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The Sound on the Page: Great Writers Talk about Style and Voice in Writing
In writing, style matters. Our favorite writers often entertain, move, and inspire us less by what they say than by how they say it. In The Sound on the Page, acclaimed author, teacher, and critic Ben Yagoda offers practical and incisive help for writers on developing and discovering their own style and voice. This wonderfully rich and readable book features interviews with more than 40 of our most important authors discussing their literary style,
Dave BarryHarold BloomSupreme Court Justice Stephen BreyerBill BrysonMichael ChabonAndrei CodrescuJunot DíazAdam GopnikJamaica KincaidMichael KinsleyElmore LeonardElizabeth McCracken Susan OrleanCynthia OzickAnna QuindlenJonathan RabanDavid ThomsonTobias Wolff
Dave BarryHarold BloomSupreme Court Justice Stephen BreyerBill BrysonMichael ChabonAndrei CodrescuJunot DíazAdam GopnikJamaica KincaidMichael KinsleyElmore LeonardElizabeth McCracken Susan OrleanCynthia OzickAnna QuindlenJonathan RabanDavid ThomsonTobias Wolff
420 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2004
86 people are currently reading
543 people want to read
About the author
Ben Yagoda
22 books30 followersBen Yagoda is a retired professor of journalism and English. He's published a number of books and was a freelance journalist for publications such as The New Leader, The New York Times, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone. Yagoda currently lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania with his wife and two daughters.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
July 13, 2020
As I start, I am unsure how many stars I will give this book. I don’t think that has ever happened to me before. The book is useful, and I enjoyed it, but I skimmed sections too and tolerated parts. It really depends on your current knowledge and purpose, I guess, whether or not this book is worth your time.
Style/voice is hard, and this did prompt me to think, to re-think, so I was happy most of the time. The author explored the history of thought on style in writing, touched on many genres, and explored a lot of ground. Yagoda interviewed many other authors and included transcripts, and they were often welcome and interesting, even when they were sometimes too long. Ultimately, the main ideas were not new to me, which makes me wonder if I know the topic better than I thought. Nevertheless, it was a good review and opportunity for synthesis. Understanding style in writing, of course, is not the same thing as having developed one.
So, a few details…
Yagoda puts Strunk and White into a greater context. They “purport to be talking about ‘style,’ but they are really advocating a particular style.”
The debate about style is at least as old as Gorgias vs Plato. More modern combatants might be Natalie Goldberg standing in for Gorgias vs Struck and White for Plato.
Yolanda wrote his book because, “there didn’t seem to be a book that held two different but hardly contradictory ideas about style in its head: writers express themselves through it, and readers draw pleasure and sustenance from it.”
On p. 10 Yagoda writes that “almost everyone… since the start of the twentieth century has taken the same neo-Aristotelean tack that correctness, clarity, and simplicity are to be prized…” On p. 19 he remarks: “How odd, then, that so many current writers have such strong, distinctive, and affecting styles… clearly, discourse has not crippled practice.” He explores this contradiction, claiming that “an accepted middle style exists for any form of writing you can think of…”
If you don’t know a lot about the topic and want to, I recommend this book for sure, despite the filler in places. The descriptions and reflections on style are illuminating.
Other observations I liked:
p. 38 “The middle style doesn’t merely alternate between the literary and the colloquial: it plays them off against each other…”
p. 59 “Hemingway… didn’t have a sense of humor…”
p. 59 “Faulkner… has overtones of oratory and the pulpit.”
p. 60 Chandler: “…alternates between just-the-facts-ma’am terseness (mostly used for exposition) and highly rhetorical figuration, usually deployed when Marlowe is emotionally invested…”
p. 60-1 About Rick Bragg: “...violates the Hemingway code… oratorical cadences, with personification, with alliteration, with general Faulknerian purple…”
p. 86 “Of course, style is not the only relevant factor in considering a literary persona. The other is content…”
p. 90 “…I offer seven tendencies: competence, iconoclasm, extroversion, feeling, single-mindedness, tension, and solicitousness. Each one is a continuum… Together… make up a style…”
p. 133 John Updike: “Style as I understand it is nothing less than the writer’s habits of mind - it is not a kind of paint applied afterwards, but the very germ of the thing.”
