article of interest

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 29 13:31:24 PST 1999


Michael Yates wrote:


>The current issue of Lingua Franca has an interesting article titled,"Is
>Bad Writing Necessary." On one side naturally is the bete noir of many
>on these lists, Judith Butler. On the other is our dear friend and
>list contributor, Katha Pollitt.

Sometimes I think there's no excuse for bad writing, but on the other hand, it's not easy to write well, and very few people do. Katha's a poet and a fine prose stylist, but how many people can you say that about? Science writing is largely terrible - "hard" and "soft" sciences; who'd hold up the American Economic Review as anything but a negative example (and not just for its prose!)? Butler cut her teeth reading Hegel, for god's sake.

Doug



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