There were 48 stores at its height and today the strand is a sole survivor. We survived bigbox stores, amazon, ebooks and as a month ago a major manhole fire blasted out all of our windows. We just shook off the dust and opened up the next day. We are glad we are here today and thank you all for reading and being here. Today the New York Times called sir harold evans the greatest and the most garland editor alive. [applause] [inaudible][inaudible] that says it all. He has been on the sunday times, random house, currently working as editorinchief of writers. He got the british award for Lifetime Achievement and was negative in 2003. I dont know what else the first time i met harry was in 2004 is a cspan segment on this very floor. Since then we have developed a close friendship. I am always in awe of how they know everybody and how they bring people together and conquer one project after another. Their daughter was a summer intern in the rare book room and she was so love to that every department had wanted her to work in their department. I was the one that had to break the news that she had to go back to harvard. I got off subject. Tonight we are here to discuss a brandnew book that pulls his years of experience into the pristine document of clarity and wit. Do i make myself clear . His number seven role is dont be a bore. Hope we are going to follow that will tonight. We are also on to welcome twitter. Com booktv, known as barnacle. Mike barnicle is senior contributed to msnbcs morning joe and columnist for the daily beast, broadcaster and commentator. His followed rule number seven throughout his career earning him accolades and making him a bugaboo of conservative media and red sox hater. Please join me in welcoming the esteemed mike and harry to the stand. That is truly a heroic story. Sir harold evans, it is an honor to be here with you this evening. You want one of the most legendary editors in the 20th and 21st century. My first question to you is what did you write today . [inaudible] day i began writing a piece for the london Evening Standard which is not edited by the former i was in the middle of it talking about where you find truth and whats going on. That is what i spent most of my life doing. And i have written a few words though i stopped. I thought the strand was more important. I better skedaddle and get down there. In the book you write many things in the book. The book incidentally is a gift to both writers, attentional potential writers and readers. Because it gives you an account of how easy it is to read something that has been well edited, clear and concise. You dont want to really write anything where people would scratch their heads thinking what does he mean . No one has ever felt that way about anything that you write and still write. One of my favorite chapters in the book is storytelling. Long and short. The many stories that you tell in the book, defining clarity in writing, one that struck home to me was the helicopter patrol over a city in afghanistan. Why dont you. Guest the need for clarity and the difference between two different forms of news writing. News writing, when i was young and i would get an assignment or try to get someone to talk to me or if there has been a robbery there was a getaway youre too young to learn about this. So i let my writing, i did my best to tell the truth and the whole truth. But i was too young and inexperienced to weaseling out of people. The difference between writing for the columnist like Mike Barnicle it is certainly directing you to look for particular place with an arch and come up and see men scurrying about and it looks just, sounds just like the place theyre looking for. And so they you think well maybe its not so they circle again and talk among each other. And they say will i didnt ask him again . The guy on the ground floor, whats happening . They say look for an arch and this kind of building. What we have seen several of those. And then they go back again and finally say lets go. So they go. And i said doctors without borders, of course it is a disaster. So then you ask yourself, how did this come about . And so i tell that story, i never saw any action with the army was pretty frank about that. They were not all frank however, when writers, men were killed by an Army Helicopter was looking down so these men gathering the marketplace. And they became convinced one of them was carrying a hammer and said that looks like a gun to me. The other guy said thats like a gun. And they say lets kill them. Theyre actually both photographers. And next day, i personally dont Julian Assange and snowden but in this case, im not particularly fond of this but they give an example that even the heroes get things could you speak, it is an extension of that story. The aftermath of that story, the write up of that story. The bureaucratic language of that story. Why is it so difficult for people who are smart people to write just a simple declarative english sentence quake noun, verb . That is the whole point of tonight. I mean seriously because it amazes me. Most of the time i am in a rage. But i can be enraged by the language. Let me just give you an example. As you know last year coincidental with the election of our 45th president , George Orwells 70th anniversary. And the political language and with variations which is true of all Political Parties conservatives is designed to make life down trickle in murder respectable and given experiences, let me give you some pure wit. In the Management Statement with promises to ourselves to improving the efficacy of measurable learning outcomes. What . We stand to run something. But we have this new republic, a great magazine that is set upon by one of the founders of facebook. And as generalists we have mixed views about facebook it is actually taking money away. And. [inaudible] what is going on with politics . There is a crowd and you can see all this is what they want to do really, we expect to create magical experiences through collaboration and align ourselves from a metropolitan