Buddy's house style
Scottie Bowman (bowman@mail.indigo.ie)
Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:27:55 +0000
On Will's prompting I went back - after another of those
forty year gaps - to Seymour an Introduction.
In his quotation, Will's being slightly selective.
Buddy writes:
`...It wouldn't worry him at all if I wrote the rest of this
exclusively in lower-case letters - *if *my instincts advised it.
I wouldn't *mind* some form of Cubism here, but every last one
of my instincts tells me to put up a good, lower-middle-class fight
against it...'
He seems to me to be putting in a plea [every last one of
his intstincts] not so much for the conventional as for the
unpretentious. *IF* one's instincts demand a particular
typographical treatment which alone can convey one's intentions,
then, OK, use any means necessary. But don't do it for the sake
of looking chic, or twee, or - forgodsakes - loveable.
No ?
As for the Upper Case Words - aren't they just Buddy being
rather laboriously ironic ? The Primeval Mother, the Child Radio
Celebrity, & so on - aren't we meant to smile archly to each other
well aware that while the pitiful, yet dearly beloved, mass of
humanity may take these concepts at their face value, we of
the inner circle know better.
I've a bit more to say about Buddy & his memoir but that's probably
enough to be going on with.
Scottie B.