Professor Elam

 The first step to good writing, in my opinion, is good reading. And with that in mind I highly recommend 

columns by David E. Davis, even if you are not a gearhead. Davis writing career really got going at Car and Driver in the 1960s, he left for an ad agency, came back and quit C/D after it was bought by CBS or some such and started Automobile Magazine. He was left with online WindingRoad.com. But fittingly he has returned by invitation to Car and Driver again. He can also hold forth on contemporary politics using his own personal history as guide. Note how he builds a sense of theater of the mind describing what took place in those old cars…..

but as I say the reason you should read him is not out of affection for cars of which he has a great deal, but out of affection for good writing. Good writing embraces us, beckons us along, makes us comfortable for the ride and we leave wanting more.  Stephen King can do this as do most  of the million selling writers, …. David E. Davis declared back in the 60s that he was influenced by then budding writer Tom Wolf (The Kandy Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamlined Baby, The Right Stuff) and if you have not read Wolf, you have simply not read modern American literature. 

So what are you doing over the break?  This is the chance to do some good reading, and therefore learn more about good writing. I checked out a P J O'Rourke from the SA Public Library today and just ordered some classic Jean Shepherd (he authored A Christmas Story which became the now famous seasonal movie) stories. 

Next time you are with a group of friends, go round the circle asking who has read what, you will learn a good deal about them, if the answer is, I am too busy, oh, I just read on the net  or some such, you have learned a great deal about their intellectual curiosity and therefore what you may eventually learn from them, we are after all known by the friends we keep.