threadbare words
WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Thu, 26 Nov 1998 10:34:24 -0700 (MST)
Dear Scottie, first let me just kiss you today and smile and hug...
Your post below was beautiful, simply a gift...
No, you could teach my course better than take it...and you aren't one bit
wrong to find difficulty in understanding...oh, I could throw up the need
for context (read my poems, fiction, essays, criticism, hypertexts, etc)
but the truth is understanding isn't the same thing as clarity, and I
admit sometimes struggling with both and failing.
But the truth and beauty of what you write below is that you do understand
me even as you think you don't!
(I'll explain, but for those wishing to exit this post I recommend simply
listening to "Burning Ground" by Van Morrison which was the music fuel for
some of these pixels today and tags what I'm saying too well not to simply
suggest his "The Healing Game" sings back ("I'm just trying to give back
the wind...")
OK scottie, here's the logos though it's pretty cheap stuff after all...if
you don't understand my posts, how come you use their gist to support your
judgment? You have acquired interpretive strategies and do assert valuing
intention for a writing point of view, and most importantly, below you
assert the role of the reader beyond the intention of the writer...oh
happy holiday scottie, and love,
will
On Wed, 25 Nov 1998, Scottie Bowman wrote:
> It's very good of Will to worry about me - especially after
> my insulting remarks about his prose style. I was not being
> particularly insulting - merely stating a fact that I find him
> difficult to understand.
>
> I wonder would it help if I signed on for his course ?
>
> Perhaps I should then acquire an 'interpretive strategy'
> enabling me to make something of: ''....How readers
> negotiate these intentions seems to me to be very secondary
> in how I make meaning of literature, but now how I write...''
>
> Perhaps not, though. You can't really teach an old dinosaur
> new tricks. As must be all to evident from my old threadbare
> thoughts expressed in my old threadbare words.
>
> Scottie B.
>
>
>
>