RE: words, words, words

Very crafty Scottie, who exactly would you consider a commanding writer? I
remember from days long past your preference for word craft over idea (you
gave a little story). Now, it takes some crafting ability, for sure, to
powerfully express an idea or thought be it simple or complex but the real
geniuses don't often get mired in the swamp of word choice but rather are
lured on by the sirens call of their muses. Of course there is the editing
process. I have watched good artists work and some spend much time tending
to their tools and others don't even notice them yet both turn out wonders.
Concise for the light touch or jab and wordy for that right cross or heavy
bag work, each in it's season.
Daniel

    Here I come again in Robbie's wake, swinging my bell
    & my censer - or whatever it is that acolytes swing.

    I won't presume to intrude in the dialogue between
    himself & Jim - which leaves me, in its biblical erudition,
    far behind. (While continuing to command my limping,
    short of breath, attention.)

    Except.

    To express my drop-jawed astonishment that Fr Rovira
    sees a rich vocabulary as one of the indicators of literary
    mastery. I should have thought it was just as often the mark
    of the essentially ungifted hoping to compensate his inadequacy
    through long night hours tucked up with Increase-Your-Word-Power.

    I realise minimalism is no longer flavour of the year but I still
    feel the commanding writer achieves his condensed power through
    self-imposed restraints - be these the observance of strict
    poetic forms, or the deliberate limitation of his vocabulary to
    the 'plain' words ... or whatever.
    (One of my several complaints about Salinger is his scatter-gun
    use of picturesque, but not precisely apposite, words.)

    'Simple' words have wide - & so, one might think, inexact -
    connotations. We geniuses, though, know how to structure
    the context of their use in such a way as to lend them
    the uniqueness & power denied the ten dollar items.

    Scottie B.

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Received on Tue Aug 5 10:44:01 2003