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Mark Forsyth has spent years studying how great writers piece words together.
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People like Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, but also musicians like The Beatles and Taylor Swift.
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And for him, it all comes down to these figures of rhetoric.
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These timeless tools that you can use to make your writing more memorable and enjoyable.
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And so I said, "Hey Mark, I want you to break them down for me one by one. What is the tool? How does it work? When do you use it?
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Why is it good to apply it?"
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And what you're going to find is that these tools are just going to make you a better writer.
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You're going to have a lot more fun when you write cuz you're going to be so much more playful whenever you're crafting words.
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Well, Mark, last time we did this, we went through I think three or four figures of rhetoric.
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And now what I want to do is go through like 10 or 11 this from your book Elements of Eloquence. >> Yeah.
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>> And uh where I want to start I want to start with polyptoton. >> Polyptoton.
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They all have The thing about the figures of rhetoric is they all have slightly unpronounceable Greek names.
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And the Greek name doesn't matter as at all as long as you remember what the thing was.
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So when I was writing that so it's chapter two, I had to put polyptoton at the top of it.
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But polyptoton's really simple.
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It's just when you use the same word in um different parts of speech.
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So if you dream a dream, that's polyptoton cuz you're dreaming, verb, the dream, noun.
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Uh I'll give you an example from a Shakespeare sonnet.
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This is one of the the greatest of Shakespeare sonnets.
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It's often read at weddings.
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It's it's a classic goes down all time.
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And it goes, "Oh, let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment.
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Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds or bends with the remover to remove."
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So that's alters when it alteration finds. Alter, alteration. >> Mhm.
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>> Bends with the remover to remove.
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Or you'll find the same thing in Macbeth.
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"Is this a dagger that I see before me?
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The handle towards my hand. Handle hand.
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Same root, same kind of uh essential word just being used a little bit differently.
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And you I mean that's Shakespeare, the greatest poet of the 16th, 17th century.
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But you if you want to skip right up to now and you can go to Taylor Swift.
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Who built a whole song around this with like the players going to play play play play play.
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>> And the haters going to hate hate hate hate hate. >> Exactly. Yeah.
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And baby I'm just going to shake shake shake shake shake.
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Will indeed shake it off.
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>> [laughter] >> Shake it off.
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But you have this all over the place.
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You've got there's like W. B. Yeats.
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We are the dreamers of dreams.
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And then there's the song Dream a Little Dream of Me. That's always happens.
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It's it's >> Dream on little dreamer. >> Yeah.
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Dream dream gets put up to toned more than almost anything else.
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But between Shakespeare, Taylor Swift, or or Jesus for that matter.
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Uh >> [laughter] >> top wordsmith Jesus as well as being a being son of God and all that sort of stuff.
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But um in one of his better known little compositions um called The Lord's Prayer goes Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
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Thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.
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Give us this day our daily bread.
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And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us.
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So it's day and daily, trespasses trespass.
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Just using the same word in a different sense within the sentence.
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Just mucking around with it.
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And you know, once it's once something's been used by Shakespeare, Taylor Swift and Jesus, you know you know it's got to be quite good.
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Got to be quite salable at that point.
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And has you know the divine imprimatur on it. And it's so easy to do.
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Like podcast this podcast.
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Come on, build the building.
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Dream the dream, walk the walk, talk the talk.
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It's a very easy one to just slip into your writing any way you want.
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So, I understand what it is, help me understand why I should use it.
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Like, what's the benefit of this figure of rhetoric?
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It sticks in people's minds.
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It It makes a phrase memorable.
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Um in a way that it wouldn't be otherwise.
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Even if you think of um there's a Beatles album, "Please, Please Me."
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A Beatles song and an album.
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And if you said, "Can you please me?"
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that wouldn't be nearly as memorable.
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It wouldn't It wouldn't stick in the same way.
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And you know, um "I'd like you to dream of me" is not as memorable as "Dream a little dream of me."
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And what you're trying to do when you're writing is you're always trying to make that phrase that sticks in the person's mind. Sticks with the reader.
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And often that's just to do with making a little twist to how you say the sentence.
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Um and you don't need have anything new to say.
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It's the important thing.
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And this thing about the figures of rhetoric which we're not talking about which sorry, which is what we are talking about.
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What we aren't talking about is there's a whole massive subject of rhetoric and arrangement and um uh uh making [clears throat] big arguments and arranging proofs and stuff like that.
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But the figures of the rhetoric are just ways of rephrasing a single sentence and making it making it stick in the mind much more.
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>> What's cool about this one, too, is that it's so simple.
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I was thinking if I was a coach, right?
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Like, "Run on, little runner.
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Sprint on, little sprinter.
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Uh Write on, little writer."
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It's a much more memorable kind of encouragement than "Run. Sprint. Write." Whatever it is.
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>> "Write until it's written."
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That's just a nice little phrase, not better than writing till you finish.
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>> So, this in that way kind of reminds me of chiasmus, where both of them are just ways of arranging information that make things more memorable, stick in your mind.
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>> Yeah, that's all all you're trying to do with the figures of retro kisses.
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>> And the difference between this and chiasmus is what?
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>> Uh chiasmus is uh when you things are arranged symmetrically.
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So, it's ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
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Or mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. Those are both John F. Kennedy.
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Um or Snoop Dogg with my mind on my money and my money on my mind.
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>> [laughter] >> It's a something that clicks. It um um works with us.
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It becomes a great memorable phrase.
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If you read through JFK's inauguration speech, it's all chiasmuses.
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It's a way of making things memorable, making them symmetrical, and producing something beautiful.
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>> We choose to go to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard. Chiasmus? >> That's not chiasmus. >> What is that? >> Oddly enough.
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Um not because it's easy, but because it's hard is a bit of a nicer colon, which we'll come to later.
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That's that's the simple thing of um waiting phrases next to each other so that they're same length.
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Not because it's easy, but because it's hard.
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And you could have said um You could have phrased the same thing, because it's hard not easy.
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>> Or >> not because it's easy, but hard or But there there's a nice phrasing of the waiting, the symmetry of not because it's easy, but because it's hard.
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>> Roses are red, violets are blue.
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>> It's the um equal length phrases.
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It makes it you sound an all reasonable in a way.
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On the one hand, you're saying this, and on the other hand, you're saying that.
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It um it's a nice symmetry that builds up.
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Not the absolute symmetry of chiasmus, which is T for two and two for T.
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Uh but a more a general waiting.
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It's like it It's like chiasmus, but um maybe a little bit toned down.
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>> Okay, so walk me through the first three that we've spoken about.
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So, we talked about isocolon, chiasmus, and polyptoton.
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So, bring me back to What do they all have in common?
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And then the differences between them.
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>> What they all have in common is they are weigh um setting one thing against another in contrast.
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So, isocolon, as you say, it's the two phrases of the same length and just being weighed against each other.
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And then chiasmus, it's two um uh uh symmetrical phrases.
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Um live to eat, don't eat to live. Is that way around it? Oh, sorry.
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That's the other way around.
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Eat to live, don't eat uh live to eat.
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And um and on the other hand, polyptoton is weighing two different uses of the same word in different ways against each other.
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Give us this day our daily bread.
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Or love is not love that alters when it alteration finds.
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So, in a sense, they're all But they're all just playing with different ways of phrasing the same thing.
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Making it more memorable, making it fit into fit into your mind.
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And as I say, these these things have worked eternally.
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I was sort of joking about Taylor Swift and Jesus and Shakespeare.
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But it's worthwhile pointing out that these these people are 2,000 years apart.
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And they're still using that same method to make the same memorable phrases.
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Moses' wife in the Bible.
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Now Now Now we're back to to 3,000 years ago or more.
