America has lost its greatest wordsmith: James J. Kilpatrick has
passed away at the age of 89. To those of us in the writing
business, the loss is incalculable. I feel it personally because
I was privileged to know Kilpatrick and have experienced his
warmth, great intellect, and generosity.
From the moment several decades ago that I first read the
greatest book about writing ever written — his The Writer’s
Art — I have felt a friendship with Jack about which more
in a moment.
Born November 1, 1920, in Oklahoma City, Kilpatrick began
his newspaper career in 1941 with the Richmond News
Leader, where he stayed for twenty-six years, rising from
reporter to chief editorial writer to editor, and began his
syndicated column — on writing, of course — calling it “The
Writer’s Art.”
Jack’s column — which continued until 2008 — was his
personality in full, as well as instruction to us all on the
proper use of American English. His instruction was even
directed, occasionally, at his very close friend and fellow
master wordsmith, William F. Buckley, Jr.
Patrician Buckley had an enormous vocabulary, which he used
effectively throughout his career. But when WFB got carried away
with a word such as “decoctable,” “anfractuosity” or
“endogamous,” Kilpo would take him to task.
But why? This wasn’t a matter of rivalry, and there was no
hint of enmity or anger. But our language, and its usage, was a
matter of metaphysical import to Jack.
Because, as Kilpo wrote, journalists’ first duty is to
communicate clearly: “if your aim is chiefly to be clear, keep
this in mind: Short words are ordinarily better than long words.
Short sentences generally are better than long sentences.”
From the chapter of The Writer’s Art titled,
“Faith, Hope and Clarity”:
Another time, I was writing a column about the remarkable
increase in the number of political action committees. In 1972
these committees numbered 113; ten years later they numbered
3,149. I wanted a word to describe the proliferation. Now,
proliferation in itself is about a two-dollar word, but that
was not enough. The devil was in me.
At precisely that moment, a word wandered by. These
things are like knowing sin. Sitting at their typewriters, all
writers know the experience. The word is seductive. It slithers
along, wet-lipped, scented with exotic perfume; it gazes at the
writer with a come-hither glance. “Take me,” says this gorgeous
creature. “I dare you.” Thus we are led into temptation.
The word was mitotically. I could not
resist.
But he usually did, and so — as a direct result of his
teaching — American writing now is clearer and more compelling.
There are too many other examples from his book and column to
catalogue here. In his column, Jack often convened his “Court of
Peeves, Irks and Crotchets” in which he’d rehearse a few “horrid
examples” of abuse of our beautiful language and lay out the Rule
that should govern forever more.
Kilpatrick took the national stage, for a few years, on the
CBS Sunday show 60 Minutes in its “Point–Counterpoint”
segment. There, Jack debated liberal Shana Alexander for about
five minutes each week. Though most people who remember that at
all only remember the Saturday Night Live parody of it
with Dan Aykroyd playing Kilpatrick, it was, in fact, a seminal
feature. Much of what we see on cable television “news” shows
today is an evolution of the “Jack and Shana show.”
Long after the 60 Minutes segment passed into
television history, my encounter with Kilpo began entirely by
accident.
Graduating from law school after having barely scraped
through engineering school, I entered the practice of law as an
Air Force judge advocate. I was a truly awful writer, but at
least I knew it.
I read Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style
again and again, and nothing seemed to register. And then I read
The Writer’s Art.
It was an epiphany. Why, I wondered, hadn’t anyone tried to
teach me these things when I was younger? The truth was that
someone probably had but, like too many other young men, I was
too busy gazing at the girls in my class to have learned these
things.
Writing was suddenly easier for me, and as I re-read
Kilpatrick’s book and continued to write it only got easier, and
better.
I learned how a writer has to trust not only his “mind’s
eye” but his mind’s “ear”: if something sounds good in your head
when you read it to yourself, it’s probably going to work just as
well for the next guy who reads it.
In 1991, after a brief term in the Pentagon as political
appointee, I re-entered the law practice with the Virginia office
of a large Richmond law firm. Chatting idly with one of the
receptionists one day while waiting for a client to show up, I
mentioned my admiration of Kilpatrick and she quickly volunteered
that she was his goddaughter. I then had the audacity to take
issue with something he’d written in a column on the usage of the
word “caliber” in describing a firearm.
A few days later my home phone rang, and the gent on the
other end of the line said, “Jack Kilpatrick here.” I told him
about my disagreement with his usage — as I recall — of the
term “9mm caliber.”
A rather cold “humph” came through the line, followed by
“why?”
I explained that “caliber” was a measure of the diameter of
the projectile (or inner diameter of the barrel of the weapon) in
hundreds of an inch. Hence “.45 caliber” meant 45/100ths of an
inch. “9mm” is a parallel expressed in metric terms, so to say
“9mm caliber” was to combine incompatible measurements. Better, I
said, to convert “9mm” into the mathematically equivalent “.38
caliber.”
I was answered with a warmer “hmm.” And then came an
invitation to join him the next time I visited Charleston, South
Carolina.
When my wife and I visited Jack and his first wife, Marie,
in Charleston, she was quite ill. And Jack, already in his
seventies, gave her loving attention every minute of the day.
They were deeply in love and he — a Southern gentleman in the
best sense — worked hard to make her burdens lighter and courted
her every day.
A short while after Marie passed away in 1997, Jack moved
to Washington and married newspaper columnist Marianne Means in
1998.
We spoke from time to time, by telephone and e-mail, and on
the rare occasion a dinner including our wives.
Jack continued to write his weekly column and was always
ready to referee language disputes. I remember one I had with my
pal Greg Garrison, Indianapolis radio host, lawyer, and
all-around good guy. He used “anxious” where I said he should use
“eager” and Greg wouldn’t budge. My point was that “anxious”
included an element of fear or anxiety and that “eager” shouldn’t
be limited to descriptions of puppies and little boys even though
it connoted a degree of happiness.
I submitted the argument to His Honor, the Chief Judge of
the Court of Peeves, Irks and Crotchets, and — within the hour
— the decision was rendered. I was right, Kilpo pronounced,
saying he’d resorted to three dictionaries to be entirely
sure.
Kilpo said all writers should strive to write at least one
perfect sentence each month. If we don’t, it’s not because his
good-natured instruction failed us. It’s because we were too lazy
to follow it or too inattentive to absorb it.
Here’s my best shot for this month: Every American writer
should be thankful for all of Kilpo’s peeves, irks and crotchets,
because each one more finely tuned our minds’ ears to our
readers’ needs, and made us better at our lives’ work. God rest
ye, Jack. I shall miss you greatly.