p. 138 Joyce Carol Oates: “The pleasure is the rewriting. The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written. This is a koan-like statement, and I don’t mean to sound needlessly obscure or mysterious, but it’s simply true. The completion of any work automatically necessitates its revisioning.”
p. 157: “By the end of his writing career Hemingway was a shell - an encrusted style behind which lay pretty much nothing.”
p. 158 About Tom Wolfe: “...was canny enough to change gears…”
p. 162 “The downside of this kind of approach… is in the area of marketing. Stylistic zig-zagging dilutes the brand.”
p. 178 Susan Orlean: “Fundamentally, the most interesting writers are the most interesting people. I don’t think it would be possible to be an interesting artist without having a complicated, intriguing way of looking at the world. All you’re really doing is conveying that.”
p. 181 “A good deal of best selling American prose… a homogenization and formulaic reduction of certain features of robust and muscular style introduced… by Hemingway…”
p. 181 “Their own style is subservient to the sound of the character’s talk. Conversely, the more distinctive and assertive stylists among fiction writers tend to go easy on dialogue…”
p. 186 Michael Chabon: “I try to hit on the voice as quickly as I can. I will keep hammering away at the first sentence till I hit that tone…”
Style/voice is hard, and this did prompt me to think, to re-think, so I was happy most of the time. The author explored the history of thought on style in writing, touched on many genres, and explored a lot of ground. Yagoda interviewed many other authors and included transcripts, and they were often welcome and interesting, even when they were sometimes too long. Ultimately, the main ideas were not new to me, which makes me wonder if I know the topic better than I thought. Nevertheless, it was a good review and opportunity for synthesis. Understanding style in writing, of course, is not the same thing as having developed one.
So, a few details…
Yagoda puts Strunk and White into a greater context. They “purport to be talking about ‘style,’ but they are really advocating a particular style.”
The debate about style is at least as old as Gorgias vs Plato. More modern combatants might be Natalie Goldberg standing in for Gorgias vs Struck and White for Plato.
Yolanda wrote his book because, “there didn’t seem to be a book that held two different but hardly contradictory ideas about style in its head: writers express themselves through it, and readers draw pleasure and sustenance from it.”
On p. 10 Yagoda writes that “almost everyone… since the start of the twentieth century has taken the same neo-Aristotelean tack that correctness, clarity, and simplicity are to be prized…” On p. 19 he remarks: “How odd, then, that so many current writers have such strong, distinctive, and affecting styles… clearly, discourse has not crippled practice.” He explores this contradiction, claiming that “an accepted middle style exists for any form of writing you can think of…”
If you don’t know a lot about the topic and want to, I recommend this book for sure, despite the filler in places. The descriptions and reflections on style are illuminating.
Other observations I liked:
p. 38 “The middle style doesn’t merely alternate between the literary and the colloquial: it plays them off against each other…”
p. 59 “Hemingway… didn’t have a sense of humor…”
p. 59 “Faulkner… has overtones of oratory and the pulpit.”
p. 60 Chandler: “…alternates between just-the-facts-ma’am terseness (mostly used for exposition) and highly rhetorical figuration, usually deployed when Marlowe is emotionally invested…”
p. 60-1 About Rick Bragg: “...violates the Hemingway code… oratorical cadences, with personification, with alliteration, with general Faulknerian purple…”
p. 86 “Of course, style is not the only relevant factor in considering a literary persona. The other is content…”
p. 90 “…I offer seven tendencies: competence, iconoclasm, extroversion, feeling, single-mindedness, tension, and solicitousness. Each one is a continuum… Together… make up a style…”
p. 133 John Updike: “Style as I understand it is nothing less than the writer’s habits of mind - it is not a kind of paint applied afterwards, but the very germ of the thing.”
p. 138 Joyce Carol Oates: “The pleasure is the rewriting. The first sentence can’t be written until the final sentence is written. This is a koan-like statement, and I don’t mean to sound needlessly obscure or mysterious, but it’s simply true. The completion of any work automatically necessitates its revisioning.”
