Author(s): Jonty Claypole

Psychology

A lifelong stutterer dismantles the cult of fluency and champions the creative powers of inarticulacy.

 In an age of polished TED talks and overconfident political oratory, success seems to depend upon charismatic public speaking. But what if hyper-fluency is not only unachievable but undesirable?

Jonty Claypole spent fifteen years of his life in and out of extreme speech therapy. From sessions with child psychologists to lengthy stuttering boot camps and exposure therapies, he tried everything until finally being told the words he'd always feared: 'We can't cure your stutter.' Those words started him on a journey towards not only making peace with his stammer but learning to use it to his advantage.

Here, Jonty argues that our obsession with fluency could be hindering, rather than helping, our creativity, authenticity and persuasiveness. Exploring other speech conditions, such as aphasia and Tourette's, and telling the stories of the 'creatively disfluent' - from Lewis Carroll to Kendrick Lamar - Jonty explains why it's time for us to stop making sense, get tongue tied and embrace the life-changing power of inarticulacy.

Review: A moving study of stuttering...remarkable -- Helen Davies * Sunday Times *
Words Fail Us is a deep dive into disfluency, exploring its history, its science, its politics and its profile in a fluency-obsessed world. Jonty Claypole's book is timely, thoughtful, rich in fact and personal anecdote, and looks to a more enlightened, speech-diverse future. -- David Mitchell
Comprehensive, open-minded, thoughtful and wise ... a liberating book. -- Colm Toibin
Words Fail Us is one of those rare books - a piece of writing and thinking I hadn't realised I'd been waiting for until I read it. In this thoughtful and moving exploration of disfluency Jonty Claypole has written both a wonderfully engaging study on the history, causes and societal perceptions of speech disorders and an acutely argued call to arms, not just for the wider acceptance of communication diversity but also for an embracing of the creativity and originality of thought it can inspire. -- Owen Sheers
Humane, thought-provoking, and rich in experiential detail. * Guardian *
I would recommend [Words Fail Us] to any fluent person trying to understand the tribulations of disfluency, and to any disfluent person who feels that he or she is enduring them alone ... Kendrick Lamar, Lewis Carroll, Somerset Maugham and Henry James are just a few of the writers whose stammers Claypole believes enriched their work. In Words Fail Us he has given us another instance of this fine tradition. * The Times *
Claypole, who has a stutter, argues that pathological "disfluencies" should instead be understood and - the more radical claim - celebrated. Claypole thinks it is no coincidence that some of the greatest verbal artists - Henry James, Kendrick Lamar - have struggled with speech. The book doubles as a polemic against fluency: by unlearning our reflexive reverence for it, we can appreciate our disfluencies, and the "diversity and innovation they bring to human thought and language". * New Statesman *

Author Biography: Jonty Claypole is Director of BBC Arts, Chairman of the arts centre HOME in Manchester, and was listed in the Bookseller's Top 100 Most Influential People. Although born in Australia, he grew up in London and now lives in Bethnal Green with his family. His most recent project at the BBC was the landmark series Civilisations featuring Mary Beard, David Olusoga and Simon Schama.