BF2S Forums BF3s Book Club

Last edited by cl4u53w1t2 (2009-11-04 15:37:25)

JohnG@lt wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

There's a lot of snobbery in writing.
Hardy and Dickens are 'well-written', apparently, but dreary as hell.
Wilbur Smith is gripping but low-brow english, and his books all have basically the same plot.
I couldn't give a toss, I'll read what I enjoy reading.

What irks me is technical stuff which is badly written, tiring to read and ambiguous.
'Pistolsmithing' By George C Nonte is an interesting read for example.

I try to avoid literature written in the age when authors were paid by the word. I don't enjoy reading other peoples bullshit. Never write two words where one will suffice.

Uzique wrote:

he's talking about orwell as a literary critic... not 1984. orwell doctrinally said that good english was terse and laconic, rather than flowery and flamboyant. i think it was in one of his essays on english literature as a discipline, or perhaps mentioned in one of his political-theory pieces.

JohnG@lt wrote:

Spark wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

I try to avoid literature written in the age when authors were paid by the word. I don't enjoy reading other peoples bullshit. Never write two words where one will suffice.

orwell would love you.

No, I'm not suggesting Newspeak. I don't enjoy reading overly flowery prose. The plots of many of the books written in that age are incomparable but the books themselves trend toward boring just based on the excessive wordplay used. Austen and Dickens are marred in my eyes because of the age they wrote in.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

Spark wrote:

JohnG@lt wrote:

Spark wrote:

orwell would love you.

No, I'm not suggesting Newspeak. I don't enjoy reading overly flowery prose. The plots of many of the books written in that age are incomparable but the books themselves trend toward boring just based on the excessive wordplay used. Austen and Dickens are marred in my eyes because of the age they wrote in.

I meant as a literary critic as zeek suggested.

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

read a brilliant piece of structuralist criticism on rabelais' complete work by mikhail bakhtin and knew i had to read the original source material. really great grotesque realism. bakhtin's work on the cultural significance and rhetoric of the work really elucidated the old confounding renaissance ideas into a clearer light. really enjoyed it, even though i shouldnt really be spending the time on such distractions...

Don't trust verbose nonces, punch them in the face, its the right thing to do.

the reasons for reading and recommendation of the book is for fairly straight-forward reasons.

Uzique wrote:

there's a certain amount of confusion in calling my posts 'verbose' at one moment and then ridiculing my poorly-thought english afterwards.

it's not that english isnt my first language, it's that i cant be bothered to thoughtfully reply to someone with such a lack of logic in their own pathetic jibes. you're clearly too intelligent to be intimidated by verbosity - let alone to find my basic-posts as examples of circumlocution - so why are you making such a weak criticism?