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She says, "I have been a stranger in a strange land."
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And that's a a beautiful, beautiful phrase.
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It's just taking the word strange and mixing it with its cognate word stranger and you you get you get something absolutely lovely and memorable.
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And if you just said, "I have been an illegal alien."
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That's not the same thing.
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It wouldn't It wouldn't resonate in the same way.
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But stranger in a strange land is a beautiful phrase that we are still using.
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I think there's a heavy metal album called Stranger in a Strange Land, but I can't remember who it's by.
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You know, I was going to ask you about titles later on, but polyptoton seems like it's very rich for coming up with titles. >> Yes. Yes, definitely.
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>> Yeah, cuz you can get so much in just three, four, five words. >> Yeah. >> Dream the dream. Walk the walk.
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>> Stranger in a strange land.
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Tricolon, tell me about that.
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>> Tricolon is just the the rule of three, which is we like things in threes.
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We like the good, the bad, and the ugly, things like that.
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We love um blood, sweat, and tears.
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Blood, sweat, and tears, by the way, is a sort of quote from Winston Churchill.
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But it's not what he actually said.
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What Churchill said on his first speech in Parliament as Prime Minister is he told the House of Commons, who said, "I've nothing to offer you but blood, toil, tears, and sweat."
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Perfectly good phrase, but not as good as blood, sweat, and tears.
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Because sometimes your your our memory helps us to improves phrases, and this is the thing about being memorable.
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It's the ones that stick in our minds.
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I think I remember last time we were talking about there was a Remember I surprised you cuz I was talking about the line in The Wizard of Oz, "Fly, my pretties, fly."
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Which does not exist in The Wizard of Oz, and yet we all remember it being there, some of the Wicked Witch of the West shouting it, but she doesn't.
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But our memory will improve these things.
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You take blood, toil, tears, and sweat, and you narrow it down to the three, the tricolon, where you Usually you have um Usually you have a little twist at the end.
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So, classic tricolon is the good, the bad, and the ugly.
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Where you go from well, one, two, but then the third one uh twists it.
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The good and bad are moral things, ugly is an aesthetic thing.
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But you have a a lot of that with things like um It's quite a quite a totalitarian government one, cuz you have >> [laughter] >> When you have the French Revolution produced liberty, equality, fraternity.
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But then um the Nazis produced Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Führer.
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Um Which means uh which means uh one state, one people, one leader.
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Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Führer.
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>> So, tricolon with that, the third one doesn't seem like a surprise. >> No, much less so.
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>> So, sometimes tricolons are the same thing three times, sometimes they are the same the same thing twice, and then the third one breaks the >> And then the twist.
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Yeah, the twist is always a a nice thing to add on, but no, you don't you don't always need it.
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It's just that it's I mean, people talk about a sort of a rule of three in writing all over the place.
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You often have it's in the structure of jokes, for example, you'll have um like three guys who are stuck on a desert island, and the genie appears, and first one does something normal, second something uh asks for something normal, and the third asks for something weird, and that's that's the structure of the joke.
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>> Well, I was thinking, as you said tricolon, roses are red, violets are blue, and then you can insert whatever you want, and then even better if it rhymes with blue for that final word. >> Yeah. Uh water is wet. How do you do?
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>> [laughter] >> I think I heard one growing up.
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I can't believe this was coming to mind.
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Roses are red, violets are blue, if it weren't for Christmas, we would all be a Jew.
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>> [laughter] >> I never heard that one.
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>> I don't know, that's just what came to mind, but that's that has the uh the pattern. >> Yeah.
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Yes, the the rule of three, which is just runs through writing all the time, and especially in folk tales.
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You'll often have in the uh structure of folk tales, you'll have three brothers, and the two elder brothers always get it wrong, and then the younger brother gets it right somehow, cuz he's been nice to the magical unicorn, or whatever it happens to be.
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>> Lies, damn lies, >> and statistics. >> Yes.
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So, the magic comes from the surprise. >> Yeah.
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If you can do it with a twist in the end, that's perfect.
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>> Now, should the third one be longer than the first two?
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Is that part of the the thing? >> I think so, yes. Possibly.
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I mean, I I would certainly say it's true of the like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
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Lies, damn lies and ugly is just adding one syllable on.
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Lies, damn lies and statistics is a a similar movement to the slightly longer one.
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>> Yeah, you mentioned statesman.
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Obama had 21 tricolons in his victory speech. >> Yes.
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He's the >> Government of the people, by the people, for the people. Yeah. Hmm.
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>> I mean, Obama's speeches tended to be filled with the figures of rhetoric.
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Things like um uh there's epistrophe, which is ending every sent- everything with the same words. So, yes, we can.
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What said they One of his very big speeches was to say, "Can we do it? Yes, we can. Can we do it? Yes, we can."
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And always ending up in that that same way. >> Yeah, here's Lincoln.
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Government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth. >> Yeah.
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>> So, what's going on there?
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>> Saying the same thing in three ways. He's divided it up.
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He could have said, "Democracy shall not perish from the earth."
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And that would not have been as memorable.
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But there he's going of the people, by the people, for the people.
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He makes it that that that rule of See that tricolon.
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Each Each little bit of it ending in the word people.
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And that really produces something very, very powerful.
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>> Yeah, I'm getting the sense of like >> Boom. Boom. Boom.
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>> A rhythm, a predictability, and from that it the memory.
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>> Shall not perish from the earth, yes.
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>> A fine woman, a fair woman, a sweet woman.
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>> Yes, that's a Shakespeare thing. >> Yeah. Yeah.
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>> Of Of all the joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine. That's from Casablanca.
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And it's a great one as you move up from the gin joints to the towns to the world.
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Uh it gets bigger and bigger as the three go on.
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>> Right there, there's a sense of progression and from that drama. >> Yeah.
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>> Is that what's going on with Churchill's we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight in the fields? >> Yes.
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Although that's an odd one.
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So, the um that's that's one called anaphora.
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>> And that one was the original quote?
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>> Um so, he says and if it's in it I'll tell you the thing to watch out for is it did that the speech he gave when we were losing the Second World War.
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The British army had been turned back in France, was having to retreat across the English Channel.
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Everything looked hopeless and Churchill says, um we shall fight them in the sea, we shall [clears throat] fight them in the air, we shall fight them on the beaches, which meant the British beaches.
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And if you watch it's getting closer and closer.
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We shall fight them in the fields, we shall fight them in the cities.
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And by this time the Germans are in London.
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Then we shall fight them in the hills, we shall never surrender.
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I forget the exact wording of the speech, but it's it's roughly telling you the Germans can invade and we will keep fighting.
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But there's this this rhythmic thing that goes with starting every sentence with the same words, which um somehow carries you away.
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I mean, he needed that big bit of rhetoric cuz he's basically saying he was saying to the British people, we will die fighting.
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He wasn't promising them victory there.
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He was promising them death on the battlefield, death in the British fields, death in the hills.
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I mean, it didn't happen, thank god, but that's what that speech is promising.
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But by using the anaphora thing, by which is a great way of building a crowd up, he manages to make it sound somehow inspiring. That we will fight. We will fight.
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Despite the fact he's it's a prophesying despair.
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And yet we remember that as the the great inspiring speech, which it was.
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And he manages to push through it with with the anaphora.
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>> So, walk me through when you're doing apostrophe, that one where you're ending the >> Yeah.
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>> the sentence or the parts of the sentence over and over again with the same word.
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What is the tool that you're have there?
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Like, what is the purpose of doing that?
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>> Uh apostrophe is a funny one cuz especially cuz it's used so much in pop music and rock music.
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Cuz pretty much every pop song is structured along the lines of verse and then the same chorus or the same words at the end.
