I came across the book On Writing Well by William Zinsser when browsing the shelves of Half Price Books for my writing curriculum portion of my personal curriculum last fall. I grabbed it on a whim based on the reviews I found online. Please note that my version of the book is from 1985 and hopefully the newest version has some updates.
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The book started out engaging and pretty strong with some excellent writing but my honest review is, that this version at least, leaves a lot to be desired. Many of the authors William Zinsser references as great literary geniuses such as E.B. White were great writers but the references were so outdated, and quite frankly all white males, that it really took the weight of what Mr. Zinsser was saying and lessened it. I get that the book was written originally in the 1970s but so many of the references were Mr. Zinsser’s buddies or writing group pals that the book sort of felt like those speeches in middle school for class president where the candidates just name off their friends and don’t really say anything about what they will accomplish as president.
I was kind of meh about the book as well until I came to one of the later chapters that was all about word processors and how controversial they were in this new day and age. At that point I did look up the publishing date, which is 1985, so the reference did make sense for the time but it also felt like there was some resistance to new technology and I had a really hard time finishing the book at that point. The last 40 pages took me weeks to sum up the gumption to finish and I am glad it is over. I would be curious though to see if the newest version has been updated for more modern references but I am not curious enough to find it at the library at the moment.
Overall the book had some well written sections that flowed beautifully and I wonder if the more choppy sections where were the revisions to make the book more modern had been inserted as they did not flow as easily. I would tentatively recommend checking the most recent update out at the library for those that are looking to write humor as the author is well known for it but I would not recommend this version unless you would like to examine a time capsule from the 1970s and 1980s.
Links:
On Writing Well by William Zinsser
