Subject: fashion note
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Fri Dec 22 2000 - 04:50:38 GMT
'... Could we please all promise not to debate
this bad boy? ...'
OK, Crystal, if you insist. The trouble is, as his lordship
has pointed out on more than one occasion, off-topic
themes invariably produce more reactive & emotionally
engaged threads than boring old Salinger.
However, Hapworth's great paralysed 3 kgm body
is still lying helpless at the end of the desk here, the gleam
of life fading from his eyes, the blood slowing finally
to a trickle. I've resolved at last to do the decent thing
& finish the poor bastard off. So with luck you may all
have some really terrific Salinger apercus to consider
in the New Year.
In the meanwhile, can anyone explain to me why the
passive voice is viewed with such disdain by literary
aesthetes? On the Hemingway list recently all the experts
have been pointing out the obvious superiority of:
'Snow covered the fields'
over:
'The fields were covered with snow.'
Though they came to something of a screeching halt
when I offered quite a respectable list of just such passive
verbs in the great opening passages of A Farewell to Arms.
What about Jerome? Is this one of his stylistic concerns?
Without actually going & counting, I'd have thought not.
Scottie B.
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