"Carrol brought up the Paris Commune. Rimbaud was a participant and wrote something non-sophomoric about it when he was 17, so it's not a given. "
Oh great, now we're comparing with Rimbaud. That's ridiculous.
A more realistic example would be Jack London, who often wrote like an ass, in order to impress.
I think I'm as fierce a critic of writing as anyone on this list, and yet, I was not scandalized by the Berkeley screed. The spirit mattered, and the spirit was fine.
I once saw a man get up at a SUN micro company meeting of hundreds of people and, rather incoherently, tell the CEO (Ed Zander) at the time to fuck off. It really was incoherent, but it caught the spirit in the room, he was loudly applauded, and Ed Zander never came to speak again.
Joanna