perspective. What . I want to Say Something that will shock you. And if i am i have many emotions. Donald trump, this is donald trump at a charity and an emphasis and a certainty which i for one overlooked as being effective as it was in the election. And this is what he says. We have to stop illegal immigration we have to do it cheers. Usa today, usa today. And when i hear people i am running against a we have to build a well folks, we have to build a wall and a wall works. We have to do it we have to do it all you have to do is go to israel and say is your well working . Walls work. This is just but you have to say, you have to admit it, in the Election Campaign that worked. Because it cuts through all of these long words and nonsense. While they personally aided the message, you have to admit now. So the question is, is that language, that certainty of nonsense . And there are some objections to my notes, but in that certainty, how does a transit from winning a campaign to governing . If you read the paper today, the newspaper you know the translation from campaigning to winning is definitely very different. But what is it that his campaign again, the certainty and clarity of it much as i didnt like it. So these great slogans which you see here today, make america read again. His was make America Great again . How many of you know that was stolen from Ronald Reagan . Ronald reagan said lets make America Great again. Donald trump edited out the lets and put the emphatic make America Great again. And unfortunately, the democrats, they didnt have any kind of certainty. So that is why we have 1 45 president who spoke with dogmatic certainty about lies thats all . When i say lets be clear im speaking on behalf of people who want to see justice done and they want to see nonsense being posed for the Republican Party at the moment. But you really have not to talk this business of crack. This business crack that i read out to you of measurable outcomes and magical experiences. You need to learn to speak dearly. You have to speak clearly in simple sentences. But where do you get the clarity that is respectable. Where is the verb . It is okay to have a sentence without a verb. When youre trying to find the verb and also the noun it relates to, and given tons of examples and supportive. I cant understand half of it so i sit there getting angrier and angrier and finally find a way of uniting verb and subject. In talking about the chum campaign and building a wall and talking about noun, verb, object. You edited millions, millions literally millions of newspaper stories. Thousands of books, is there a linkage between words that make you think about things and words that so many emotion and a reader or listener . And do you think emotion is an important part of writing . Tell me why and how. I really do. One thing, i want to get out of the swamp that i have been in. No graph lets imagine it is 30 years from now or maybe 40. You are 93. This is, this is before all of you. So i come up to and say, how are you feeling . At 93. Well, i know how it begins. I mean why do you ask . Just look. I show the change here. This is what roger angell wrote. Before he reads it i want to taste something he wrote or that he quoted. Roger angell could make a paperclip sing. Go ahead. [inaudible] okay its 93 this is what he says. This is what he writes. Check me out. Check me out. The two top novels in my left hand look at that being worked over by the kgb. No, if i had been a catcher for the hall of fame, to put this another way if i put my hand like you like a pistol and fired a year knows the bullet would nail your knee. And it is like slamming a door in your face. Dont stop, its good stuff. Dont stop . No, dont. Now still facing about cover my left or better eye with one hand i see a blurry and certain vision of the ceiling and floor and walls or windows on your right and left. But no sign of your face or head. Nothing in the middle. But cheer up if i reverse things and cover my right i that you are back again if i take my hand away and look at you with both eyes the empty hole disappears and you are in 3d. And actually, looking pretty terrific today and it ended macular degeneration. Im 93 and im feeling great. That is magnificent tansey specific images, having the courage to admit the deficiency. And at the end of the day when he is 93 and i am somewhat younger than that, im feeling sorry so that is an invocation of sympathy by the way he writes. So they have been entitled to say i can barely get up the stairs. Thats what i mean by really good writing. Simple language, noun, verb, copied images and imagine a great metaphor about this eye. Does that answer your question . And send this gets to the flipside of roger angell his book i think is this old man, all in pieces. Which is well worth reading. Roger angell, life sir harold evans is a legend. He has a ready for the new yorker for 67 or 70 years. But in any event, the flipside of clarity in writing, and it struck me reading your book. Is, the writing that impacts and effects so many lives like Health Insurance policies. Has anyone ever read their Health Insurance policy with a Car Insurance policy . Nobody reads that. So i would like you to talk about two people. Start with ethan bedrick. His mother was a young man whose mother had a difficult birth. He was born with Cerebral Palsy. And he was also born with that means you have to stretch the muscles what youll never be able to walk. Also, because of the effect of Cerebral Palsy, the muscles in the mouth for enunciation and speech are not properly developed. See need Speech Therapy as well as physical therapy. Even ehtan bedrick was born and his father was a top executive, he bought an insurance policy. A health policy. Would permit to do more of the things that were required to be done. And the boy, within five years he said he had a very good chance of walking. After 18 months, travelers suspended the treatment. They went to court. Some of the means by which he was enabled to exercise his muscles, they were restored by court