The simple yet grand language of the King James Bible has pervaded American culture from the beginning--and its powerful eloquence.
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Alfred rated it it was amazing. This book is a thoughtful look at the impact of the King James Version on some of the masterpieces of American lit. You could use this-- I should use this-- as a primer on how to talk effectively about style.
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It is also a work of remark This book is a thoughtful look at the impact of the King James Version on some of the masterpieces of American lit. It is also a work of remarkable scholarship and enthusiasm which is enjoyably readable. If you need any convincing that the works in question, including the Hebrew Bible, is worth reading, this is a book you can consult. Mar 10, Kate rated it liked it Shelves: This was more narrowly academic than I expected I now know more than I ever expected to about biblical syntax , but interesting enough.
- Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible by Robert Alter;
- Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible.
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The best part was that it got me to read Faulkner. Aug 28, Douglas Wilson rated it really liked it Shelves: Dec 26, Anand rated it it was amazing. When people focus on novels, they tend to focus on plot, character, theme, and history. While all of these are valuable and essential to understanding why great novels endure, style often gets lost in the shuffle.
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While I cannot claim to have a fantastic writing style for fiction something I long for; I long to be on the heights of Melville, of Shakespeare, of Cormac McCarthy with his recondite lexicon and soaring biblical, Shakespearian, and Miltonic prose taken from the great Melville and Fau When people focus on novels, they tend to focus on plot, character, theme, and history.
While I cannot claim to have a fantastic writing style for fiction something I long for; I long to be on the heights of Melville, of Shakespeare, of Cormac McCarthy with his recondite lexicon and soaring biblical, Shakespearian, and Miltonic prose taken from the great Melville and Faulkner, and of Vladimir Nabokov, with his lovely eye for the visuals. Robert Alter, American professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at University of California, Berkeley, sets out to correct the great neglect of style in his fantastic study Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible.
But it is also a study of style in general, and as a study it is filled with marvelous insights about style that I think deserve attention.
He gives a fantastic example of Abraham Lincoln's speeches and how they show the gravity of the KJV that American writers tapped into. He then shifts toward his main focus: Does it matter much? It seems that it doesn't matter too much, as some major novelists have either average or bad styles Dreiser, Trololope, Balzac, Stendhal , and others are fantastic stylists Fielding, Flaubert, Melville, Henry James, Faulkner, Nabokov, Joyce.
In his defense of stylistic analysis against the general thrust of literary studies, Alter succeeds ably. One of the things I admire most about Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer is its attention to style, and Robert Alter successfully integrates stylistic and thematic analyses into his scholarly work for this novel, much like Prose did for her book that was aimed to the general reader or writer.
He also gives a brief and wonderful analysis of Moby-Dick that makes me want to delve into Melville's dark Shakespearean-Miltonic prose epic. I find a choice section from the first chapter that I want to quote here at length: In English, the great source of stylistic counterpoint is the two dictions deriving respectively from the Greco-Latin and the Anglo-Saxon components of the language: The language of the King James version falls by and large on the Anglo-Saxon side of this divide, though there are abundant elements of the Anglo-Saxon stratum of the language that have nothing to do with the King James Version.
The counterpointing of the two strata has been a feature of English prose since the seventeenth century, and we have already seen one striking instance of it in one of the excerpts quote from Melville. But it is Faulkner, clearly a kind of neo-Baroque stylist, who is the great master of this strategy of contrapuntal dictions. Literary works are made of words, but they emerge from and address issues in the real world What I would like to argue is that none of these considerations should entail an averted gaze from the artful, inventive, and often startlingly original use of language that is the primary stuff of literature, the very medium through which it takes in history, politics, society, and everything else.
The analysis of Moby-Dick and its polyphonic use of language instills in me a strong admiration of Melville's story and of his language. It makes me want to dive into his novel, and it gave me an appreciation for how Melville's style was both old-fashioned and innovative, in how it took from the history of literature and how it offered a fresh counterpoint to the old imitation of English prose that once dominated American literature though I would say that Nathaniel Hawthorne, Melville's friend and one of America's great romancers, was one of the best writers in the classical English style, and The Scarlet Letter , while not possessing the varied energy of Moby-Dick , is still a strange work of beauty, a work admired even by Melville himself.
Alter's study of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom is a strong case study of how even one of the most Latinate of writers, whose diction didn't quite take influence from the simple diction of the KJV, takes from the biblical lexicon of words and stories to create a large narrative of sin, struggle, and death. It's perhaps the longest section of the entire book, but I loved it. It is exhausting, insofar as Faulkner's writing is dense and exhausting, but it is worth the struggle to admire Alter's study and Faulkner's prose.
I really enjoyed Alter's writing about Saul Bellow's Seize the Day , which further strengthens my positive impressions of Bellow as one of the great postwar writers and one of the great literary stylists like Nabokov, Updike, Faulkner, and Joyce. Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises also gets a solid analysis for its biblical prose of paratactic succession of events and details, a succession that matches the Bible's own description of events and details, a succession that gives the virtue of plain force that allows for an openness of interpretation and meaning.
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I feel compelled to bring up a quote from Alter regarding how Hemingway's attention to spareness contrasted to the old style of 19th-century novels, a quote that brought new insight to style. What is at play in all this [in Thomas Hardy's style] is a fundamental assumption of the realist tradition of the novel that in England goes back to George Eliot, to Jane Austen, and, before them, to Fielding: To present this shifting system of interconnections, one needs a rich repertoire of syntactic subordination.