p. 157: “By the end of his writing career Hemingway was a shell - an encrusted style behind which lay pretty much nothing.”
p. 158 About Tom Wolfe: “...was canny enough to change gears…”
p. 162 “The downside of this kind of approach… is in the area of marketing. Stylistic zig-zagging dilutes the brand.”
p. 178 Susan Orlean: “Fundamentally, the most interesting writers are the most interesting people. I don’t think it would be possible to be an interesting artist without having a complicated, intriguing way of looking at the world. All you’re really doing is conveying that.”
p. 181 “A good deal of best selling American prose… a homogenization and formulaic reduction of certain features of robust and muscular style introduced… by Hemingway…”
p. 181 “Their own style is subservient to the sound of the character’s talk. Conversely, the more distinctive and assertive stylists among fiction writers tend to go easy on dialogue…”
p. 186 Michael Chabon: “I try to hit on the voice as quickly as I can. I will keep hammering away at the first sentence till I hit that tone…”
December 10, 2009
I first read pieces of it for a writing class, and after the class was over it ended up on my "to read" shelf. The author attempts to define, survey, and categorize writing style though both inspection of texts and insightful conversations with an amazing selection of writers. Not just popular and literary fiction writers, but critics, journalists, poets, humorists and writers of most every stripe and color are interviewed discussing their own works and style and the style and works of their influences (and counter-influences as well.)
I could have ended this review with the clichéd "...and it changed the way I...", but instead I will say that as a reader it fascinated me to watch linguistic gymnastics of an author’s style analyzed down to the separate movements that a page, a paragraph, and even a sentence take to land. As a fledgling writer, I found it more inspiring and interesting than any navel gazing “on writing” book. The focus was not on how, but on what. What does style mean, what goes into constructing it.
I could have ended this review with the clichéd "...and it changed the way I...", but instead I will say that as a reader it fascinated me to watch linguistic gymnastics of an author’s style analyzed down to the separate movements that a page, a paragraph, and even a sentence take to land. As a fledgling writer, I found it more inspiring and interesting than any navel gazing “on writing” book. The focus was not on how, but on what. What does style mean, what goes into constructing it.
March 16, 2017
Yes, it's the kind of thing I like, but it was well-written, too. And fun -yes, fun. Yagoda interviews a wide range of writers and quizzes them on their ideas and feelings about style, about their own "voice" in writing. So it's a lot of opinions and approaches, not just Yagoda's. SO interesting. I loved it.
January 20, 2020
I acquired this book with considerable excitement, which I held on to through most of the long-winded introduction, and quickly lost thereafter. The introduction is worth a read due to a helpful critique of the Strunk and White view of "style." I would also recommend Chapter VIII, Style According to Form, specifically the section for Fiction, which includes a great interview contribution from Michael Chabon. The pages in between might be enjoyable to a true student of literary criticism, and they include some real gems that the author excerpts from other writers on the subject, but one really has to slog through the dross to find them. Another peeve: the author fills his pages with block-quoted excerpts that run an entire page (or two!), which lends a flavor of a rush manuscript that needed another round of editing. Perhaps the following passage at the start of Chapter III best reveals why I did not care for this book about style and voice in writing:
"But this is a book about something else, writers who are or want to be visible. What distinguishes their prose from that of the middle stylist? A lot of things, as this chapter tries to explain. Start with bad writers: the indifferent, inconsistent, the dull, the utterly conventional, the tone deaf, and the grammatically, verbally, and orthographically incompetent. Their prose is certainly noticeable, filled as it is with cliches of all kids, mistakes of all kinds, rhythymless sentences and paragraphs, repetition in sentence structure, and unintended word repetition. ..."
When I read that, I reread the paragraph and the one before it, hoping for a sign that the author was being ironic. Alas, there is no apparent irony whatsoever.
"But this is a book about something else, writers who are or want to be visible. What distinguishes their prose from that of the middle stylist? A lot of things, as this chapter tries to explain. Start with bad writers: the indifferent, inconsistent, the dull, the utterly conventional, the tone deaf, and the grammatically, verbally, and orthographically incompetent. Their prose is certainly noticeable, filled as it is with cliches of all kids, mistakes of all kinds, rhythymless sentences and paragraphs, repetition in sentence structure, and unintended word repetition. ..."