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So, if you think of the the song Jailhouse Rock, it always ends up with each verse is different, but then it ends up with was dancing to the Jailhouse Rock.
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It um it keeps um ending up in the same place.
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Um in Sting, every breath you take, he will always end up watching you in this obsessive way.
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Apostrophe is a very kind of obsessive, bonemaniacal, whatever, however I start off, I'll always end up here.
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Um I will always end up in the same place wherever you start.
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Um because it's the the verse chorus verse chorus system, which always ends up um in the same place.
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Whereas um Yesterday's Yesterday's a funny one because it's John Lennon complained about that song cuz it was written by Paul McCartney, but John Lennon complained that the song goes nowhere.
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And it's true that it goes nowhere.
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The The first verse begins with the word yesterday and ends with the word yesterday.
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It's Yesterday, all my troubles seem so far away.
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Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
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Oh, I believe in yesterday.
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And then the second verse does exactly the same word with suddenly.
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It's the same thing with suddenly.
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It's Suddenly, there's a shadow hanging over me.
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I'm not half the man I used to be.
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Oh, yesterday came suddenly.
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And then the third verse does the same thing with yesterday again.
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So, it's a It's a very much a a song about somebody being stuck in the same place.
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He starts on the word yesterday, finishes on the word yesterday.
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He starts on suddenly, he finishes on suddenly.
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Starts on yesterday, finishes on yesterday.
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He doesn't He doesn't get anywhere.
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>> Well, what strikes me from that example is that through aesthetically, you can communicate something that enhances the words that you're trying to say.
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So, you could uh say words about being stuck, and you can aesthetically show the stuckness by going from yesterday, suddenly, back to yesterday, and then having the bookends be the same because the circle closes where it began.
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>> Yeah, absolutely, which is why it's such a haunting, beautiful, memorable song.
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>> But he didn't like it.
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>> Uh John Lennon didn't like it. Paul McCartney did.
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Or John Lennon said that he could John Lennon complained an awful lot.
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>> [laughter] >> He really did.
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Um but he did That That was his complaint about the song yesterday, which I think may have been born of a little bit of jealousy there. >> Synesthesia.
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>> Synesthesia is a very weird one.
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I mean, should point out synesthesia is also considered a um mental condition some people have, but it's when you when you mix up the uh the senses.
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There's a lovely line in a Raymond Chandler novel, the great detective writing, it says, um she smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight. Mm. And it's >> Wow. >> Yeah.
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I think everyone wants to smell that way. >> Hm.
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>> If you could actually find that.
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>> in the elevator with me yesterday did not smell well.
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>> [laughter] >> We are in a heat wave, to be fair.
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>> [laughter] >> We'll leave it at that.
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So, tell me about that sentence.
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>> It's a very clever sentence, cuz it just it because it moves you from one sense to another.
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It um it takes the the sense of smell, which is very hard to talk about actually when you're writing, and then expresses it using a visual.
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And if you can if you can do that in a surprising way, you can you can do beautiful things.
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You can say um he looked like a symphony by Mozart or something if you describe some something um Uh yeah, you could say his his suit and tie was, you know, harmonious as a Mozart symphony or something like that.
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You can you can um make surprising jumps between the senses.
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>> You could say she felt like the flowers blooming at springtime. >> Yeah. It's lovely. >> Does that work?
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>> Yeah, I think that works.
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It doesn't it doesn't work in it's not a precise way of talking, but it's a way of it's a thing which we get which we will understand as you jump from the one sentence to the other.
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>> It appeals more to emotion than reason. >> yes, absolutely.
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It's a it's a sort of paradoxical thing, but we like we like paradox.
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We like things which are don't quite work.
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>> If you were coaching me on on synesthesia, how would I think through this?
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Would I get like the different senses and start comparing them?
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Like, how would I actually implement this?
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>> Uh I think yeah, you take a two senses and try and jump from the one to the other.
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Try and Try Try picking um uh taste and looks.
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>> Yeah, you can have like all these adjectives and all these adjectives.
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>> She looked the way chocolate tastes. Mm.
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Or the the croissant tasted the way um Marilyn Monroe looks. >> Right. Right.
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>> Take it across the senses. See what you can do. What where you can go.
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Cuz it's not something we think about doing normally.
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We tend to especially on smell and taste, you tend to produce some very sort of um bad or not very memorable writing.
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As you just If you just try and describe smells in terms of smells, if you would try and describe, you know, um the the the air that day smelled of hay with a little bit of grass and some salt from the sea in the distance.
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And it's all becomes You find this on the back of wine bottles actually all the time.
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It goes on like hints of walnut and badger in this um notes of raspberry.
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And you This doesn't paint a picture to me at all.
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It may be accurate, but it doesn't paint picture.
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Incidentally, just as a little writing tip, not mine, I got this from um the the great novelist Jilly Cooper, who died recently.
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And her I think her her novel um Rivals has become massive hit TV series of late.
26:44
Um but she once told me that you should When you're which writing a novel, she said you should always um and make sure you've got all the senses in there.
26:53
Each chapter, something touch, something scent, something taste, something fit I mean, we all we tend to write visual stuff and often forget about the other the other bits.
27:06
>> Personification, let's talk about that.
27:10
>> You need to have a little bit of fun with personification.
27:13
>> You're not having enough fun.
27:14
>> Yeah, have a bit of fun and uh I think most people don't sort of dare to do it these days in the way that Shakespeare did, but you can dress it up, for example, what what's far-eyed fury wearing?
27:25
He could be you know, be dressed in barbed wire and then you start and you go from there, if you see what I mean.
27:33
So, it >> seems like personification can kind of grow and grow into allegory then. >> Yeah, absolutely.
27:38
It's heading on that way, but it's a a thing you could have fun with.
27:43
Far-eyed fury dressed in barbed wire, blood dripping from the spikes.
27:49
>> And what made time and death be the things that Shakespeare personified so much?
27:55
>> Um, he's very interested in personifying death. It's an odd one.
27:58
He Uh, if you go through every reference to death in Shakespeare, it often has Shakespeare as a sort of skeleton that eats people and drags them off to his that the secret house of death is um, by Nancy and Cleopatra.
28:14
He seems to have imagined this this figure and and imagined him properly.
28:23
>> Do you want to read this one, "O, beware"? >> Oh, yeah.
28:27
"O, beware, my lord, of jealousy.
28:27
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on."
28:34
That I have a green-eyed monster suddenly suddenly pulls you out of just saying he could just said, "Beware of jealousy. Don't don't be jealous.
28:41
Make you do silly things."
28:43
Whereas "Beware of jealousy.
28:45
It is the green eyed monster that mocks the meat it feeds on is suddenly to create an image of green eyed jealousy that has lasted this day in a in a way.
28:58
>> I wonder if there's something intrinsic to monsters that they're green. >> Yeah. Reptiles. Yes.
29:02
Well, Welsh dragons always red.
29:05
Um, Chinese dragons I'm not that sure about.
29:07
They're different breed to the Welsh ones.
29:09
British dragons are are red, I think.
29:12
But then Game of Thrones dragons were green. Weren't they?
29:17
>> Yeah, there's something to these things. Yeah.
29:19
The book of Ecclesiastes, a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.
29:27
>> Yes, it becomes anaphora is kind of hypnotic.
29:29
I think that's why Churchill was using it with the British people.
29:33
It's sort of puts you in a bit of a trance that we will fight them on the fields, we will fight them on the beaches.
29:40
Um, but it does it the same thing with um, that section of the book of Ecclesiastes.
29:44
So, there's a time to be born, there's a time to die, there is a time to weep.
29:48
There is a time to rejoice.
