The War Against Cliché
The War Against Cliché (2001) is an anthology of essays, book reviews and literary criticism from the British author Martin Amis. The collection received the National Book Critics Circle award in 2001.
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- Has anybody read Martin Amis’s: The War Against Cliche?
It’s been several years but the book is great and the title summarizes the work of a literary critic, at their best, in my opinion.
- I have enjoyed Martin Amis's work, for instance "The War Against Cliché" is a compilation of his essays.
- Thank you for connecting 2 sayings of Murakami Haruki :)
1.痛みは避けがたいが、苦しみはオプショナル
Now, I don’t know how representative this book is of Murakami’s novelistic style, but I wonder: Is this low-maintenance, attention-deficit prose part of Murakami’s attraction, especially among the young? Do people enjoy reading him for the same reason they persist in listening to music as blandly familiar as Clapton’s? If Martin Amis is engaged in a “war against cliché” a phrase in danger of becoming a cliché itself then Murakami, on the evidence of this book, is a serial appeaser. How much does his thigh hurt? “Like crazy.” How do we know the weather is nice? Because as he tells us (twice) there’s “not a cloud in the sky.”
2.^_^？self-styled zero-percenter and book reviewer in the above(Norwegian Wood)
(Roughly, “growth is pain, nongrowth is unfortunate”)
- I love that Orwell collection.
An entire collection of Martin Amis essays and book reviews is called 'The War Against Cliché'[1] (your #1 above) because he too prioritizes resisting the all-too-easy tendency to rely on tired worn-out phrases. I have noticed that tabloid papers lean on this style of language more than traditional broadsheets - for me it is this (deliberate) literary lazy folksiness that sets them apart rather than mere content. Note Amis puts an elitist accent on cliché breaking Orwell's #5 but I like it because it reminds us that it is cleeshay rather than cleesh and I am not afraid of foreign tongues :)
Philosophy is another area (besides law) rife with jargon and, if I may say, prolixity. It is an area here care is rarely taken to express oneself plainly and simply. Schopenhauer has an essay called simply enough 'On Style'[2] which starts out "Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face.". I use this as a guiding light. Some philosophers are too important to avoid regardless of style (Hegel, Kant, Luhmann) but I am always and everywhere suspicious of any who are too verbose and needlessly opaque (Quine springs to mind). This is why I love Nietzsche so much, whatever you may say about his ideas - my God - his turn of phrase is sublime.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_Against_Clich%C3%A9
[2] http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/lit/cont...
- The deeper I get into writing, and what it means to write well, the harder it is. Reading Martin Amis's The War Against Cliche was a particularly pernicious moment for me. So was Lakoff and Johnson's Metaphors We Live By.
I think the question is this: does a rhetorical figure of speech help the reader or writer see the things being compared or figurized in a new way? If the answer is no, then perhaps we should look at those rhetorical things as literal, in order to remind ourselves of the power of rhetoric.
I favor metaphors and hyperbole like politicians favor hand-shaking and baby-kissing. But it to be done well.
