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March 2nd, 2014 | #61 | |
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I believe I was better 20 years ago. I believe music was better 20 years ago. I believe I music was better 20 years ago. The last looks like a mistake. Most times it would be. But it's intentional here. I like it. You blip over it thinking it's a mistake, but then you think, hmm, maybe the guy meant something by it. Let me restudy it. Ah...I think I see. It's a commonplace to observe that music was better in one's youth. Perhaps he's suggesting that everyone thinks that for the same reason he does - he was better in his youth. That sounds about right. It's an unusual expression, and I don't know what you would call it grammatically, that technique, that sort of dual-nouning, but each noun taking the verb separately, and in no relation to the other noun, as you would have with, say, 'leather purse.' It's a strange combination of two sentences made into one, but if it's grammatically wrong, I believe it achieves the artistic effect and communicates meaning, even profound meaning. Perhaps someone has expressed the idea before, but I have not seen it. If it's ungrammatical, it's still right by the laws of art. However, I'm not sure it is actually ungrammatical. Yet I'm not educated enough to know what the term would be for that construction, using two nouns, unrelated, each taking the verb independently. In essence, simply doubling the nouns, the meaning of the sentence. It's not really right, I suppose, but I think it works. |
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March 2nd, 2014 | #62 | |
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My general goal is to write without cliches, yet in a way that allows meaning to come through without excessive effort on the part of the reader. Yet, in this case, the reader does have to work; hopefully the reward, an attempted insight, is worth it. But at a minimum, the work must allow the reader to grasp the point the writer tried to put across, whether he agrees with it or not. By telelscoping two sentences into one, I think we can recreate the psychology of the man who says "music was better back then," and run that commonplace alongside his real meaning, without the need for two full sentences. I really am about done going on about this, but this kind of thing is intensely interesting to me. |
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March 2nd, 2014 | #63 | |
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March 2nd, 2014 | #64 | ||||||
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I think the default for the educated layman is communicating grammatically and effectively so that anyone he's writing for/to can understand him. Many can do that - many cannot, as we can see here, for crissakes. You do it exceptionally well, in my judgment. Quote:
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MacDonald and Duke are great expository writers - they explain things well - at length and intelligently. That's characteristic of professors. They don't play with language, generally, beacause that's kind of the opposite of what professors do - they cite evidence and quote people to prove points. Humor doesn't really figure in. I do more journalistic, expressive stuff, not academic work, certainly, and so I try to achieve whatever can be done with a freer, looser style, including wordplay, humor and free association. Everyone prefers his own form; in my opinion you'll get better politics out of the emo-artistic crowd than the professors because it understands that people have to be moved emotionally and led, not just read to and explained to and proved to. But, everything is fodder...I certainly USE what the men I respect like Duke and MacDonald and Johnson come up with, but I fancy, perhaps arrogantly, that I know better how to deploy their findings than they do. I couldn't do what they do. But I don't think they can do what I can, either. Quote:
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There are infinite ways to say anything...that's what makes writing interesting. It so happens that people are herd animals, conformists, in matters verbal as well as everything else, but that just leaves the field open to those of us who aren't. Yet neither do we fall into the trap of non-comformity for its own sake; that would be puerile. We disconform where there's a political necessity or artistic advantage to be gained - i.e., for reasons, and a good ones. |
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