29:50
A time to sow, a time to sow, a time to reap.
29:53
And I mean, in a sense, you could you could say that got that about my quickly by saying there is a time for everything. >> Mhm.
30:03
>> But that I mean, this is this is the great lesson is to don't write just to be efficient and get the um, get the meaning across. Write to to enchant.
30:14
And that that's a that passage goes on for a lot further than I've just quoted it there.
30:19
Um, but it has this hypnotic trance like rhythm to it and it produces it it it hypnotizes people, I think, a little bit.
30:32
>> Well, you talk about writing to enchant, that's kind of the opposite of how we're taught to write these days. >> Yes.
30:37
Which I think is is very, very foolish.
30:40
We're told to write in the most efficient possible way using the plainest possible words.
30:44
Shakespeare being told to write like that, there would be no Shakespeare.
30:48
I mean, if I mean, it's a It's the same goes for Dickens.
30:52
The same goes for almost anyone.
30:54
They Why I I think writing for efficiency is like dressing for efficiency.
30:59
You know, if we all dressed for efficiency, we'd just be there in high visibility um waterproof trousers.
31:07
It would It would be It would be terrible.
31:10
You Write Write for beauty. Write to enchant.
31:14
To make things better than they were.
31:18
I mean, it depends what you're writing, of course.
31:21
If you're just writing a quarterly company report, then you probably want to turn it down a little bit.
31:27
But if you're writing a novel, if you're writing a script, if you're especially if you're writing a poem, or or just writing a uh you know, a text to somebody you love, go go for go for something bigger and more beautiful and more You You can You can make this lovely.
31:47
You don't have to wear the high-vis waterproof all the time.
31:49
You can You can wear silk and and shiny shoes and everything else.
31:55
The I mean, there's there's nothing else where we are taught to just be as plain as possible.
32:04
I mean, just look at the room we're in.
32:07
This isn't the most efficient room possible.
32:10
If it were, it'd just be um plain walls, and we'd be sitting on a couple of boxes, and but somebody has tried to design this room to be to be beautiful.
32:20
And we we do that everywhere we go.
32:20
We decorate the houses we live in.
32:24
We buy nice clothes for ourselves.
32:27
We um you know, we do our hair nicely.
32:30
Old people put on jewelry or whatever it happens to be.
32:34
I Why you would take writing of all things and say this must be completely plain.
32:40
This must never be beautiful. That's crazy.
32:45
>> Complete Yeah, it's basically making the world of writing bare in the same way that you see those memes of the guy who has in his apartment just a mattress on the floor and nothing else. >> Yeah. Well, exactly. It'd be terrible.
32:59
Imagine if I invited you around for dinner and then I just gave you like a lump of fiber. Here's your carbs. Here's some protein.
33:05
That'll keep you going for another 12 hours.
33:09
Isn't that that's not why we cook.
33:09
We we want everything to be beautiful.
33:12
We want our we want our music to be beautiful.
33:16
What's the point in music to begin with?
33:19
But we we want our music beautiful.
33:20
We want our houses beautiful, our rooms beautiful.
33:23
We want our food to be tasty.
33:25
We want everything to be beautiful.
33:29
So why why break with that on on writing?
33:32
>> Yeah, I'm mostly going to have Soylent. >> Soylent? Soylent?
33:36
>> It was this drink that was really popular in Silicon Valley like a decade ago. >> Yeah.
33:41
>> And the whole pitch of the drink, I remember I had this guy who worked next to me.
33:45
And he was like, "Oh, yeah.
33:45
I have like 20 Soylents a week because that way I don't have to go out to lunch.
33:50
I can just drink the Soylent while working and it's great because, you know, look at it here.
33:56
You get all your protein and all your fiber and all the things you need. You can just drink it."
34:00
And on one hand, he's completely getting the point of food, which is it's sustenance and and all that.
34:08
But even more so, he's completely missing the point because food is so much more than consuming calories.
34:14
For your body, it is this and this and this and this and that.
34:17
And I think what we're saying here is not all writing needs to be Soylent. >> No. No, absolutely.
34:24
We could be the opposite.
34:26
I mean, I I can see his point of view, but that's to miss out on what it is to be human.
34:30
Humans Humans eat together and we want our food to be be nice.
34:37
I mean on odd little thing the word companion in etymology literally means that the person you share your bread with.
34:44
Pan in French is is >> Mhm. >> bread. >> Co-pan. >> Yeah.
34:47
And similarly even even your mate is somebody you share your meat with.
34:51
So mating with each other everything is about Humans are eating creatures.
34:58
We eat together and we want our food to be delicious and that's what it means [clears throat] to be human.
35:03
When you are when you decide just drink Soylent you are sort of reducing yourself to being a a robot an inhuman robot and well why do that?
35:13
And it's the same if you're just try and make your writing as bare and bare bones and efficient as possible.
35:19
That's that's not what writing is.
35:22
>> It is funny cuz if you were to basically set up here's a list of the most popular lines of all time.
35:26
The things that have really stirred souls by the millions and millions.
35:30
And then you were to say these are the qualities that they have and then you were to say here's what we're teaching in school of how people should write.
35:37
They're the antithesis of each other. >> Yeah. Absolutely.
35:40
It's it's it's very weird.
35:44
>> Now walk me on the other side.
35:44
When does using these figures of speech figures of rhetoric when do they become baroque and rococo in a way that's kind of eye rolling like okay now you're just trying way too hard.
35:57
>> It that is hard to say cuz it's a question of judgment.
35:58
I mean keep on the food analogy.
36:00
It's like how many spices and how many side dishes before it all becomes a bit silly.
36:05
There will there will be a point.
36:07
But um Uh I I think you I mean certainly in terms of where how most people write now you can just throw in a few in a in a paragraph and you'll get um something so much more than what most people write.
36:25
It will have spice to it. It will have uh verb.
36:28
It will have chili's in it, as it were.
36:31
You know, there's always going to be a limit where that was too many chilies and now you're ill, but at at some point, you know, that those first few flakes of chili always going to be good. >> Mhm.
36:43
You were talking about an aphorism earlier on and we were talking about how it kind of lulls you.
36:47
It almost puts you in a trance.
36:49
The other thing is because I think that you keep saying, "Okay, I get it. I get it. I get it. I get it."
36:56
You become very receptive to the thing that comes right after that. >> Yeah.
37:00
It's like your defenses have calmed Yeah.
37:02
>> come down or something. >> Yes. For completely down.
37:04
I mean, that's like I could say as with Winston Churchill sort of persuading the British to keep fighting in the face of defeat, even if the defeat comes to their own street.
37:17
>> I don't know how to say this one. Scesis onomaton.
37:21
>> Yes, Scesis onomaton, which is just not having a main verb.
37:24
So, which is one thing your teacher at school always have told you, a sentence has to have a main verb, no matter what.
37:32
There must always be a main verb.
37:32
But that's that's not true.
37:33
They There's Charles Dickens, the great Victorian novelist.
37:37
His great novel, Bleak House, the first line, the first sentence of that book is one word long. It's just London. Full stop.
37:47
It's kind of what you need.
37:50
And then I mean, it's exactly the same with Star Trek.
37:53
It starts space, the final frontier.
37:57
And we all remember that.
37:57
If you said, "This is space, which is the final frontier."
38:03
then it would it would never have worked.
38:05
But um dropping the main verb can often be very powerful.
38:09
As um uh in the Winston Churchill line, it's I think it's in victory, magnanimity, in defeat, defiance.
38:21
And it's just that I would even phrases like like father like son.
38:23
There's no main verb there.
38:27
>> These feel very bold to me like a proclamation.
38:30
>> It's a it's a it's a good one for a a first line.
