“Making Writing Simple” Question Answers ENG A WBCHSE 11

“Making Writing Simple” Question Answers by J B Priestley is included in the syllabus of ENG A for grade 11 (WBCHSE : West Bengal Council of Higher Secondary Education). The literary piece is an essay that talks about the merits of writing in simple and plain English so that it is comprehensible to a large variety of audiences.

SHORT ANSWER QUESTIONS

Question 1: What were the author’s views regarding the youngish critic? 

Ans: According to the author JB Priestley, he liked the personality of the youngest critic who was sincere but loathed the critic’s value regarding literature. 

Question 2: What was the youngest critic’s view regarding the author’s writing? 

Ans: The young critic opined that the author’s writing seemed to him very easy and simple but his talk is much more complicated and subtle than his writing. 

Question 3: When did the youngest critic mature and what did they want? 

Ans: The young critic and his colleagues matured in the early thirties. 

       They wanted literature to be difficult. 

Question 4: Whose writings were in vogue and why? 

Ans: The writings of Hopkins and done were in vogue. 

         According to the literate class of society, literature had to respond to something twisted tormented, and esoteric in their secret nature which was reflected in the writings of Donne and Hopkins. 

Question 5: What has been referred to as the critical fallacy? 

Ans: According to the author, literature is not synonymous with introversion unlike critic and his lot. This is regarded as a critical fallacy. 

Question 6: What was the author’s belief and what did he prefer? 

Ans: The author does not feel that there is a glass wall between him and the people in the nearest factories, shops, and puns and he does not believe that his thoughts and feelings are quite different from them. 

        The author therefore a wide channel of communication between people. 

Question 7: To whom did the author pay a tribute and what was its outcome? 

Ans: The author paid a tribute on the air to CG Jung for whom he had a massive admiration. 

LONG QUESTION ANSWER

1: “In all these, there was no pose and here their elders went wrong about them.”Where did the elders go wrong? How were the views of the elders contrasted with that of the author? 

Ans: According to JB Priestley, the elders went wrong when they wanted literature to be something twisted, tormented, esoteric, and secret. When the elders wanted difficulty and did not want to share anything with the crowd and to make readers sweat and toil, they went wrong. 

       The elders believed desperately that a true artist must hide from the crowd behind a ticket of briers. They wanted the mass to threaten all descent values however the author was born in the nineteenth century and rightly or wrongly he was not afraid of the crowd. Art to him was not synonymous with introversion so he preferred communication and deliberately Priestley aimed at simplicity and not complexity in his writing. No matter what the subject in hand might be, he felt that it must be such that he could read aloud in a bar parlour. So, he did not consider literature to be a cerebral activity. 

2: What has Priestley claimed not to have achieved and what was the little triumph which he achieved? 

Ans: In the essay “Making Writing Simple”, Priestley says that his aim had been to write in a simple manner so that it could go down to the masses. So, he worked hard to satisfy the crowd. Yet, he does not claim to have achieved even now a prose that is like an easy persuasive voice which is his best, though he he had been trying to give his best for years. 

        However, his habit of simplification has its little triumph. He was asked to pay a birthday tribute, on air, to CG Jung for whose work and personality, the author has a massive admiration. To explain Jung in thirteen and a half minutes so that ordinary listeners could understand what the fuss was about, it was really difficult. Priestley’s friends as well as the psychologist said it could not be done. However, Priestley can reasonably claim, backed by first-class evidence, that he was able to perform his work. It was no doubt a tough little task, hard to accomplish, when came to the end of the program he felt that it was like the honey in the rock, he tasted delight and triumph. 

3:In the essay “Making Writing Simple” what did the youngish critic criticize about Priestley? What were the critic’s views regarding literature? 

Ans: The youngish critic stared at JB Priestley and commented that he did not understand Priestley’s nature of writing because his talk was always more complicated and subtle than his writing. His writing always seemed to the critic very simple. Priestley replied that he had spent years and years to make his writing simple. What critics saw as a fault, he regarded it as a virtue. This revealed to Priestley the Gulf between his generation and Priestley’s. 

         The critic and his lot, who matured in the early thirties, wanted literature to be difficult. They grew up in revolt against the mass communication antics of their age. They did not want to share anything with the crowd. Writing that was hard to understand was like a password to their secret society. A good writer to them made his readers toil and sweat. They admired extreme cleverness and solemnity and poets like political cardinals, and critics who took literature like specialists summoned to a consultation at a king’s bedside. A genuine author, and artist, as distinct from hacks who tried to please the mob, began with some simple thoughts and impressions and then proceeded to complicate his account of them, if only to keep away the fools. Literature had to respond to something twisted, tormented, and esoteric in their secret nature.