Writing Badly Is Easy

by Amitava Kumar

When Lord Macaulay introduced English as the instrument of education in India, he
also bequeathed to us a legacy of language-use that is often stiff and bureaucratic. This
awkwardness plagues academic, journalistic, legal, even creative writing in India.
You fail as a writer if your writing is not concrete, if it is vague and abstract, and your reader
is unable to see what you mean. Writing Badly is Easy is a style guide for those who want to
write well. It presents advice given by award-winning creative writers—including Jonathan
Franzen, Jennifer Egan, Suketu Mehta, Marilynne Robinson, George Saunders and Colson
Whitehead—and noted thinkers like Alain de Botton, Andrew Ross, Anna Tsing, Kathleen
Stewart and Rob Nixon, as well as numerous others. Amitava Kumar’s own essays on writing,
including his collaboration with Teju Cole, demonstrate the importance of blurring the line
between critical and creative writing. A manifesto for writing that is exuberant, imaginative
and playful, Writing Badly is Easy will change the way you think about reading and writing,
and reveal the pleasures to be had in the inventive use of language.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing

320 pages, Hardcover

Published April 20, 2019

About the author

Amitava Kumar is a novelist, poet, journalist, and Professor of English at Vassar College. He was born in Bihar, India; he grew up in the town of Patna, famous for its corruption, crushing poverty, and delicious mangoes.

He is the author of Nobody Does the Right Thing; A Foreigner Carrying in the Crook of His Arm a Tiny Bomb; Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate, a New York Times “Editors’ Choice” selection; Bombay—London—New York, a New Statesman (UK) “Book of the Year” selection; and Passport Photos. He is the editor of several books, including Away: The Indian Writer as an Expatriate, The Humour and the Pity: Essays on V. S. Naipaul, and World Bank Literature. He is also an editor of the online journal Politics and Culture and the screenwriter and narrator of the prize-winning documentary film Pure Chutney.

Kumar’s writing has appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, Vanity Fair, The American Prospect, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hindu, and other publications in North America and India.

Reviews

[Resh (The Book Satchel) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this book if you love the idea of writing. It isn't a help book — so not very helpful as a guide. Rather it makes you think, reflect, disagree and simply stare out into space. It makes you fall in love with the idea of writing effectively. There is advice from some prominnent writers, Amitava himself lists his best tips for getting writing done, there are so many other books on writing/good writing mentioned (you'll want to read them all even when one is mentioned in a single sentence and I think that IS good writing?), how academic writing can be non boring etc.

I wrote a list on books that make up a good writing bundle — This list might be useful to you if you are looking for books on writing |

Much thanks to Aleph for a copy of the book. All opinions are my own.

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[Chitra Ahanthem · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did you know that when the Wikileaks expose happened, there were political tumbles emerging the world over, but that it also had a stringent criticism of the long winded way of English usage by India's diplomats, bureaucrats and officials?But then we don't need Wikileaks to say about how a colonial language has evolved in India (as in the world at large) becoming a language that has become central to upward social mobility, access to communication and opportunities and yet continues to be written in convoluted ways.

Amitava Kumar's Writing Badly is Easy looks at the politics, the art and craft of writing in a way that is readable yet effectively making a resonance with readers:every chapter leaves the reader more aware of how to write better and why.This is not a manual with exercises on how to write better: rather, it is a series of intimate essays linking the opinions of a great many writers who are authors, essayists, academics and quoting from their works.The author places the matter of writing as a discipline to one of creative flashes, of writing from research to writing from and by impulse and experience but to put the core task of writing as a process of simplifying and keeping to the basics, never to meander with a string of big words that do not fit together or serve any purpose except maybe to show off one's vocabulary.

The chapters are short but contain multitudes of books and essays to look up and learn further from.Amitava Kumar's writing settles on you: the writing tips, the contemplation on what makes good writing be it academia or journalism or creative writing, all of it does not end as mere text but as something solid and true and in need of further contemplation. This is a book that people who want to write well or better or both, should read and keep on re reading.

[Iqra Tasmiae]

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[Satdeep Gill · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been such an interesting conversation that I want to have again. Maybe in a couple of weeks.

Must for any aspiring writer. Be it academic or creative. What's the difference anyways?

[Shubham Gupta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kumar is honest about the kind of book that he wants this to be -- a sort of freewheeling collage à la Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts -- but the self-awareness doesn't quite translate into execution.