38:33
It's a good one for a title as well.
38:34
I mean to for some reason we never apply this um rule of there must be a main verb to the title of a book like Bleak House or David Copperfield. It's just bang.
38:46
Here's the Here's the title.
38:47
And yeah, it's it's it's punchy.
38:49
Space, the final frontier.
38:53
It absolutely just um it grabs you.
38:57
It's it's um yeah, there's something about not having the verb there at all.
39:02
It's like bang your bang your fist on the table. London.
39:07
That's what Dickens was writing about.
39:09
And so he made the first line London. Full stop. >> Listen to me. Yes.
39:14
>> Famous phrases like lights, camera, action. >> Mhm.
39:19
>> Full stop after each one, but it's a it's a beautiful pun Yeah, I mean it's it's very very punchy cuz it um takes out that verb.
39:26
It just rams rams things home.
39:31
>> Tell me about paradox.
39:33
>> Paradoxes are well, they're funny things.
39:35
We we we we love a paradox.
39:35
We we love things that don't make sense as human beings.
39:41
It's sort of going back to synesthesia. That's what we like.
39:43
And we we love we love a good um something goes back on itself.
39:49
So you know the Uh you can make it so there's Oscar Wilde, you know.
39:55
Uh Oscar Wilde was the master of the paradox, but um the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.
40:03
It's a a lovely and you you you have to think about it for a moment.
40:05
Then you get what he what he means that he would rather be slandered a little bit than um not be known at all.
40:13
And then we have um uh All women become like their mothers, that is their tragedy.
40:19
No man does, that is his.
40:24
Uh which I think says something rather funny about the the notions of um uh difficult mothers-in-laws and um and stuff.
40:32
Although my future mother-in-law, I should say, is a lovely person.
40:35
>> [laughter] >> Just cuz I getting married in a few weeks.
40:41
>> In this world, there are only two tragedies.
40:42
One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
40:46
>> Yes, George Bernard Shaw, which is yeah, it's a it's a lovely observation and uh a lovely way of phrasing.
40:56
>> We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.
41:01
>> Is that Oscar Wilde again, I think?
41:02
>> Yes, it's a Well, that that sort of goes back to what we were saying about the the soil and the Yes, we need we Unnecessary stuff is absolutely necessary in life.
41:11
And that's a But that's just a very pretty memorable way of saying it.
41:16
I mean, actually Yes, we were dancing around talking about soil and then Oscar Wilde kind of put it better than either of us there.
41:24
Because yes, unnecessary things are necessary.
41:25
The uh But if you can find a way, and it's not an easy one to do, and you shouldn't overuse paradox, but if you can find a way to make a sensible observation sound like it doesn't make sense, then it will really, really stick in the memory.
41:44
>> Yeah, I was thinking of that doesn't make sense.
41:48
Oh, that makes perfect sense.
41:51
Huh, that kind of doesn't make sense.
41:52
And now I got a puzzle that I need to chew on.
41:54
Yes, that's what I see happening here.
41:57
>> Yes, I mean, we do we love paradox.
41:57
We love logical paradoxes even when they're not the beautiful kind here.
42:01
Things like um uh I I wrote a children's book which is all about logical paradoxes, a children's novel.
42:08
And um there cuz I I love those ones like what I'm saying now is a lie.
42:16
Was that statement true or false?
42:19
Cuz if it was true, then it was false.
42:21
And if it was false, then it was true.
42:22
And if it was true, then it was false. And on and on forever.
42:26
These uh these ways of um uh making something which you're which you just can't stop thinking about.
42:36
There's the village barber who shaves all those and only those who cannot shave themselves.
42:43
Does the village barber shave himself?
42:46
>> Take his then come >> Oh, yes.
42:47
Yes, you will be there forever trying to work it out.
42:53
>> The book of John has a lot of these sorts of paradoxes.
42:55
Before Abraham was, I am.
43:01
>> Yes, Jesus in the book of John talks uh he he does saying things which uh don't make sense.
43:07
Then you have um the people uh that he's talking to don't understand him.
43:12
He says, I mean, that's that's where Jesus says, "A man must be born again." And the guy says, "How?
43:16
Uh he enter second time into his mother's womb?"
43:25
His own [clears throat] Nicodemus says that to him.
43:27
And it's a yes, but it's uh the Jesus is trying to confuse people with these phrases which what for a moment they seem like they don't mean anything.
43:38
A man must be born again.
43:41
I And then you realize that it obviously he mean it has a meaning and it is a truth in a in a different kind of way.
43:48
And these days we're so used to the term born again Christian that we forget how weird it was when Jesus first said that. >> How about this one? The sound of silence.
44:01
>> Yeah, that's um just a great one for um the um the Simon Garfunkel's song, which is this strange song about a mystical vision that keeps returning is a sort of dream vision he's had about crowds of people staring at the neon lights and seeing the words of the prophet.
44:18
But, it just keeps coming back to with apostrophe ending each verse with this phrase the sounds of silence, which yes, means nothing or means everything. It's very hard to say.
44:33
As you say what what What does the term you knew the term I I don't the Zen thing? >> The Zen koan.
44:39
>> Yeah, I yes, is that koan? >> Yeah. >> Ah.
44:42
And that's where you would try and think of one hand clapping.
44:44
Is that a >> Yes, exactly.
44:46
It's stuff like that where there's certain things that don't make sense, but then the door closes and then there's certain things that don't make sense, but there's an open there >> Yeah.
44:56
>> that beckons you to walk through it. >> Yes.
44:58
You can I like thinking about the four-sided triangle.
45:02
>> How about the pun paradox like labor isn't working?
45:06
>> Yeah, that's a one I uh famous pieces of political um advertising from uh the early 1980s in Britain Britain being being ruled by the Labour Party and unemployment was way up and so the Conservative Party had this the slogan for the election campaign was or a lot of the adverts was Labour isn't working.
45:27
So, the Labour Party um and there there is the the pun paradox um isn't providing jobs for Britain.
45:38
I mean, you could do sort of like um you could probably reverse it saying the Conservatives aren't conserving anything.
45:45
Or aren't into conservation.
45:47
Making them out as the non-eco party, but yes, if you can use the pun >> Conservatives aren't conserving. >> Yeah.
45:54
There's a line in John Donne as well.
45:54
As come madam, come or or powers my rest to find till I labor I and labor lie.
46:02
Which means till um he's doing a pun there, which is a bit obscure because the labor was a slang term for sex in the um uh late 16th century.
46:11
And so he's saying until I labor, I have sex with you, I labor lie like a woman in the pains of childbirth. In pains of expectancy.
46:24
>> Don't it make my brown eyes blue?
46:27
>> Yeah, that's that another beautiful pun one from Crystal Gayle.
46:29
Although she she didn't write the song, but yes, the famous Crystal Gayle song, Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue.
46:34
And again, it's it's a for a moment you go that makes no sense at all.
46:39
Brown eyes can't be blue, but then of course it's it's blue in the sense of blue, sad, and lonely.
46:42
I'm saying twisted around, yeah.
46:45
We've gone from from the visual to the emotional.
46:52
It's a beautiful way of doing it.
46:54
>> Then you have the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
46:56
So there, it almost sounds like you got the paradox, but then you also have chiasmus. >> Yes. Yeah, absolutely.
47:03
That's paradox and chiasmus.
47:05
It's strange how these things mix up, you know, The Sound of the Silence is an example of epistrophe cuz every verse ends with the same words, Sounds of Silence.
47:13
And in this one, yes, it's a a paradox, but it's also a chiasmus, the same as um mankind must put an end to war war will put an end to mankind.
47:23
The first shall be last, the last shall be first.
