``... Orwell died at age 48 having subsisted on a diet of coffee, rare meat, Guinness and cigarettes.'' John Halle
Ooo-er. First I discover I share the man's prejudices and now I find out I share his diet - by this reckoning I've got four and a bit years to finish this #!* thesis and squeeze that PhD bit in before the RIP bit.
'Night all, Rob.
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Sleep tight, and don't worry Rob, I think Orwell kicked from TB which was probably kept at bay for at least a dozen years as half starved colonies tried to fight their way through masses of necrotic alveoli. The poor bacilli must have succumb many times to the toxic levels of nicotine and alcohol extruded from the surrounding tissues, not to mention the great struggles they must have had endure against the aberrant moral climate they found in there.
And, while I could subscribe to the keep it simple theory of writing, and I concede it takes considerable skill to put an idea into words in as plain a manner as possible, that technique also limits what can be put into words, in some cases excluding entire realms of nuance, ambiguity, exception, and tonality that when combined and included, lend a kind of polyphony and harmonic depth as each thread in a contrapuntal arrangement is woven into a much broader texture of meaning than would be otherwise possible if writing were to remain imprisoned by the single strand of the plain song and declarative sentence.
Chuck Grimes