When I read that, I reread the paragraph and the one before it, hoping for a sign that the author was being ironic. Alas, there is no apparent irony whatsoever.
January 22, 2012
If content is the what and style is the how, this book is the what on the how. It was a random pick off my small town library's shelf, at a time when I was struggling with what my writing voice ought to be. Yagoda didn't solve the problem for me but he took me on a wonderful tour of writers who've certainly given it thought. He built his book with essays, punchy quotes from the quick and the dead, and a good many interview excerpts. I left it on the kitchen table and snatched a few pages at a time over salad and scrambled eggs. The method worked because it's a book that needn't be consumed in large chunks. (Atrocious pun intended.)In the end, I can't say I'm any closer to formulating my style and that, perhaps, is one of Yagoda's 'take away' points (Lord, did I just make another food pun?): style is recognizable but how it got that way is for each writer to discover and keep discovering.
April 13, 2012
Voice in writing is a difficult subject to talk about: We know what it is, but apart from dissecting samples from different writers, the discussion is oftentimes largely abstract. This author doesn't examine samples to reveal the subtle characteristics that define voice. What I don't understand is why.
August 4, 2018
This book started off interestingly but then got more boring as it went on. I gave up about halfway through and didn't finish it. It would have been more interesting to me if I had recognized more of the writers mentioned.
My favorite quote was by Dave Barry: "I always wanted my column to look more like it was a total mistake that I had gotten hold of the word processor."
My favorite quote was by Dave Barry: "I always wanted my column to look more like it was a total mistake that I had gotten hold of the word processor."
October 17, 2007
Voice is one of the hardest things to describe, let alone teach, in writing. This long-time writer, editor, and teacher weaves together interviews with some of the best writers working in English (from Greil Marcus to Junot Díaz) to get that roots of this pesky thing called “style.”
January 26, 2009
This book totally helped me think more critically about my writing style and how to improve it. I wish there were more books out there like this one.
May 22, 2019
These are two subjects discussed, talked about and taught in the academia and successful writers. Yet they remained remote to newbies and a mystery when explained by those successful writers in countless books and written materials. This book attempts to explore style and voice from history to the present. From style and voice of oral delivery of stories and rare written documents that existed since the beginning of time. In a classic Yagoda style, he presented how current writers have found their style and voice by interviewing forty authors and reviewing different books.
The book isn’t academic, I must say. Instead it is practical and very useful to writers. Though I suggest this book for someone who has written or drafted thousands of words and is confronted with question of style and voice. One has to go through the real writing process and not merely putting on a blog or a journal.
Sad to say, that this book will not offer anything to make your book popular or bestseller. Which had been discussed mostly by other authors.
The book isn’t academic, I must say. Instead it is practical and very useful to writers. Though I suggest this book for someone who has written or drafted thousands of words and is confronted with question of style and voice. One has to go through the real writing process and not merely putting on a blog or a journal.
Sad to say, that this book will not offer anything to make your book popular or bestseller. Which had been discussed mostly by other authors.
November 25, 2012
Technically I didn't 'finish' this book nor do I want to. The author's rather pompous about his opinions on what is what and a lot of his opinions are black and white. He has a few good points but there's a lot more that's just dry and annoying to read. I wouldn't recommend this book.
Want to read
April 1, 2010Fun to flip through. Some great snippets from great writers I had not seen in other interviews.
Read
November 14, 2007The few pages I skimmed were pretentious and snobby and peppered with the f-word. I decide not to waste my time on it.
February 24, 2015
This was required reading for school. Ugh.
May 16, 2016
A good read about writers and their style/voice and writers on other writers style/voice. Interesting.
December 31, 2019
A really helpful book for writers. It's all about writing style, word choice, sentence length, cadence, etc. It's hard to describe the concept of "voice" in writing, but this book does it well.