47:25
And again, it's Jesus saying something reasonably clear when you think about it, which is that those who are um you know, have a bad life on earth will be rewarded in heaven.
47:41
And yet he phrases in this beautiful way of way of paradox of first and last switching over, and also the chiasmus, this symmetrical structure which makes it so so memorable.
47:55
We often don't think about how about the familiar lines.
48:01
This is one of the funny things.
48:03
The ones which are so familiar to us.
48:07
When I was writing Elements of Eloquence, I had to just sort of sit there staring at the ceiling.
48:14
>> [laughter] >> You know, sitting in the British Library, but staring at the ceiling and trying to think of examples.
48:18
And often they came to be very late.
48:21
Often after just after I'd finished writing the chapter.
48:23
And I would suddenly go, "Oh, wait.
48:25
Give us this day our daily bread."
48:27
But you never thought to look in the most obvious places, the most well-known stuff. >> hot then you're cold. >> Yeah. >> Yes then no. In then out.
48:38
You're up then you're down.
48:41
It's wrong then it's right.
48:42
It's black then it's white.
48:44
>> Yeah, which is Katy Perry doing the same thing as the Book of Ecclesiastes.
48:49
And there's a time to be born and a time to die.
48:51
A time to gather up But he's also doing the same thing as the opening of another Dickens novel.
48:54
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
48:58
It was the time of reason, it was the time of unreason.
49:03
I I can't remember the full thing now.
49:05
But it's But it's the same as George Gershwin George Ira Gershwin.
49:08
You say tomato, I say tomato.
49:11
You say potato, I say potatoh. >> Right.
49:14
Now I'm thinking of political speeches. I have a dream. I have a dream. And then you have Obama. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. >> Yeah.
49:23
Except um uh Obama puts the yes, we can on the end. That's the epistrophe.
49:28
And Martin Luther King puts I have a dream at the beginning of each sentence, which is the anaphora one. >> Right.
49:35
So, basically what you're saying is we swim in the waters of these rhetorical tools. So, just everywhere.
49:41
>> They're all around us.
49:41
And we we just often sort of don't realize that they're there.
49:47
And they're they're they're hanging in in our culture in words, you know, every phrases we use all the time.
49:55
>> What is this idea with paradox of veridical paradoxes?
49:59
>> Uh a veridical paradox is simply a paradox which turns out to be true. If you see what I mean.
50:05
As opposed to Uh I mean it's usually used in mathematics actually.
50:10
There's a There are paradoxes which are insoluble like this statement is a lie.
50:14
Which goes on and on forever.
50:19
And then there are other veridical paradoxes sometimes just used for things which aren't at all obvious like the uh the Monty Hall problem.
50:28
Do you know the Monty Hall problem? >> No, tell me about it.
50:32
>> Uh I have three boxes. Um A, B, and C.
50:37
Um one of them contains a million dollars. The other two are empty.
50:38
I know where the million dollars is.
50:40
I say pick a box at random.
50:45
And you you pick box A cuz you have no further information.
50:50
I say, "Well, it's a very good thing you didn't pick box C because that was empty.
50:55
Now, do you want to change your mind about box A?"
50:58
>> Oh, and now you should change >> You should change your mind and it's very very hard to very counterintuitive, but you actually double your chances if you now switch from box A to box B.
51:09
Um Took me ages and ages to understand that, I remember.
51:14
You can understand it the the simple way to understand it is if I ask you to guess my birthday.
51:21
Guess a Guess a day of the year. >> December 24th. >> Right.
51:24
I'll tell you it's either December the 24th or it's April the 20 April the 2nd.
51:29
And you realize that because your first guess was almost certainly wrong, it's it's going to be April the 2nd. >> Mhm. >> Almost certainly.
51:41
It's a lot more intuitive on big numbers.
51:44
>> Tell me about hyperbole.
51:46
>> Hyperbole is overstatement, and overstatement is just great fun.
51:49
It's uh I It's just going far too far for a bit of a laugh.
51:57
I mean, it's Sometimes there's a whole genre in in America, you have a whole genre of your mama jokes, I believe.
52:04
>> Oh, I'm familiar with your mama jokes. >> Yeah.
52:05
Yes, and they're all about how fat your >> Oh, your mama's, yeah.
52:10
>> Or like your mama's so stupid that she stared in an orange juice bottle for 20 minutes just cuz it said concentrate.
52:16
>> [laughter] >> I like that.
52:18
Well, it's just going going too far and really um uh jumping over everything and uh It's my favorite form, actually, is the um uh it's a sort of twist on hyperbole called adynaton, which is the impossible thing.
52:36
So, um the familiar ones are when pigs fly or when hell freezes over.
52:40
But, you can really go to town.
52:43
There's a great um a bit in W. H.
52:44
Auden poem where it goes, "I'll love you, dear, I'll love you till China and Africa meet, and the river jumps over the mountain, and the salmon sing in the street.
52:53
I'll love you till the oceans are folded and hung up to dry, and the seven stars go squawking like geese about the sky.
53:01
The world shall the so Years shall run like rabbits, for in my arms I hold the flower of the ages and the first love of the world."
53:12
And it's just a pushing that impossible things to to its absolute conclusion.
53:18
>> Yeah, there's a band from London called Above & Beyond, and they have a line that reminds me of that.
53:24
They might have even pulled it from that, where they say, "I'll love you till the sky falls down." Yeah. It's like, "What?" Yeah.
53:33
>> That sort of comes from might come, though, from the old phrase um Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
53:37
Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.
53:44
>> I was talking to a guy who writes satire, writes really good satire, and I said, "What mistake do people make when writing satire?"
53:50
He said they don't go far enough with the bit.
53:52
It needs to so obviously be a lie, needs to so obviously be a hyperbole. Yeah.
53:59
Otherwise, people are thinking, "Is that true? Is it not true?"
54:00
So, like it wouldn't make sense.
54:03
It wouldn't be as good to say, "Man, it was like 100° in there."
54:07
versus "Wow, it was like a sweltering furnace in there." >> Yes.
54:13
At the moment, we're we're we're in a heatwave in London.
54:14
At the moment outside, I'm melting.
54:16
I feel like I'm in an air fryer.
54:19
I feel like I'm in a casserole.
54:23
I feel like I'm on the surface of the sun. >> Right.
54:26
>> Going to have so much so much fun with this.
54:29
>> Could have shadowed a drop of salt water from Golden Gate to Hong Kong without ever losing sight of it.
54:35
>> Yes, that's a lovely one from um a statue of Hammett, I think.
54:38
Just describing a really good private detective. >> Yeah.
54:43
>> So, cuz it's so impossible, he could have shadowed a drop of salt water from Golden Gate to Hong Kong without ever losing sight of it.
54:50
That's that's utterly impossible.
54:52
And yet, tells you everything you need to know that this is a really good private detective.
54:56
And does it so much better than just saying he was a really good private detective.
55:02
He was very good at shadow I mean, if you're going to do it, really do it. >> Yes. Yeah.
55:09
>> Cuz you could have done that like he could have uh he could have shadowed a man all the way from San Francisco to New York.
55:13
And that would be nearly as good as the shadow shadowing a drop of water in the ocean.
55:22
>> This struck me that grammar is tied to the word glamour. Yeah.
55:25
And there's something so revealing about that and why figures of rhetoric are so powerful.
55:33
>> Well, it goes back to this idea of writing as being magical that you had this secret written the magical book the book of you always need that grammar glamour same word pronounced slightly differently because a grammar was just something that was written down and a glamour was a spell that you cast on somebody who cast a glamour on them and enchant them.
55:57
And then take them off to your magic castle by throwing glamour and that's where the word glamour comes from and then we get the word glamorous and glamour meaning just anything beautiful.
