[lbo-talk] Prose Style, was Time to Get Religion

[Jerry Monaco]

On 12/6/06, Miles Jackson <cqmv at pdx.edu> wrote:
>
>
> That said, I want to join Carrol in a rejection of the demand for "clear
> writing".  The clarity of a text is not a product of the text; rather,
> clarity is a product of people in a given social context who share the
> same background of knowledge and interest and then use the text in their
> ongoing interactions.  Thus a computer programming text is not clear to
> me at all, but it could be a clear text in the culture of computer
> programmers.   A chess book using algebraic notation may be a
> fascinating topic of discussion for me and ravi (/Life and games of M.
> Tal /rocks!), but it's just gibberish to people who don't participate in
> the chess culture.  In sum: you can't say a text is "unnecessarily
> obscure" until you participate meaningfully in the culture that created
> it.
>
> Miles

 Miles please go back and read what I actually wrote, where I take into
account technical prose, expertise etc.  Clear writing is not a fetish but a
facilitation of communication.

One cannot read Tal and his "self-interviews" about the tangle of his own
thoughts in the midst of calculating a sacrificial combination, without
realizing that sometimes the Hypo must sometimes be left in the swamp.
There are certain things that you just can't know.

I don't think I ever used the phrase "unnecessarily obscure" but yes there
was some chess writing that was bad and some chess variations that were so
tangled and unorganized and full of errors that they might be called
"unnecessarily obscure".  This was never true of Tal's writing and
analysis.  But there was rarely chess writing that was obscurantist for
those who played chess.

But there was something analogous to obscurantism and exclusivity in chess.
For years the Soviet chess establishment led by Botvinnik, kept its database
(all on index cards in the age before computers) a closely guarded secret.
Tal, who was often in disfavor with the chess bureaucracy, was excluded from
much of the results of chess praxis that was evidenced in the database.
This was so even when he was world champion.  In other words you had to be a
bona fide member of the inner circle to obtain entrance to the special chess
knowledge in the Botvinnik database.  Even after he retired from world
championship competition Botvinnik kept a tight reign on the database.  This
kind of exclusivity is similar to the special exclusivity often promoted by
the priestly class.  To the extent that this is a result of the necessity of
chess competition I have no objection.  But this kind of obscurity was used
as a tool of the chess bureaucracy.

Miles you must go back to the thread where these posts originated and read
what Ravi and I said on the need and utility of technical language, before
you affirm Carrol's defense of the territorial imperative of the academic
class.

Jerry Monaco
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