Re: words, words, words

Perhaps there's no pleasing a doctor who no longer
knows how to appreciate a naked body because he knows
it too well.

That's got to be a story already written...maybe one
by Katherine Mansfield?

Cheers, Esmé

--- Scottie Bowman <rbowman@indigo.ie> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> -
> * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with
> the message
> * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Sat Aug 9 12:38:53 2003