56:06
But it's also the way the reason you have a magic spell is exactly the same thing.
56:14
The spelling spelling grammar glamour it's all it's all the magic.
56:20
The magic of the written word.
56:22
So would >> grammar have been like a book of spells something like that or what's going >> yes well grammar could just mean a a book. Yes.
56:32
Um And so yes grammar glamour same.
56:36
>> What what you're saying is the idea was that the words people looked at words and what was in a book is almost something that would just enchant you like you would step into it it was like yeah abracadabra and you're carried away.
56:46
>> The magical power of words this is why in in our idea of magic you have to say the correct words you have to have the um you know Harry Potter needs to learn his spells and have the pointed wand and say the right word.
57:02
And you have similar ideas of um in yeah I love the scene in a horror film where you you always have the sort of the scholar saying there's some ancient writing here it says kodogu nakrak watara and then yeah always everything starts to rumble.
57:15
Oh no I've summoned the demon.
57:20
>> That's a good example.
57:22
So we're talking about figures of rhetoric and you focused on that and now you've written a new book about poetry and what is the the link between those two?
57:34
>> There is an awful lot of rhetoric in poetry.
57:36
And poetry is the most beautiful writing there is.
57:42
But I think poetry uh poetry has a problem these days which I think is it gets ruined in school.
57:47
It gets ruined in education.
57:50
People think of a poem just as something you have to write an essay about.
57:58
And the essay probably has to say something about how the poem doesn't mean what it appears to mean.
58:05
And um it gets it gets ruined because they're taken out of context and you don't see them as as they were meant to be.
58:16
So, for example >> Do the Twist and Shout example.
58:20
>> Yeah, the Twist Twist and Shout. Uh Who knows?
58:25
Let's Let's imagine a music professor in 200 years time who has perfect pitch and I can tell you absolutely every musical thing about the song Twist and Shout.
58:37
And you know, the flattened ninth in this chord or something like that.
58:42
Well, think about us and our attitude to Twist and Shout.
58:44
Twist and Shout is the song where when it comes on at a party, you turn it up and everybody >> Nah. >> Everyone dances. That's what it is.
58:50
We know Twist and Shout and we know Twist and Shout better than that professor in 200 years will ever know it.
58:57
Because you can analyze something till hell and back, but if you don't know where it belongs in a culture, and Twist and Shout belongs being played loud at a party.
59:07
That's That's where Twist and Shout belongs and how it should be used and how how we know to react to it.
59:15
And if you just if you took Twist and Shout and then said write an essay on this by Thursday, at least 500 words, it would be What can What can you write other than this is the song we play at parties?
59:28
You don't get a greater appreciation of it by by chopping it up.
59:33
You get a great appreciation by seeing where it was and what it was meant to be doing at the time.
59:42
I'll take another musical analogy as of we know what an advertising jingle is.
59:47
It's a very short piece of music that does does, you know, this, that, and the other.
59:52
And we know what an advertising jingle is trying to do.
59:56
It's trying to stick in your mind.
59:57
It It's advertising jingles make perfect sense to us and we know that they are different from, uh, you know, a film soundtrack which is, you know, lots of violins playing trying to make you feel emotional.
1:00:07
They They But the film soundtrack belongs with the film and the advertising jingle belongs on the advert and Tristan shout belongs in a party and it's to dance to and don't try and dance to Eleanor Rigby cuz it's impossible.
1:00:21
And so I was trying in this book to, um, take us back to where poetry was, where it used to exist properly in society.
1:00:31
So, I mean, for example, in in Victorian England or indeed in Victorian America, uh, if you were invited round for a dinner party, then after dinner you were expected to have a little turn.
1:00:44
You could perform a party piece.
1:00:45
Something There was There was no television after all.
1:00:49
There's no entertainment of any sort except the stuff that you can produce.
1:00:52
So, you might be able to sing a song, play the piano, juggle, or recite a poem.
1:00:57
And reciting a poem was the very standard way of, um, doing a bit of after dinner entertainment.
1:01:06
So, if you were if you wanted to be invited round to places, you were expected to have a poem you could recite and it should be about 5 minutes long. Should Yeah.
1:01:18
They got quite for Or they could you could go shorter, but and you have to have a new one every so often cuz otherwise it's oh god, Dave is going to do that.
1:01:29
>> [laughter] >> Same one again.
1:01:29
And then you would stand up by the hearth uh in front of the fire and recite your recite your poem, which would be a sort of dramatic monologue.
1:01:40
This They're called because um cuz it's meant to be exciting.
1:01:43
It needs to have something a bit expressive to it.
1:01:45
It probably wants to make you look good depending on the length of the >> bit is the uh park bench scene from Good Will Hunting.
1:01:55
>> I've never seen Good Will Hunting. >> Oh, this one is good. >> Can Can you do it? >> I will do it.
1:02:00
If I ask you about art, you'll probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written.
1:02:05
Michelangelo, you know a lot about him, right?
1:02:07
Him and the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right?
1:02:11
But I bet you've never stood there and looked up at the Sistine Chapel. Smelled that?
1:02:17
If I ask you about war, probably throw Shakespeare at me, right?
1:02:19
Once more into the breach, dear friends.
1:02:21
But you've never been near one.
1:02:23
You've never held your best friend's head in your lap as they gasped their last breath, Mark, looking to you for help.
1:02:32
If I ask you about love, probably quote me a sonnet.
1:02:33
But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable, known someone who could level you with their eyes, who could rescue you from the depths of hell, feeling like God put an angel on Earth just for you.
1:02:47
And you don't know about real loss cuz that only occurs when you love somebody more than you love yourself.
1:02:51
And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. >> That was brilliant.
1:02:59
>> I actually missed a few things.
1:02:59
It wasn't completely accurate, but you know what? It was good enough.
1:03:03
>> You would make it at a Victorian dinner party.
1:03:05
That's that's what you need.
1:03:06
>> That's my goal in life. >> Yeah.
1:03:07
Yeah, you you just be able to stand up and do um Little Prophets than Aged King by this still hearth amongst these barren crags matched with an aged wife I meet and dull unequal laws unto a savage race that hoard and sleep and feed and know not me.
1:03:26
>> It's a And that that's that tomorrow tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and all these yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
1:03:37
Out out brief candle life is but a pulsing shadow.
1:03:41
Life is but a Life is but a passing shadow, a poor tale that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
1:03:49
It is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
1:04:00
>> [laughter] >> Yeah, you would absolutely have made it at a Victorian dinner party.
1:04:03
But that's once you see that, you see what Victorian poetry was trying to do and you don't have to start analyzing it or anything.
1:04:13
You just say this is This is the situation it was there for.
1:04:17
This is what people wanted and this is what they got.
1:04:20
And the same thing goes for if you're looking at a sonnet from Tudor England, you wrote sonnets to girls to try and get them to >> Have sex with you. Yeah. >> Or marry you or both.
1:04:33
Or and This was the the the this They they weren't sitting there thinking oh, you know, when a girl got a sonnet she wasn't thinking oh, how do I write 400 words about this?
1:04:45
This is going to be very difficult essay topic.
1:04:46
She's thinking oh, what does it say? Does he love me?
1:04:49
Is it >> Wow, he really cares. >> Yeah. But soft.
1:04:55
What light through yonder window breaks?
1:04:58
She was preparing for >> Yeah.
1:04:59
>> her exam the next day. >> Yes.
1:05:02
>> Let's end here in your new book Rhyme and Reason.
1:05:05
You talk about how Well, we can go to Chaucer.
1:05:09
You talk about da dum da dum da dum da dum.
1:05:10
But the advice that you gave is to almost mutter what you're reading and snap your fingers or tap to the beat. >> Yeah.
