: "[Greene] knows he doesn't write very well, although he thinks his main trouble is ineffective metaphor and blurred visual perception. It is true that his metaphors are very often skewed and vague, but actually his main handicap is his inability to master English syntax and the fine points of English sentence structure....The jacket copy of WAYS OF ESCAPE proclaims that Greene 'is the most distinguished living writer in the English language.' [That statement] is impertinent and illiterate, and the evidence to refute it is so palpable that it's embarrasing. Actually, Greene's writing is so patently improvable that it could serve pedagogic purposes, as follows:
: EXAMINATION: English 345, Expository writing
: The following passages have been written by Mr. Graham Greene in his book "Ways of Escape." They have been passed by his editors and approved by his publishers, who assert that Graham Greene is "the most distinguished living writer in the English language." Rewrite each passage as directed.
: 1. Correct the grammar:
: a. "I am not sure that I detect much promise in [Orient Express] except in the character of Colonel Hartep, the Chief of Police, whom I suspect survived into the world of Aunt Augusta and TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT."
: b. "In my hotel the Ofloffson..., there were three guests besides myself: the Italian manager of the casino and an old American artist and his wife -- a gentle couple whom I cannot deny bore some resemblance to Mr. and Mrs. Smith of [THE COMEDIANS]."
: c. "The day of the Lee-Enfield and the Maxim gun were more favorable to the European than those of the dive-bomber and the Bren."
: 2. Shift the misplaced modifier to the right position:
: "it is only since the Revolution that the Pole, I believe, has changed his habit of only communicating on certain major feast days."
: 3. Eliminate the jargon:
: "What the [Polish] authorities had not realized was the effectiveness of this play [Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL], at this moment in time, in modern dress..."
: 4. Suggest alternative phrasing to eliminate the cliches:
: a. "The game...was not worth the candle."
: b. "These men [at Dien Bien Phu] were aware of what they resembled -- sitting ducks."
: c. "Resettlement was a turn of the screw of discomfort."
: d. "A Ghurka patrol worked by the compass and not by paths. It moved as the crow flies."
: e. "For me to describe Brighton was really a labor of love."
: f. "The sudden arrival in 1931 down a muddy Gloucestershire lane of a Norwegian poet whom I didn't know from Adam seemed uncomfortable."
: 5. Eliminate the awkwardness:
: "A writer's imagination, like the body, fights against all reason against death."
: 6. Eliminate the redundancy:
: "Next day [in Israel] I met a Burmese officer, a Frenchman, a Swede and a Finn (English was the common language they all spoke)."
: 7. Reconstruct the sentence to eliminate excessive prepositions:
: "Suicide was Scobie's inevitable end; the particular motive of his suicide, to save even God from himself, was the final twist of the screw of his inordinate pride."
: 8. Give the sentence a backbone and eliminate the awkwardness:
: "Some critics have found in [TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT] a kind of resume' of my literary career -- a scene in Brighton, the journey on the Orient Express -- and perhaps a hint of this did come to mind by the time Aunt Augusta arrived at the Pera Palace, but what struck me with some uneasiness, when I reread the book the other day, were the suggestions I found in it where the future was going to take me."
: "Be sure your name is on your paper."
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