Finnegan's Wake Up Call

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Fri, 23 Jan 1998 09:24:49 -0700 (MST)

Keep in mind that Finnegan's Wake begins and ands with incomplete
sentences that make a luscious whole sentence if the reader gets to the
end of the book and begins again (thanks to Vico's idea of "recourso.")

Keep in mind that there are a variety of literacy levels in the list
participants as there are among all people.

Keep in mind that trying to make ideas work without conventions of
discourse is often a risk, just as those conventions risk making ideas
less clear.

As an English Professor and Director of Writing, I do think that mastering
conventions of language is always a worthwhile challenge and I continue to
learn them...I was dyslexic and not a good user of conventional language
but there is little knowledge I now value more.

As a "techie" (I designed and implemented my university's first online
writing classroom, have presented thinking about computers and learning
at more than a dozen national conferences, and spend an average of 6 hours
a day online participating in several lists and enjoying "information
overload" on the web), I've come to enjoy the freer discourse conventions
online.

I sense the list division personally because I have liabilities as an
english user and because I believe passionately in the effective use of
language.  I also believe mr. salinger has a deep respect for the
conventions of language but he has not said much about that outside of his
fiction and what he says in his fiction is open to a variety of
interpretations.  In all honesty, I want this list to help me with my
thinking about salinger texts and tend to read most posts...

Let it rip--write what you want and how you want--that's why we have a
delete function--but if you think that not improving your use of language
or avoiding necessary conventions of discourse makes your ideas
persuasive, think again, or at least think about how language really works
in your life..."A way a lone a last a loved l long the 

riverrun, will