Stein on Writing by Sol SteinReview by: William Relling Jr.The Library Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 3 (Jul., 1997), pp. 308-309Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40039732 .

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308 THE LIBRARY QUARTERLY

mean ages at the time of receiving of the Nobel prize. In addition, Zuckerman could have considered other variables outside personal achievements in her evaluation of scientific activities in the social sciences, which is based on standard interpretive models of themes of research, publication activities, and attempts at quantitative prognosis of Nobel quality work. However, all the central conclusions of the author about the nature of scientific rewards, its social functions, and role in the stratifica- tion of the scientific community, remain just. She is faithful to the statistical aspects of her book. The interviews with the laureates from the United States are priceless. I am glad to see this in print again and hope it enjoys a long life.

Galina F. Gordukalova, Faculty of Library Studies, Saint Petersburg State Academy of Culture

Stein on Writing. By Sol Stein. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995. Pp. xii+308. $23.95 (cloth). ISBN 0-312-13608-0.

One could hardly assail Sol Stein's credentials as an individual eminently qualified to publish a book sharing his personal "craft, techniques and strategies" on how to compose fiction and nonfiction. According to the biographical information on the book's jacket, Stein has been a writer, editor, and teacher of writing for nearly four decades. Among the people he has worked with are some of the twentieth century's more renowned men of letters: James Baldwin, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Budd Schulberg, Jacques Barzun, and Lionel Trilling, to list only a few.

However, Stein's professional qualifications do not do much to make Stein on Writing the helpful "how-to" book it could - or should be. Not that the book is without merit; it isn't. Instead it is somewhat like the old joke: in regards to Stein on Writing, there's good news . . . and there's bad news.

The good news is: there are genuine nuggets here for aspiring writers to mine. No one - not even Sol Stein - spends close to forty years making a living as a writer and editor without learning something that may be imparted to others about the craft of putting words to paper.

Take, for example, Stein's advice on establishing and maintaining point of view in fiction. At the end of chapter 13, he provides a simple but thorough checklist against which any writer may measure whether he or she has maintained a consis- tent point of view in the telling of a story - and the checklist is clear, direct and, most of all, right. Something of value may also be found in many of Stein's opinions on the topics of characterization, plotting, revising, and so forth. All of which is sprinkled with (occasionally) illuminating examples from the work of Stein and others, and (also occasionally) amusing anecdotes from Stein's long career.

And there, as William Shakespeare might say, lies the rub. The biggest problem with Stein on Writing is its tone. While reading the book, one cannot escape the impression that one is in the company of someone whose thoughts tend to mean- der, like a doddering uncle in his dotage. His long-winded tales wander hither and yon, until one has forgotten what point it was the man intended to make.

Stein on Writing engenders that same feeling. The book seems to possess a care- fully structured organization - seven separate sections divided into thirty-five chap- ters - but, in fact, that "organization" is illusory. Instead of seven sections of four to six chapters each, there is one section of three chapters, one of sixteen chapters, three of four chapters, and two of two chapters. Not that this sort of division is necessarily a flaw - but it is compounded with Stein's tendency to spout onto the

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REVIEWS 309

page whatever has popped into his head at the moment, however tangentially re- lated to the subject at hand. At which point, a suspicion begins to nag that the author does not really have control over what he is doing, and the reader cannot help feeling a sensation of boredom and frustration creeping in.

Unfortunate, too, is Stein's apparent lack of interest in the topic of learning to manipulate language, which would seem to be a writer's most basic and essential skill. In just one brief, four-page chapter titled "Similes and Metaphors" does he even broach the subject, and then merely to offer the suggestions that (a) writers should avoid figurative language that may "strain too much" and (b) when revising, "find spots of 'bare bones' writing that could be improved by a simile or metaphor that you hadn't thought of when you were getting your early draft onto paper" (p. 267) . These are not particularly insightful bits of advice.

Perhaps there are no enjoinders that writers should constantly work toward im- proving their command of the language because Stein feels them unnecessary, as- suming that anyone who possesses a powerful enough desire to write will automati- cally have such a command. Although it seems likelier, given Stein's own pedestrian and sometimes clumsy style of prose, that the notion did not even occur to him.

Examples of Stein's imprecision pepper his book. On page 52, he uses the word "talented" to describe a novel (an inanimate object), rather than the novel's au- thor, who would seem more appropriately served by the adjective. On page 54, in the same chapter, he uses the word "disadvantage" as a verb instead of more prop- erly a noun. On page 118, as an example of dialogue written in dialect, he cites the following passage from his own novel, The Best Revenge (New York: Random House, 1991): " 'You a much big man now,' Manucci said. 'In papers all time Ben- neh Riller present, Ben-neh Riller announce, Ben-neh Riller big stars, big shows. You bring Gina Lollobrigida here I kiss her hand. I kiss her anything,' he laughed."

While the quality of the dialogue itself may be considered good, or bad, de- pending on one's taste, Stein's use of the word "laughed" to describe the act of uttering speech is certainly questionable. Human beings express speech in any num- ber of ways - they may say it, shout it, mutter it, whisper it, call it, or scream it. But it is impossible for anyone to laugh and speak at the same time.

These glitches, however small they might seem, pile up over Stein's three- hundred-odd pages. Which is why, finally, his book cannot be recommended, simply because it requires too much effort to sift through the bad stuff to get to the compar- atively few nuggets. Aspiring writers would be far better served by the likes of Law- rence Block's Writing the Novel (Cincinnati: Writer's Digest Books, 1979), John Gard- ner's The Art of Fiction (New York: Knopf, 1983), Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird (New York: Pantheon, 1994), and William Zinsser's On Writing Well (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991) (all of which are in print) than they would be by Stein on Writing.

William Relling, Jr., DreamWorks SKG, Los Angeles

Watford's Guide to Reference Material. 6th ed. Vol. 3. Edited by Anthony Chalcraft, RayPrytherch, and Stephen Willis. London: Library Association Publishing, 1995. Pp. xi+1148. ISBN 1-85604-137-9.

The first edition of this guide was published by Albert J. Walford in 1959 as a one- volume work. It has appeared since then as a three-volume set, in 1966, 1970, 1977, 1987, and 1991. Publication of the current volume 3 completes the sixth edition.

Although a standard guide to reference materials, Walford's is not as well known

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