There are other matters which, although not important, seem not out of place in this paper. A good deal of cheap wit has been expended upon a fanciful story that I published an order or wrote a letter or made a remark that my “headquarters would be in the saddle.” It is an expression harmless and innocent enough, but it is even stated that it furnished General Lee with the basis for the only joke of his life. I think it due to army tradition, and to the comfort of those who have so often repeated this ancient joke in the days long before the civil war, that these later wits should not be allowed with impunity to poach on this well-tilled manor. This venerable joke I first heard when a cadet at West Point, and it was then told of that gallant soldier and gentleman, General W. J. Worth, and I presume it could be easily traced back to the Crusades and beyond. Certainly I never used this expression or wrote or dictated it, nor does any such expression occur in any order of mine; and as it was perhaps served its time and effected its purpose, it ought to be retired.
General John Pope (Go here to read the origin of this myth.)
It is impossible to be a good writer if you are not first a good reader. To be a good reader you must read regularly everyday and what you read should be well written. In the age of social media, students read little except the screeds written by their contemporaries which are usually near illiterate scrawls. Of course to be either a good reader or a good writer you must be a good thinker. Our educational system these days is long on Leftist propaganda and short on anything recognizable as education. This is totally a man made disaster and we will be generations digging ourselves out from it as a society.
Recently I have been reading some articles written by General John Pope. Pope was a below average general whose main claim to fame was getting his head handed to him by Jackson and Lee at Second Bull Run. I was expecting little when I began reading the articles, but I found them to be gracefully written, and filled with good humor and insights into the War and his fellow generals. Pope was not a professional writer, but he was a product of a time that prized clear thinking and clear writing. May we have such a time again.
This is so true!! I have four grandchildren in elementary school. Every year for birthday and Christmas gifts I give them books. It takes a lot of effort to sort through the drivel that makes up so much of children’s “literature” to find what I consider well written, engaging stories. Fortunately they all love to read, their parents read with them and also select good material, and we have grandma’s book club to encourage them to talk about what they are reading. I imagine the ability to publish online without the benefit of a publisher and editor contributes to the decline in the quality of writing.
On the contrary, online publishing seems to me to be a great aid in several ways.
First, the profit considerations are squarely set against many works that you and I would find worthwhile. The public wants it’s pulp.
Second, online publishing eliminates the ideological gatekeeper that one encounters with the modern publishing industry, which is hardly immune from woke.
Third, it promises to allow for very small scale printing, which could resurrect public domain works that would not be wirth a publishers effort.
That said, it warms my heart to hear of your sharing reading good material with your grandchildren. Just remember, the research time gets longer as the books do!
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“very small scale printing, which could resurrect public domain works that would not be worth a publishers effort.”
I did exactly that from about 2016 through 2020 — used the Create Space publishing platform (now KDP) to create new paperback editions of works that were in the public domain. However, after the pandemic and the shutdown of many book events, combined with vastly increased expenses from buying a home, the wind went out of our sails and we haven’t added any new works. I know I “should” get back to that — especially with all the talk about online books being censored and needing to have print books as a backup against that and/or an EMP attack or Carrington Event wiping out the internet — but have a hard time resurrecting the enthusiasm I once had.
Better than Pope, look at Grant’s Memoirs, and for that matter, Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe (neither one ghost-written).
Grant was actually suspected of using Mark Twain as a ghost writer. Twain denied it saying that he only gave Grant tips about marketing the book. The Memoirs are pure Grant as anyone familiar with his letters and orders could attest. Ike wrote Crusade in Europe in two months, a remarkable achievement for a non-professional writer.
There is much writing done in the nuclear power industry, from plans and procedures to specifications, design descriptions, and safety analyses. The subject matter is often very technical, and the regulatory-endorsed industry standards with which these document must be consistent are often themselves not consistent. Nevertheless, the majority of the engineers with whom I work (indeed some of the most brilliant minds around when it comes to engineering, science, and mathematics) are horrible writers. Often I am asked to re-write what they have produced in order to present the information in an intelligent format that the regulator can understand. I do not intend to criticize my co-workers; however, many commit not just grammatical mistakes, but demonstrate an inability to explain what they think into bite-sized actionable and digestable chunks of text. Too often there are bloviating paragraphs of text which allow a flexibility through which an elephant could walk. I thank God for having been raised on reading the King James Version of the Bible, and having been forced to translate Cicero and Virgil from Latin, and St. John’s Gospel from Koine Greek. I also avidly read books like HG Wells’ Outline of History, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, etc.; the English in those works was absolutely outstanding. So today, while I am far from the best writer, when the Director of my department needs a procedure or a specification written, the assignment usually finds its way to my desk.
And yes, I am certain I made some grammatical or editorial error above. 😉