Short Review of The Art of Making Sense by Andrew Klavan

Andrew Klavan is one of my favorite authors, speakers, and political commentators. I listen to his podcast, aptly named The Andrew Klavan Show, weekly (I used to listen daily, but he’s slowly retiring, and has switched his show to once a week). I stumbled upon his young adult novels as a teenager (and I’ve just recently started them again!), when I found them on the shelves of the only Christian book store my mom would let me buy books from. Years later when I first started dating Tucker, he suggested Klavan’s podcast, and I’m ashamed to admit that it took me a few months to connect the podcast host to one of my favorite author’s as a teenager. I think it’s the way he spells his name (that’s a Klavan-inside-joke for fellow fans).

Since becoming a fan of his podcast, I’ve been wanting to get back into reading his work, thus I found his short book of writings and speeches from 2019, called The Art of Making Sense, named for the specific essay to which this review/annotation is dedicated. There are many aspects of this essay that I could discuss, but given the focus in my MFA on authorial presence, I want to highlight Klavan’s masterful ability to mark his writing as his own. My writing mentor calls this “voiciness.” Of course, I would recognize his voice anywhere, having listened to it almost daily for about two years now, but I think I can now pick out his writing voice in the same way. He speaks as he writes and vice versa. 

Two recognizable aspects of Klavan’s writings are his self-deprecating humor and his sentence structure. Throughout Klavan’s work, specifically his non-fiction work, he leaves markers of his style and humor. For example, a common joke of his is that he’s very old. This “joke” wiggles its way into his podcast and I recognized it immediately in this essay.

He writes, “I was sitting in a restaurant with two old friends, two men I’ve known a long time, both of them a little older than me. (You can only get a little older than me, after that…)”

The entire essay could do without what he placed in parentheses; the meaning of the piece would remain the same had he left it out. However, the aside becomes a form of authorial presence. He could have left it out, but by including it, he reveals himself more intimately, even providing a closeness with readers who are familiar with him. As a fan, I immediately recognized the secret. And if I had read the essay without knowing who had written it, I would have immediately taken that line as a major clue. 

Another example occurs toward the middle of the essay when Klavan recounts an argument he had with a friend who is Roman Catholic. Klavan himself is a Protestant Christian, though at the time of the argument with a friend, he was not a believer.

He writes, “Now, like a large number of my dearest friends over the years, this friend was a Roman Catholic. And I hope there are no Roman Catholics here because I can share with you that these people are the biggest pains in the neck you ever want to meet.” He goes onto explain that they are pains in the neck because their faith has been around for over 2000 years and therefore, their arguments are fairly well-thought out and thus make sense. He finds this frustrating because he often loses arguments with Roman Catholics, and in the specific story he is telling, he loses the argument in a major, all-my-beliefs-are-challenged type of way.

The particular phrasing of this recount is very Klavan. I would recognize it anywhere, especially in the structure. Klavan begins with a kind description and thwarts expectations for the end of the sentence by stating something contradictory to the initial description: a dearest friend, the biggest pain in the neck. It’s memorable and useful, especially as a tool for authorial presence - the form is something he can (and does) use across his writing and speaking and it is always effective. Not to mention it made me laugh. 

In “The Art of Making Sense,” Klavan is tackling the issue of abortion. He is speaking to fellow believers, or at least, fellow pro-lifers, so he does not spend as much time making the scientific or even the strictly moral case. Rather, his main argument is summed up in this sentence: “When you make sense, you say what you believe and therefore mean what you say and therefore act in accordance with it and therefore you are who you seem to be.” He’s arguing for logic, and finding meaning in logic.

The structure draws to my mind the various arguments Christian apologists make for God, for example the Kalam Argument - whatever begins to exist has a cause for it coming into being, and the universe began to exist, therefore, the universe has a cause for it’s coming into being (the cause being God). This means this, and this means that, therefore this means this and that. (Not the sharpest way of showing you the structure, but I think you get it.)

There may be a specific term for this type of arguing and I’m not sure what it is, but I recognize it also as Klavan’s main form of structuring arguments. He then almost always summarizes everything into one sentence, each clause strung together with “and therefore” or something similar. Personally, I love these long sentences, stacked with clause after clause, laying stepping stone after stepping stone until we’re at the end. I try to use them often in my own writing.

After spending time with each clause throughout the essay to build his case for logic in the abortion debate, he drives his point home with a restatement of his thesis, generally using the same structure: “We say all of us has the right to life. If we are saying what we believe, then we must mean what we say and act in accordance with it and be the America we seem to be.”

The “and therefore” is replaced with “then we must,” both explicitly written and implicitly understood. I find this both effective in making his argument, but also in creating a clear and well-formed “through-line” strung throughout the essay. “Then we must” is also much stronger. He’s made his point, and now he’s not budging on its validity. The restatement is recognizable as his original thesis, but written in a way that ties his arguments together more forcefully and makes the essay as a whole both effective and memorable.

As a big fan, I can’t recommend Andrew Klavan enough, both his writing and speaking and any other project his words touch. Like I mentioned above, I’m working through his young adult books now, so I’ll be sure to give a brief review of those if anyone’s interested!

Until then, there are no “e’s” in Klavan.