Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction (review)

Reviewed by: Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction Steven E. Gump (bio) Stephen J. Pyne. Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious NonfictionCambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009. Pp. xii, 314. Cloth: ISBN-13 978-0-674-03330-6, US $25.95 Books on writing tend to be filled with rules, admonishments, checklists, and examples of poorly written prose. Such works may intimidate; they rarely inspire. Their functional goal is typically to fix problematic syntax at the sentence or, at best, the paragraph level. Much more difficult than identifying and remedying comma splices or dangling participles is teaching how to write an effective non-fiction book—teaching how to organize, frame, and present a sustained argument in an appropriate, unified, and purposeful manner. As expressions of authorial judgement and taste, these higher-order skills depend on context: content, genre, audience, intent. But the larger scale and the intricate interrelationships among contextual factors make presenting examples more difficult, and advice often leans toward the theoretical. How, then, are writers of nonfiction books to learn how to develop the craft of writing and refine their authorial skills? Enter Stephen J. Pyne’s Voice and Vision: A Guide to Writing History and Other Serious Nonfiction. This work tackles higher-order writing skills head on. Readers reflect on writing as art and craft while learning how to design compelling architectures for non-fiction works and how to apply literary principles from the world of fiction—yes, fiction—to non-fiction writing. All writing, Pyne contends, is art; and lessons from literature can help make even scholarly writing more artistic, engaging, and enjoyable. ‘The ideal,’ Pyne writes, is ‘a message wrapped in the proper medium. It is a text in which all the parts knot together, in which the meaning is inextricable from design, perspective from plot, vision from voice. This, after all, is the premise behind nonfiction writing as [End Page 379] art’ (208). The genius of the book, though, is that Pyne rises to his own challenge. He demonstrates his central idea—the importance of following a clear vision and writing in a compelling voice—through the structure and text of the very book itself. Thus the vehicle qua analogue reinforces its message, and even casual readers will be impressed by the dovetailing between function and form, between exposition and expression. Prior to reading Pyne’s book, I thought that only a guidebook on writing guidebooks would have been able to pull off such an existential trick. But perhaps such polished craftsmanship is to be expected from a MacArthur Fellow who, in the first thirty years of his academic career, has honed his writing skills by authoring no fewer than twenty books. A professor at Arizona State University who specializes in the environmental history of fire, Pyne is a mature, confident writer. Even better, as a careful look at his impressive oeuvre reveals, he knows how to tell a compelling story. Pyne is the enviable scholar who understands how to write for both learned and general audiences: his books have been published not only by prestigious academic presses but also by major trade publishers. He shares—in fact, demonstrates—the secrets to his success in the ‘academic trade’ genre (13) in this book. In a brief introduction, Pyne describes the twenty-two chapters that follow as a ‘collection of commentaries’ (3) in which he ‘ponder[s] the internal shape and architecture of books’ (2). Although he claims that this organization—‘a roster of topics like beads on a string’ (2)—may appear to betray his argument for integral design, his overarching framework offers a clear plan. The first eleven chapters focus on writing as art, the next nine focus on writing as craft, and the final two offer insights into the life of the scholar-as-writer. By subverting the normal generative hierarchy and placing art before craft,1 Pyne emphasizes the potential artistry inherent in history and other non-fiction: ‘History is scholarship. It is also art, and it is literature’ (2). Writing is, indeed, ‘a supremely creative act’ (297). That Pyne has taken cues from fiction is clear. Chapter titles...

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