May 26, 2024
Books about writing offer varied advice and often contradict themselves. Should everyone write like Hemingway? Is it ok to diverge from Strunk and White’s style? How can I inject personality into writing without putting off my audience (or my editor)? These are common issues for writers, especially new or aspiring ones, and Ben Yagoda has decided to address them. He has interviewed and compiled results on acclaimed writers from many fields, genres, and styles. He presents his findings and garnered insights in this book.
He divides his investigation into two parts: history and practice. The historical facet is interesting because it captures how style changes over time. Without a grasp of the past, it’s hard to figure out why we got here and how to move forward. At times, this section can involve a lot of names that I’m frankly unfamiliar with, but Yagoda offers erudite insights about topics like how speech and writing mingle or how modern writing should marry the heart and the head.
The section on practice is filled with transcripts of interviews from great authors. Yagoda himself is not the main driving force here as much as the questioner. The variety of writers this second-half deep and wide. Its meatiest chapter is about forms and genres; in 58 pages, that chapter looks at an interview with one-or-more expert in each writing form – personal essays, stories, poetry, online, etc. – and discusses how that person gained a remarkable style.
This book seems most suited towards writers in an educational degree program, but newer writers on their own can benefit from the self-discipline of reading Yagoda’s words. He concludes by noting that the cultivation of a writing style occurs throughout an entire life. It accompanies the building of inner strength and is most enhanced through reading, not practice. Thus, even experienced writers (and middle-aged fogeys like myself!) can benefit from his studied expertise. My authorship will benefit from the rich tapestry of quotations noted here.
He divides his investigation into two parts: history and practice. The historical facet is interesting because it captures how style changes over time. Without a grasp of the past, it’s hard to figure out why we got here and how to move forward. At times, this section can involve a lot of names that I’m frankly unfamiliar with, but Yagoda offers erudite insights about topics like how speech and writing mingle or how modern writing should marry the heart and the head.
The section on practice is filled with transcripts of interviews from great authors. Yagoda himself is not the main driving force here as much as the questioner. The variety of writers this second-half deep and wide. Its meatiest chapter is about forms and genres; in 58 pages, that chapter looks at an interview with one-or-more expert in each writing form – personal essays, stories, poetry, online, etc. – and discusses how that person gained a remarkable style.
This book seems most suited towards writers in an educational degree program, but newer writers on their own can benefit from the self-discipline of reading Yagoda’s words. He concludes by noting that the cultivation of a writing style occurs throughout an entire life. It accompanies the building of inner strength and is most enhanced through reading, not practice. Thus, even experienced writers (and middle-aged fogeys like myself!) can benefit from his studied expertise. My authorship will benefit from the rich tapestry of quotations noted here.
Read
June 23, 2020In Ben Yagoda's The Sound on the Page: Style and Voice in Writing, the author offers not a how-to manual for authors, but rather an indepth look at identifying and developing a distinctive style and voice. Older evaluations, considered to be classic instructional guides to writing, like Strunk and White's The Elements of Style (a vital assigned reading for most college freshmen, snooze), focus on the correct writing style: simple and direct without elaboration. But Yagoda convincingly argues that authors like Dave Eggers, Junot Diaz, and David Foster Wallace are very stylish, (not to mention very successful) risk-taking contemporary writers.
I chose to read The Sound on the Page because Yagoda's About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made is a personal favorite. (I would also highly recommend About Town to book worms/ history nerds. The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism is next on my geeky reading list.) Interviews with a melting pot (both in background, style, and subject matter) of over 40 writers also sweetened the deal. Interviews with Christopher Hitchens, Junot Diaz (holler), Bill Bryson, and Camille Paglia offer something for everyone. I whole heartedly recommend this book. It is not as boring as it sounds, scout's honor.
As an added bonus, the author focuses on the word processor as the be-all-end-all form of recording and transcribing. PCs or "tools on style" are grumbled about for a good twenty pages. I thought this would be an annoying chapter, but as a public educator/ literacy trainer/ technology user with special needs, I LOL'd and LMFAO several times over. Pretty appropriate for technology literacy instructors aka Gmail/ wifi/ Craigslist/ Facebook gurus: the underrated and underappreciated CTEP nerds of the greater Twin Cities.
