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

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Thu Dec 7 06:55:25 PST 2006


Most arguments about "obscurantism" have the hidden premise that people write obscurely ON PURPOSE. That they _could_ write clearly but do not because of improper motives.

But no one has provided one iota of EVIDENCE for this.

An attack on the morals of 10s of thousands of people (without evidence) is being disguised as a discussion of rhetoric.

There has been no recognition at all of how fucking hard it is to write well.

There has been instead the arrogant assumption that the _critic_ has an infallible knowledge of what is clear and what isn't clear and that all the people who are not clear are trying on purpose to make the poor critic sweat.

And there has been only the most grudging admission that there are hundreds of different genres of writing and that each one calls for different skills. The critics remind me of sports writers, who spend their lives nagging at various athletes for refusing to bat as well as they could if they weren't maliciously trying to spoil things for the fans.

CArrol



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