January 17, 2022 | On Writing Well
I read William Zinsser’s On Writing Well (originally published in 1976) out of interest and out of a hope that my own writing would improve from his recommendations. Perhaps I did learn a few things. In any case, it is fairly highly rated on Goodreads, so at least other readers thought it was a worthwhile read.
Anyways, I found a few (ancient) Egypt mentions.
(a) In chapter 5, “Audience,” Zinsser includes an excerpt from James Herndon’s How to Survive in Your Native Land (1971), which is a book describing Herndon’s “experiences as a teacher in a California high school.” The excerpt includes a “lesson about Egypt.”
(b) In chapter 9, “The Lead and the Ending,” Zinsser includes an excerpt from one his earlier articles, “Thank God for Nuts,” which is about his visit to the National Baseball Museum and Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. He likens his interest at looking at a piece of elm (“a botanical relic”—“the kind of bark [Burleigh] Grimes [a baseball player] chewed during games ‘to increase saliva for throwing the spitball.’”) to that of looking at the Rosetta Stone. The Rosetta Stone is “a stele [...] inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences between the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts” [Wikipedia]. It is named Rosetta as it was found in Rosetta, Egypt. The Rosetta Stone is located, since 1802, in the British Museum in London, England. A replica can be found in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.
(c) In chapter 9, “The Lead and the Ending,” Zinsser includes an excerpt from Joan Didion’s piece “7000 Romaine, Los Angeles 38.” After the excerpt, Zinsser writes about it: “What is pulling us into this article—toward, we hope, some glimpse of how Hughes operates, some hint of the riddle of the Sphinx …”. This is yet another example of the sphinx.
(d) In chapter 13, “Writing about Places: The Travel Article,” Zinsser uses visiting Egypt as an example of a travel destination. Were you moved when you saw the pyramids for the first time?
(e) In chapter 14, “Writing about Yourself: The Memoir,” Zinsser lists some memoirs that he “most vividly” remembered reading, one of which was André Aciman’s Out of Egypt: A Memoir (first published in 1980). Out of Egypt is a recounting by “the son of a flamboyant Jewish clan” of “his family’s move to turn-of-the-century Alexandria, its many colorful members, its pursuit of wealth and happiness, and its struggles with anti-Semitic and anti-Western nationalism” [Goodreads]. Perhaps I am way off with this, but the book’s title reminds me of a line from the Old Testament: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery” (Exodus 20:2).
(f) In chapter 18, “Writing about the Arts: Critics and Columnists,” Zinsser speaks about “true wit.” “It’s far easier to bury Caesar than to praise him—and that goes for Cleopatra, too.” Cleopatra VII, but really any of the others too, were Egyptian, etc.
[Screenshots of parts of pages from the eBook version of On Writing Well]