I chose to read The Sound on the Page because Yagoda's About Town: The New Yorker and the World it Made is a personal favorite. (I would also highly recommend About Town to book worms/ history nerds. The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of Literary Journalism is next on my geeky reading list.) Interviews with a melting pot (both in background, style, and subject matter) of over 40 writers also sweetened the deal. Interviews with Christopher Hitchens, Junot Diaz (holler), Bill Bryson, and Camille Paglia offer something for everyone. I whole heartedly recommend this book. It is not as boring as it sounds, scout's honor.
As an added bonus, the author focuses on the word processor as the be-all-end-all form of recording and transcribing. PCs or "tools on style" are grumbled about for a good twenty pages. I thought this would be an annoying chapter, but as a public educator/ literacy trainer/ technology user with special needs, I LOL'd and LMFAO several times over. Pretty appropriate for technology literacy instructors aka Gmail/ wifi/ Craigslist/ Facebook gurus: the underrated and underappreciated CTEP nerds of the greater Twin Cities.
February 20, 2025
The Sound on the Page is a helpful introspective look at the high-level concepts surrounding writing style.
The research and perspectives offered in the novel are worthwhile, and Yagoda does an excellent job drawing connections between different concepts and practices in a way that is informative and enlightening.
I would have appreciated a somewhat more academic approach to the concepts that are explored, which are primarily evaluated through the lens of opinions from notable writers and Yagoda's analysis connecting them. Additionally, for a book that's all about style and that points out the broadly accepted and preferred usage of a "middle" style for works that are primarily intended to communicate clearly and concisely, Yagoda does somewhat frequently allow an excess of stylistic writing to intrude into the analysis. It can be a welcome addition in spots, but I generally found it to be more distracting than helpful.
There are some meaningful elements that are missing that I would have liked to have been included. Notably, Yagoda hints at, but never explicitly explores how stylistic preferences in the reading and critical analysis communities have changed over time. I would have loved to have seen a detailed chronology of how mainstream views about the value/appropriateness of more highly stylized writing changed over time, and what (if any) specific factors may or may not have contributed to those shifting preferences. Similar meta-analyses of the concepts of style was less present than I would have liked.
Overall, a very helpful exploration for readers who are looking to be able to view writing with a more refined critical eye or for writers who are actively exploring their own relationship with words and style, but it does fall somewhat short of being a definitive text on the topic.
The research and perspectives offered in the novel are worthwhile, and Yagoda does an excellent job drawing connections between different concepts and practices in a way that is informative and enlightening.
I would have appreciated a somewhat more academic approach to the concepts that are explored, which are primarily evaluated through the lens of opinions from notable writers and Yagoda's analysis connecting them. Additionally, for a book that's all about style and that points out the broadly accepted and preferred usage of a "middle" style for works that are primarily intended to communicate clearly and concisely, Yagoda does somewhat frequently allow an excess of stylistic writing to intrude into the analysis. It can be a welcome addition in spots, but I generally found it to be more distracting than helpful.
There are some meaningful elements that are missing that I would have liked to have been included. Notably, Yagoda hints at, but never explicitly explores how stylistic preferences in the reading and critical analysis communities have changed over time. I would have loved to have seen a detailed chronology of how mainstream views about the value/appropriateness of more highly stylized writing changed over time, and what (if any) specific factors may or may not have contributed to those shifting preferences. Similar meta-analyses of the concepts of style was less present than I would have liked.
Overall, a very helpful exploration for readers who are looking to be able to view writing with a more refined critical eye or for writers who are actively exploring their own relationship with words and style, but it does fall somewhat short of being a definitive text on the topic.
May 7, 2020
Instagram Review: https://www.instagram.com/p/B_568xWAz-E/
This book doesn't do so well with the readers and I can see why. This book is a slog. It is dense as pea soup. I can't count the number of times I found myself snapping awake and trying to toss this book across the room in terror. So why did I stick with it, you might ask? Well, it was kind of worth it.
