Re: willeford RE: RARA-AVIS: recent reads

From: jacquesdebierue (jacquesdebierue@yahoo.com)
Date: 22 Jan 2010

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    --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "James Michael Rogers" <jeddak5@...> wrote:
    >
    >
    > When I say "good style", which I usually don't, I am referring to an author who is very economical, very evocative, and very ,very precise (almost lawyerly) in their meaning. My exhibits would be Gibbon, Johnson, Austen and Chesterton. Perhaps they are indigestible and long-winded.
    >

    Times change, and so does language, and so does writing. It's not reasonable to say that "good style" was fixed at some point and then it's a paradigm. Everything is in flux. If you or I wrote like Gibbon today, people would laugh at us. Which is another way of saying (this was noted by Russell) that young people should pay no attention to old people, since it's young people's lives that are at stake...

    Best,

    mrt



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