Category: Reading and Writing
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The Editor as Besserwisser
We need editors, but too many an editor is a Besserwisser. The editorial know-it-all knows better than the author what he wants to say and how it ought to be said. At this point I hurl choice epithets. I offer a more measured response in The Paltry Mentality of the Copy Editor.
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On Taking One’s Time in Philosophy
Both Brentano and Wittgenstein advise philosophers to take their time. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80: Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!" This is how philosophers should greet one another: "Take your time!" A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have…
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“Murder Your Darlings”
Good advice. I should take it. I am too enamored of my own formulations, which I tend to repeat. Anthony Flood, a hard-working editor who is doing some editing for me, just sent me this: The phrase "murder your darlings" is often attributed to the English writer and critic Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. He used a…
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Thomas Mann on Blogging
Thomas Mann: Diaries 1918-1939 (Abrams, 1982, tr. R & C Winston), p. 194: I love this process by which each passing day is captured, not only in its impressions, but also, at least by suggestion, its intellectual direction and content as well, less for the purpose of rereading and remembering than for taking stock, reviewing, maintaining…
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Oriana Fallaci on Writing
From The Rage and the Pride (New York: Rizzoli, 2003), pp. 23-24, emphases added: I must say that writing is a very serious matter for me: it is not an amusement or an outlet or a relief. It is not, because I never forget that written words can do a lot of good but also a lot of…
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To Write Well, Read Well
The example of William James. Excerpt: But what makes James' writing good? It has a property I call muscular elegance. The elegance has to do in good measure with the cadence, which rests in part on punctuation and sentence structure. Note the use of the semi-colon and the dash. These punctuation marks are falling into disuse, but…
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resist, Resist, RESIST!
Seemingly, no day without a 'woke' outrage. See below. Beneath refutation. There's no point in trying to engage these clowns on the plane of reason. Mock, deride, resist, and above all: ignore the A.P.'s asinine recommendations. By the way, 'asinine' is spelled exactly as I just spelled it, and not 'assinine' despite the fact that…
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Which is Worse?
A former colleague of mine published one lousy book, a teacher of mine, many.
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Italicizing and Underlining
The writer italicizes what he hopes the reader would underline were there no italicization.
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Cacoethes Scribendi
Substack latest.
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Pretty Feeble Stuff
Much of what I post here is pretty feeble stuff. But damned if I don't love this daily scribbling!
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Nulla Dies Sine Linea
No day without a line. But why keep a journal?
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Writing and Reading
He who writes may or may not be read, but he who only reads will never be read.
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My Ideal Reader
A lover of language, precise in its use, respectful of its mothership* of our thoughts, analytic but not conceptually myopic, out for the Sellarsian big picture, non-dogmatic and therefore skeptical in the best sense, which is to say, an inquirer, but not a worldling mesmerized by the sublunary, and therefore spiritually oriented. And his attitude…