Re: words, words, words

My God, Scottie,
I only hope to one day be as intelligente and eloquent as you.
tina
p.s. Do you see me as the radical misfit of this group?

>
> There's no pleasing me, Diego.
>
> On the one hand, I take a kind of laughing pleasure
> in the way Hemingway will at one time deliberately
> & perversely break up the rhythm of his sentences
> & at another make what sounds like the affected choice
> of the formal or unexpected word ('commenced' for
> 'began', 'would not' for 'wouldn't', & so on.) It FEELS
> like advanced games playing in order to make the reader
> pay attention, give due weight to each word - rather as
> a painter will force you to be aware of each of his little
> tiles of paint. And I love it.
>
> Then, on the other, I crib when Conrad is doing
> the selecting because he will seem to me to have come to
> that same 'odd' word by dredging through the alternatives
> offered by his thesaurus.
>
> "The words rolled out to wander without a home upon
> the heartless sea".
>
> Fair enough. One just can see them drifting away, like lost
> souls, their poignancy lost forever on the ocean air. But what
> about 'missing the unsteady hearts of men'? Why unsteady?
> Does this refer to the essential fickleness of all men,
> or the dyrhythmic hearts of a stricken crew? The 'missing'
> is normally done by the hearts - like clumsy catchers failing
> to field a high ball, but here it seems to be the words which fail
> to strike their target. One is - or, at least, I am - left in a very
> mild state of uncertainty & frustration: not feeling, as I do
> when brought up short by Ernie: 'Ah YES. Of course.
> You old bastard.'
>
> Then,
> "the frank, audacious faces of men barefooted, well armed
> and noiseless''
>
> 'Frank' & 'audacious' seem to me to sit oddly together. 'Frank'
> has the feeling of 'unapologetic', 'open', perhaps even 'innocent.'
> Whereas 'audacious' carries the quality of boldness, provocation,
> in-yer-faceness. You CAN ram them into the same slot & achieve,
> perhaps, a sense of ambiguous subtlety. But I personally retain
> the lingering suspicion: 'Did he really mean that or is he simply
> mixing a couple of odd ingredients in the hope of producing
> a nouvelle cuisine?'
>
> On the other hand, 'well' armed sounds, again to me, fatally
> bathetic. 'Armed & noiseless' would, indeed, freeze the blood
> with its menacing brevity. 'Well armed' is getting a bit too damned
> close to 'jolly well armed.'
>
> Don't mind this cantankerous old shit, though. It can only ever be
> a matter of the individual ear. Mine is no doubt getting a bit tinny
> with advancing years.
>
> Scottie B.
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Received on Thu Aug 7 21:10:20 2003