This book contains a lot of great information. I really hate the organization and the formatting, but I love the form. I know, figure that one out. What I mean is, Yagoda relies a great deal for his content on interviews with a slew of successful writers in a number of fields, which he presents side-by-side. In a book about voice, you receive exposure to a dozen or more unique voices in close proximity, often and subsequently. The form of Sound on the Page is clever, however you look at it, and you will learn, being exposed to it.
Yagoda's central idea through the book has to do with what he calls "middle style." If a naked voice like Hemingway's is at one end of the spectrum and an ostentatious voice like Joyce's is the other end, Yagoda argues the "middle style" is the most commercially appealing. He encourages writers to simply be aware of this balance when cultivating their own voice.
And yet, spend five seconds reading Yagoda's prose and it becomes obvious his own style gravitates nowhere near the middle. His own voice is ostentatious enough to have earned him criticisms of snobbishness and pretentiousness in other reviews. (I'm not judging. I get the same criticisms for my natural voice.)
So if a heavy literary voice bothers you, you may not like this book. But if you want to learn about voice, reading a book written in an obvious voice might not be the worst place to start.
I hope you are all taking care of yourselves and each other. Thank you to the parents-turned-teachers and the front line! <3
This book doesn't do so well with the readers and I can see why. This book is a slog. It is dense as pea soup. I can't count the number of times I found myself snapping awake and trying to toss this book across the room in terror. So why did I stick with it, you might ask? Well, it was kind of worth it.
This book contains a lot of great information. I really hate the organization and the formatting, but I love the form. I know, figure that one out. What I mean is, Yagoda relies a great deal for his content on interviews with a slew of successful writers in a number of fields, which he presents side-by-side. In a book about voice, you receive exposure to a dozen or more unique voices in close proximity, often and subsequently. The form of Sound on the Page is clever, however you look at it, and you will learn, being exposed to it.
Yagoda's central idea through the book has to do with what he calls "middle style." If a naked voice like Hemingway's is at one end of the spectrum and an ostentatious voice like Joyce's is the other end, Yagoda argues the "middle style" is the most commercially appealing. He encourages writers to simply be aware of this balance when cultivating their own voice.
And yet, spend five seconds reading Yagoda's prose and it becomes obvious his own style gravitates nowhere near the middle. His own voice is ostentatious enough to have earned him criticisms of snobbishness and pretentiousness in other reviews. (I'm not judging. I get the same criticisms for my natural voice.)
So if a heavy literary voice bothers you, you may not like this book. But if you want to learn about voice, reading a book written in an obvious voice might not be the worst place to start.
I hope you are all taking care of yourselves and each other. Thank you to the parents-turned-teachers and the front line! <3
September 17, 2024
Very dense book. Took me a while to get through. But there's a lot of great information in here about how to understand what style is and how to differentiate it. I will have to reread it multiple times to absorb everything because I'm currently going through burnout, but it's immensely helpful as a reader and writer. I just really wish the author wasn't so dismissive of stories written after 1980.
January 4, 2025
read for class.
fun, humourable, but obviously an opinionated book.
i think the insights are nice and allows you to explore who you are as a writer and how it translates to others.
enjoyed this more than i would figure as a required reading.
fun, humourable, but obviously an opinionated book.
i think the insights are nice and allows you to explore who you are as a writer and how it translates to others.
enjoyed this more than i would figure as a required reading.
February 20, 2019
Wow. What a great book on writers voice. Voice as in the whole person, not first versus third. Highly recommend to those interested in understanding others' or developing one.
Read
December 11, 2020Yagoda asked dozens of successful writers to discuss their own style and voice. A fascinating analysis of a couple of tricky concepts for writing students.
April 6, 2017
The bits I liked didn't even fill two pages - most of this book is yadayadayada blahblahblah filler. Ben Yagoda put a ton of work into it and then let us know, dragging us through everything regardless of relevance or merit. We get the brunt of his scholarly research on style, which reads like a sets of interminable term papers, and musings from the 40 writers he interviewed; some of this is on point but much is not.
Read
May 21, 2018Too technical for me at this time. The writer's voice is very much like a research, journalist type, and although he had plenty of interviews with writers that could be very interesting, it just wasn't for me right now.
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