this tacit and necessary choice of theology sets the stage for writing. Since inventing a theology from scratch is hard, Thomas and Turner present one to their audience. They call it classic style.
Unlike prophetic, oratorical, Romantic, and contemplative style, classic style takes truth as timeless, knowable, disinterested. The stylist then writes as though conversing with a friend and fellow truth seeker who wants to hear him out.
Classic style is naturally mathematical. In fact, Thomas and Turner consider Euclid’s Elements the paradigm because it follows from first principles and lays out each step for the reader to check themselves.
But the subject need not be mathematics to earn classic treatment. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates must defend himself in front of a court of law. But he opposes rhetoricians and their flowery language of persuasion. So he uses a conversational style adequate for his duty, to speak the truth. A similar contrast can be seen in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War when he comments casually and dispassionately on the formal orations of Pericles.
Classic style, ancient Greek in origin, then had a renaissance in seventeenth century France which proved its versatility: Descartes’ Discours de la Mèthode, Mme de La Fayette’s La Princesse de Clèves, Pascal’s Lettres Provinciales, Cardinal de Retz’s Mémoires, La Rochefoucauld’s Maximes and Mémoires, Mme de Sévigné’s Lettres, La Bruyère’s Les Caractères, and, later, Sainte-Beuve’s Port-Royal.
If classic style has such a rich legacy in mathematics, philosophy, and history and across treatises, novels, letters, and memoirs, why isn’t it used more often?
Because it demands more from the writer. Classic sentences look effortless because they are not. Invisibly, the writer is giving a performance. Every sentence appears to be a spontaneous utterance, as if it just occurred to the writer to say it, but is in fact a precise, often telegraphed calculation in order to reach the goal while ignoring side issues.
The reader is expected to keep up in this search for truth. Arguments must be grasped implicitly since classic style only ever appears to be presenting the world as it is. And it constantly makes fine, nuanced distinctions that cannot be skimmed. When time is of the essence, as in business memos or research reports, classic style is unsuitable.
To aid students in picking and sticking to the right conceptual stand, Thomas and Turner suggest Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetorics and Longinus’ On the Sublime. For students interested in reading off the stand from a text, they also recommend Morris Croll’s Style, Rhetoric, and Rhythm, Claude Rawson’s “The Character of Swift’s Satire,” and Twain’s Life on the Mississippi.
To choose classic prose is to commit to composing a perfect performance which is essentially fictional. We see through a glass darkly, and not every topic can be treated with the elegance of Euclid. The remit is to present the subject and exit, but that does not mean it can’t be done in world-shattering prose. Among the names of modern classic stylists numbered by Thomas and Turner, many of whom wrote for The New Yorker, is Jorge Luis Borges.