1:05:21
>> So, what's going on with that?
1:05:23
>> English poetry has a rhythm.
1:05:23
The most common one is iambic pentameter, which goes da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum, da dum.
1:05:33
And it's when you're reading poetry, you should always try and read it aloud, even if it's under your breath, just to try and get that rhythm to go um shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
1:05:45
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
1:05:48
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May and summer's lease hath all too short date.
1:05:56
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines.
1:05:58
This is This is the rhythm and it flows through English poetry.
1:06:02
People people so often get it wrong when they they try and put in dramatic pauses in the middle of the line, which don't really don't belong there because it has this rhythm.
1:06:13
It's a Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
1:06:16
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
1:06:18
That's not how to recite it.
1:06:21
It has a rhythm and it's a rhythm that that flows that goes da tum, da tum, da tum, da tum, da tum.
1:06:30
And if you just keep that beat going, you know, beat it out with your foot or um uh tap your fingers on the desk or something and you get you you get something far better.
1:06:42
And in Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph, the sacred river, ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.
1:06:54
Is uh the rhythm the rhythm that flows through and that's that's the secret to poetry is to just to set up that rhythm cuz English words are all stressed in particular ways.
1:07:08
They have um David has the stress on the first syllable, not on the second. It's not David. It's David. >> David.
1:07:18
>> David, yes, if you're if you're French.
1:07:20
And um uh we stress uh uh so also um we stress important words more than unimportant words.
1:07:27
So um a cup of tea is ta-tum ta-tum.
1:07:31
I really want a lovely cup of tea is an iambic pentameter, five ta-tums in a row.
1:07:38
And it's it's quite easy to to get the get the hang of.
1:07:44
>> Poetry is so intimidating in the way that it's talked around, the way that it's talked.
1:07:47
But I what I'm hearing you saying is it's just like music. You enjoy it.
1:07:53
>> It's just like >> out to it.
1:07:54
It's almost there's an element of it that is anti-intellectual or pre-intellectual. >> Yeah.
1:08:01
>> And you just kind of find the way to tap your toe to whatever's being said, and you use that as the entry point rather than the essence.
1:08:08
>> Yes, that's the entry point.
1:08:08
And it's not that complicated.
1:08:09
The The The thing is people think you have to have like a degree in English in order to understand poetry.
1:08:17
But universities have only been teaching degrees in English for the last 100 years.
1:08:21
Nobody Shakespeare wasn't writing for people with degrees in English because degrees in English didn't exist.
1:08:28
He was writing for a a mass market, an absolutely mass market who wanted to hear that beautiful sound.
1:08:36
There's that with lovely little fact about Shakespeare that the Globe Theatre, which is at Globe Theatre can take 3,000 people.
1:08:43
Population London at the time was 200,000 people.
1:08:48
So if you scale that up for today, the population of London is about 10 million people.
1:08:53
So the equivalent Globe Theatre would be a one 150,000 seater stadium.
1:09:00
And Shakespeare had to fill that every day.
1:09:04
It was absolutely mass market.
1:09:08
Ticket cost same price as a loaf of bread.
1:09:10
You had people from the underclass right up to the top of society going.
1:09:15
Huge, huge business and they were all there to enjoy Shakespeare.
1:09:18
And also not understand every word because you can't understand every word of Shakespeare unless you've got the text in front of you.
1:09:26
Just to let it flow over you.
1:09:27
You don't need to understand everything.
1:09:31
>> It reminds me of hip hop, right? I like the song.
1:09:33
I've no idea what it says.
1:09:33
I don't even know what it means.
1:09:36
Even sometimes after knowing the lyrics, but I just like the sound so I listen to it.
1:09:40
>> Yeah, and that's how it worked in the theater cuz Shakespeare wasn't there to be read.
1:09:43
Shakespeare was to be performed and there's there's you you can go through it through it down to a fine bit, but there there bits that nobody could have understood.
1:09:52
Yeah, the people in the in the cheap seats so they were many well they weren't cheap seats.
1:09:57
They were standing at the bottom.
1:09:58
They they couldn't possibly have understood the classical references, but they loved it anyway.
1:10:04
They just absolutely adored the sound it makes and the thing about theater is it just keeps going and you will keep understanding what's going on.
1:10:14
There's a lovely story I I read about the the Venetian ambassador to London at the time used to love going to the theater and standing in the really cheap bit the the penny bit where down with like the lowest of the low and the funny thing is is he didn't speak English.
1:10:30
He just liked to be there hearing this stuff.
1:10:36
They you don't need to understand everything to enjoy it.
1:10:39
You don't need to understand every bit of street slang to enjoy hip hop.
1:10:44
You don't need it's often the mystery is part of the fun.
1:10:49
>> The mystery is part of the fun. >> Yes.
1:10:50
It's often done quite deliberately as well, especially in sort of you get it in sci-fi or fantasy.
1:10:54
You'll get completely made up stuff where it says, "Quick, the lithium decoder is about to implode.
1:11:02
Go to Force Magma 7 or whatever."
1:11:04
That doesn't mean anything, but it sounds good.
1:11:06
And if you like sci-fi, that works.
1:11:08
You get the same thing in fantasy when it says, "This sword was made by the dwarves of Inglandor in the days of King Hattu Fe."
1:11:20
Again, you can't possibly know what it means.
1:11:22
You're not meant to know. You're meant to enjoy.
1:11:26
Yeah, enjoy the hip-hop, enjoy the sci-fi, enjoy the fantasy, enjoy some Shakespeare.
1:11:32
>> Yeah, when I was a kid, I didn't like science class cuz I thought it took away the wonder of reality. >> I can see that.
1:11:38
>> want to know how the rainbow works.
1:11:38
I just want the rainbow to be all the colors. >> Yeah. I can see that.
1:11:45
>> How do you think about chapter transitions?
1:11:46
You're really, really intentional about them.
1:11:49
And what are you thinking about as you edit those?
1:11:53
>> I always want to be looking towards the next chapter in the last line.
1:11:58
So, it becomes uh so, it becomes a natural flow.
1:12:01
And you also to leave you wanting want wanting more of it.
1:12:05
There's actually it's a great thing.
1:12:08
When I was writing my children's no My own children's novel is so much fun because you can really overdo this.
1:12:13
It's like As he escaped from the pit of crocodiles, he ran through the door and saw something that really amazed him. End of chapter.
1:12:25
And then the child wants to go on.
1:12:27
They're like, "What what what happened next?"
1:12:29
And but they Try and do that.
1:12:29
You can't quite do that the same thing when you're writing nonfiction books for for grown-ups.
1:12:35
But um to try and do the same thing of um uh making that connection, getting to a little point of saying, "Which leads us on to what was happening in France." End of chapter.
1:12:47
And people hopefully people will go, "Oh, great.
1:12:49
I want to I want to read that next chapter. >> All right.
1:12:55
>> I think often thing is it's good to think about the way people read.
1:13:00
I short chapters for example are nice.
1:13:03
I always try to keep my chapters as short as possible and roughly the same length so that you can say oh I'll sit down and read a chapter of my book. >> Right.
1:13:13
>> And then people go oh yeah it's just 12 pages and they'll read their 12 pages and then I as an author you're trying to do two things.
1:13:21
A give you the opportunity to stop here because that's the end of the chapter but also just try and pull you on.
1:13:27
Come on one more chapter before bed. One more chapter.
1:13:32
And yet try and try and pull people through.
1:13:35
And give them that option every time.
1:13:37
Like a sort of evil drug dealer just trying to >> [laughter] >> Okay yeah this can be your last dose. >> Good to see you man.
1:13:47
>> Really good to see you.