Lefty despair

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>>If any piece written by a leftist is unreadable, it can be 
>>corrected, through editing, proofreading, etc.
>
>What left publications do you read? Most of them emerge barely 
>readable or worse *after* editing.
>
>Someone once sent me two versions of a piece written for The 
>Progressive - one before and one after editing. The effect of the 
>editing was to make the piece stylistically and politically duller 
>(in both senses - boring and lack of sharpness).
>
>Why is it important that stuff not be dull? For one, there's a great 
>pleasure in reading good prose, and suspicion of pleasure is no 
>dobut one of the reasons left pubs are so dull (along with fear of 
>giving offense). But for two, there's also the issue of persuasion - 
>it'd be nice to appeal to people beyond the One True Church. I know 
>some people find this a pointless or silly goal, but I don't.
>
>Doug

When I mentioned readability, I was simply speaking of grammar and 
clarity.  What's dull and what's not dull is of necessity subjective. 
I enjoy reading _Monthly Review_, for instance, but the journal may 
be dull to those who do not share my political view or stylistic 
preference.  Remember what Virginia Woolf thought of Byron's poetry: 
"I'm much impressed by the extreme badness of B.'s poetry" (@ 
<http://www.englishhistory.net/byron/woolf.html>).
-- 
Yoshie

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