IVP - Behind the Books - November 2007 Archives

Good English Versus Good Titling

We're rereleasing a book by the late great Paul Little, previously published by one of our distinguished rivals in the industry. Know Who You Believe was first released posthumously, under a different title, with the help of the author's widow, Marie Little. Marie has regularly updated her husband's writing, revealing along the way her own giftedness as a communicator and an apologist for Christianity. All told, the book has carried three titles, finally landing and resting on Know Who You Believe so that it sits comfortably alongside Paul's other books Know Why You Believe and Know What You Believe. How to Give Away Your Faith doesn't fit the pattern, but it's a clever title nonetheless.

I single out Know Who You Believe because of a publisher's note we inherited from our distinguished rival, which I didn't notice till today as I completed the book's copyright page.

Writers and publishers are often coached to "write as people speak" in order to best communicate with today's readers. Thus we have deliberately titled this book Know Who You Believe instead of using the grammatically correct--but awkward--Whom. Our apologies to purists everywhere.

I'm apparently not a purist, because the fact that the Who in the title technically should be Whom didn't occur to me till I read this publisher's note. That reflects badly on my editorial skills, I'm afraid, but I remain unapologetic, because I feel strongly that writers should write, and publishers should publish, like they talk. (Or should that be "as they talk"?) Except, of course, when they shouldn't.

The more august a book's subject matter and the more formal the writer's style are, the less appropriate an informal approach to titling becomes. But a little cheekiness in grammar--for example, in our IVP Books tagline "Think Deep. Live Smart"--generally doesn't hurt anybody. I'm reminded of a joke my uncle Pete once told me, which always elicits a chuckle:

A young southern gentleman of great intellect was on the campus of an Ivy League university for the first time, and was running late for an appointment with the registrar. He stopped a passing student on the quad and asked, "Pardon me, but could ya'll tell me where the registrar's office is at?"

The student harumphed, and with great condescension replied, "Sir, at this school we don't end our sentences with a preposition."

The young southern gentleman quickly responded, "Well, all right then. Let me try again. Could ya'll tell me where the registrar's office is at, ya big jerk?"

Exposing the Cover Up

The good folks at Very Short List recently featured the book Seven Hundred Penguins, a visual survey of sixty-five years of Penguin Books paperback covers. You can peek at eight such covers at VSL. Good Christmas present for the graphic designer in your life.

We talk about covers all the time at InterVarsity Press. How can you not when you publish ninety to a hundred titles a year--all of which need covers--and when you have more than a thousand books in your backlist--all of which feature covers that may or may not, on any given day, be showing their age?

Maybe you have a favorite cover design from the IVP backlist. Feel free to share the joy here with your fellow readers.

Thesaurus Rex

Recently I caught an episode of Friends in which husband and wife Chandler and Monica were trying to adopt a child. Part of the process was to solicit letters of recommendation for them as parents. They asked their friends™ to write letters—all except Joey.

In case you don’t remember the show, Joey is stupid. He’s also fiercely loyal, and so he demands to write a letter of recommendation. Secretly, however, Joey wants to sound smart.

Fortunately for Joey, Ross (the paleontologist) turns him on to the thesaurus in his computer, and Joey proceeds to pick the smartest-sounding equivalent to every word in the first draft of his letter. His heartfelt sentence “They're warm, nice people with big hearts” thus becomes “They're humid, pre-possessing homosapiens with full-sized aortic pumps.”

Back to the drawing board, Joe. Or should I say, “Recede to the diagram embark, Joe.”

Writers are to a thesaurus like Adam and Eve are to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We happily go through our days communicating clearly, comfortably; all along it’s there on the shelf, minding its own business, just a shift-F7 away. The thesaurus goes virtually unnoticed until that crisis moment when our vocabulary fails us, and our innate capacity to articulate what we’re thinking seems like not quite enough. We don’t just want to communicate, we want to sound clever.

Suddenly we hear a hissy whisper somewhere behind us—“Ssseeeee what’ssss in the thessssaurussss . . .”

Thank God for The Elements of Style, the long-canonized style manual crafted by E. B. White, author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, based on his training under English professor William Strunk Jr. White’s writing is undeniably good yet readable at any age, principally because Strunk prioritizes clarity over cleverness. Acknowledging that writers often see the path to cleverness as becoming deliberately obscure, Strunk and White nevertheless holds the banner high: “Since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. . . . Be cagey plainly! Be elliptical in a straightforward fashion!”

Thank God for words plainly spoken. Even Jesus is encouraged toward it; his disciples responded to his Upper Room Discourse with “Finally! You’re giving it to us straight, in plain talk” (John 16:29 The Message). I think they would say to all of us in Christian publishing, “Go and do likewise.”

Joey did just that, abandoning the computer and the thesaurus and writing a new letter by hand, complete with pictures. The adoption agency thought the letter was written by a little boy, but Chandler and Monica got their baby. And they all lived happily ever after.

Or, if you’re still tempted by the thesaurus, “They subsisted favorably interminably subsequent to.”

Tragically Cool and Totally Hip

The following clip is from slam poet Taylor Mali, offering further evidence to suggest that the public square and the bully pulpit are relocating. Thanks to Next Wave for pointing me to it.

You can read more about Taylor and his poetry at his website, www.taylormali.com. I, however, would like to hear what you think of this particular piece, so be sure to post your comments, you know what I mean?

God Bless the Adult Child

From Christian Smith’s “Getting a Life: The Challenge of Emerging Adulthood,” Books & Culture, November/December 2007.

We have long known that, for a variety of reasons, religious participation for many young people declines significantly when they leave home. Going away to college seems especially likely to kill regular church attendance for most. Historically, marriage and parenthood have then marked the return for many to church and more active faith. Regardless of what one thinks of these facts per se, the following general observation holds. When the space between high school graduation and full adulthood was fairly short . . . the length of time spent out of church tended to be rather short. But with the rise of emerging adulthood in recent decades, churches are now looking at 15-year or even 20-year absences by youth from churches— . . . if indeed they ever return. And these are crucial years in the formation of personal identity, behavioral patterns, and social relationships. Returning to church as full-fledged young adults with children in tow—yet having spent a decade or two forming their assumptions, priorities, and perspectives largely outside of church—they may very well bring to the churches of their choice motives, beliefs, and orientations difficult to make work from the perspective of faithful, orthodox Christianity.

It's difficult for me to read the phrase "15-year or even 20-year absences" and the word youth in the same sentence. It is, however, a particularly nagging problem for those who minister through churches--and those, quite frankly, who publish books for people in churches. Take heart, however, dear pastors and publishers: Smith does a nice job of setting a content agenda for us all. Sexuality and marriage, parenting adult children, stewardship, modesty and humility, education, civics and even ecclesiology are concepts worth exploring or revisiting, because they are all concepts that, in our current context, demand a kind of agile wisdom to successfully navigate.