This quote really explains for me why 19th-century ornate prose was the way it was; it wasn't just describing and elaborating for the sake of elaborating though it may seem that way ; it was a way of seeing the world and all its manifold energies. Alter's study of Gilead and The Road both Pulitzer Prize winners are fantastic and worth the read, though I would have a more positive assessment of Cormac McCarthy than Alter seems to have according to him, McCarthy seems to be better as a stylist than as a storyteller; I see McCarthy as compelling not just for his wonderful style but because of the strangeness and energetic power of his best stories, which are simple yet complex.
All in all, Pen of Iron was one of the most satisfying literary studies I have read, not only for bringing to light the strong thread of the Bible and of the King James Version in the work of the strong American writers but also for bringing to our attention the role that style plays in the novel. Filled with insight, fantastic writing, well-placed and well-supported analysis, and a concise organization, Pen of Iron stands as one of the best works of literary criticism and history. Jul 31, Keith rated it it was ok. This is a book about literary style. This seems a narrow definition of style.
Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible
What of figurative language, use of rhetorical devices, perspectiv This is a book about literary style. What of figurative language, use of rhetorical devices, perspective, form etc. Does he not think that parallelism is a component of style? The Bible is suffused with it.
The element has deeply influenced American writing. That said, Alter makes two key points in the book.
First, that prior to the midth century, the King James Bible and mostly the Old Testament was a stylistic influence on the American prose, particularly of Melville, Faulkner and Singer as well as Lincoln, Hemingway and others. I enjoyed this chapter though I think it is difficult to parse the influence of Shakespeare from the influence of the Bible. His second, and secondary, point in the book is the lack of style in writing since the midth century.
He cites as the reason behind it the almost exclusive focus on ideology when examining a work of contemporary art. The examination of political power dynamics within the context of the book. In these discussion, style is, according to Alter, set aside and not discussed. Figurative language and rhetorical devices for the most part are perceived as inauthentic and contrived.
To me, that seems to needlessly lock away some of the key tools of a writer. This book ended up being a different than what I expect. And honestly, less than I expected. The book opens propitiously with a discussion of the style of King James Version of the Bible. Dec 22, Alan Gerstle rated it really liked it. I found this work of literary analysis clearly written and thoughtful; happily, it is jargon free.
Besides showing the influence of the King James Bible on American Prose--From Lincoln to Cormac McCarthy--it also provides a good argument why the gradual displacement of the book among the reading public in favor of mediocre, impersonal prose, has in general lowered expectations of what a 'well-written' book is, suggesting that it opened the way for ideologically-based analysis, which has no inter I found this work of literary analysis clearly written and thoughtful; happily, it is jargon free.
Besides showing the influence of the King James Bible on American Prose--From Lincoln to Cormac McCarthy--it also provides a good argument why the gradual displacement of the book among the reading public in favor of mediocre, impersonal prose, has in general lowered expectations of what a 'well-written' book is, suggesting that it opened the way for ideologically-based analysis, which has no interest in 'writing' and instead, an agenda-setting project to address purportedly more significant things like male dominance, gay studies, colonial studies, and so on. And it also discourages people from becoming creative writers, or at least makes them end up being lousy ones.
As John Updike says, fiction writers over the age of forty, read, in part a large part to get ideas for their own fiction Apr 14, Margaret Harris rated it really liked it. The author writes a fascinating observation about how certain American writers have reached eloquence by borrowing phrases, style, and ideas of human nature from the King James Bible—but more so in the 19th and early 20th centuries than lately.
Some of the examples surely merit re-reading: Both the downside and the upside of this little volume of scholarship, however, is that I had to keep a dictionary ever The author writes a fascinating observation about how certain American writers have reached eloquence by borrowing phrases, style, and ideas of human nature from the King James Bible—but more so in the 19th and early 20th centuries than lately.
Both the downside and the upside of this little volume of scholarship, however, is that I had to keep a dictionary ever at hand to look up words on almost every page! Jul 25, Stephen rated it it was amazing. It is often said that the three greatest influences on the development of English literature are the King James Bible, the Book of Common Prayer and the works of William Shakespeare. Almost all of the scholarly work pressing forward this assertion relies upon the demonstration of biblical themes in secular English literature and the adduction of phrases from the three sources in the later English fictional prose.
Robert Alter is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Cal Feb 11, SallyStenger added it. This book is a little bit different from what I thought it was. It is described as showing how the King James version has influenced literature. Believers Church Bible Commentary. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. The Book of Psalms: Strong as Death Is Love: Zion, City of Our God. The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer. Studies in the Gospel of Mark. Approaches to Old Testament Interpretation. Songs of a Suffering King: The Quest For Cosmic Justice.
Hardcover Number of Pages: Princeton University Press Publication Date: A Translation with Commentary Robert Alter. Among the many English translations of the Bible, a single one is responsible for the shape of some of the most iconic works of American literature, argues Alter, a comparative literature professor at University of California, Berkeley. Focusing not on the application of specific content but rather on the more elusive matter of style, Alter, author of more than 20 books, shows how the King James Version especially its Old Testament informed the work of Melville, Faulkner, Hemingway, Bellow, Marilynne Robinson, and Cormac McCarthy.