A litotes of what you fancy: some thoughts on Stanley Hollander's writing style

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the writing style of Stanley C. Hollander, in order to better understand the power of his prose.

A line‐by‐line literary analysis of Hollander's publications, with a view to detecting his stylistic “signature” or “fingerprint”.

Four key elements are integral to Hollander's writing style – interrogatives, inventories, iconoclasm and irony. His single most characteristic literary device is litotes, a mode of ironic understatement.

Literary analysis is inherently idiosyncratic and tends to reflect the perspective of the interpreter. Another analyst is sure to find different features in Hollander's corpus (though this is less a methodological shortcoming than a testament to the richness of Hollander's writings).

All academics are writers and, by better understanding the technique of a much admired stylist, everyone's publications can be improved.