order. But one was not. And the Travelers Company refused and ended the service of Speech Therapy. Batmans that that boy was imprisoned in his own skull without the ability to communicate in a simple manner because the Cerebral Palsy, the best i could, Cerebral Palsy can be treated to the extent that a victim can learn gradually to communicate. Whether by whatever, so the judge actually said in a commentary explaining he said i cannot overrule that policy language. What was the word in language, that scrutiny when the father bought the policy . The word was this, promise to restore speech. And the Insurance Company argued, would cannot restore something that is not there. Which is the judge said privately after, a diabolical argument. Because in fact, the careful word mr. Suggests it doesnt have to be precise to take back to this state. There has to be some improvement but it was quite the 5050 chance of being able to offer some kind of sound and maybe a bit better than that. So that really amazed me. That is the story of ehtan bedrick. Why is it is an education . Lack of patient will have . That so many of us have difficulty in clear, concise writing. What is the root of this problem . Some of the magazine pieces that you do, there are books he picked up and read. Some of them, not a lot of them but some of that is like you are wearing snow shoes and a machete and its like every sentence is driving to binghamton. It takes so long to get there. That is one of the things that i describe in some detail. I think in fact, just imagine in that perfect example of the perfect metaphor. Trying to get to the sentence before you get to binghamton. Here is what happens with the sentence. It begins with what i call a predatory thought. Which is given all of the circumstances, given the fact that it is now in the seventh month of our lord and so on and so on. Then the fifth of it comes. Long opening is where most people get shipwrecked. The panic because they know nobodys going to come instance after instance in this book of mine, where there are 60, 70 words before you get to the,. You have to carry all that mental luggage the point and then you have to remember what it was. So in the end youre carrying out screaming. Because it is completely incomprehensible so the predatory clause, hell of a lot of words in my book, im trying to save you from madness. Because if this is true, it would be crazy there are hundreds of instances of this predatory clause. And in fact in simple sentence when you mentioned at the beginning, it is headed in the afterlife is it hidden . Because it is one thing that you start to write. I do this all the time. You start to write and then you remember something else. Well, lets put that in the beginning there. But whats put that in there too and then you have all of this garbage in the pit of the story. And in childrens books, is one thing very inhibiting for writers. Maybe one or two people here. I would suggest you are but maybe you used to be. Which is terrified of grammar. Oh yeah. I still am the number of people so scared of grammar they get to the clause which says, which, what . People dont fret and sweat and the difference between that and which, who and whom. It doesnt matter james server wrote a story about a man who is trapped in a witch clause. It could go on forever. And he said im never going to enter a witch clause again and whats important is know what you want to say. And say it do not stumble. Or dont even put it in. Really im serious about this. Because so many people look im all in favor of all of these things. But i think grammar scares a lot of people. Years ago, not many but for many years, when i was writing three, four or sometimes five columns for the boston globe, i ran to the issue at the beginning. You know being lost in that clause and thing the chair of the department at the university. But then after a very brief while i figured i would write for the reader. In the readers ear in the way you speak. Do you think that is an okay way to go . I certainly do. Often people asked me about their writing and they start to describe the problem and i am there but i say just send me an email. And in the email they sent usually is very clear. Because nobody on as an email all the time. And if you can write that piece of paper which is headlined Harvard English Department they are frozen not me. Just send an email no one is going to arrest you. They are causally on their tail. What do we do about the Language Police . It is a real issue that you raise. Actually when i wrote the book, i knew i was creating hostages because there would be a trivia cop hiding in may be in the word and say you cannot say that. Right . Now you cannot say that because it is not in the normal sense of the word. And i say just go away. I am expecting to get arrested any day now buying a language cop. I mean obviously, is now okay to have a word without a verb. Right . One of the more interesting things in the book is full of interesting anecdotes and stories. Compelling stories well told. Very clearly told as well. But one of the interesting things for prospective writers or writers who write for a living is you are recounting the number of people you know. Perhaps even yourself, certainly me who have a little difficulty writing until and unless they get the lead down perfectly. The first sentence, the first paragraph. It could take you in our. It used to be that it would take you quite a while some days to get the first paragraph down. At least 850 words. Typewritten lines. But until i got the first paragraph down and could not proceed. Once i got that first paragraph down the rest of it would be my 43 minutes. Almost on a clock. That is very familiar to me. Because i was writing editorials on whatever was on the evening news that was shared with the guardian. I had 50 minutes to write. Very short. Only about 600 words. I spent the first 44 minutes on the first paragraph i spent that, the method that was extended, the paragraph was not very long. But when it was approved they just sliced ver