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Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Father Terrence who wrote (45698)	7/15/1999 1:14:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 108807

What "arbitrary judgment"??!! What "arguments"??!! Do you disagree with the following (which is all that I have written on the subject)? And if so, in what way is it "arbitrary," "minute," and "petty"? To: Steven Rogers (45610 ) From: jbe Wednesday, Jul 14 1999 9:10PM ET Reply # of 45703 Let me make one obvious point here: published writing is not, ipso facto, good writing. In fact, most published writing is pretty bad -- especially stuff published exclusively on the web. And academics are the biggest sinners of all. In my opinion, the best way to determine whether particular posters are good writers or not is to read what they post here. Of course, they are not likely to take as much care with their posts as they would with something that they plan to publish. But that means you can get an even better idea of their "native" writing style. After all, there are no editors around on SI to prune out crooked sentences and to pretty up the text!

To: Father Terrence who wrote (45698)	7/15/1999 2:51:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 108807

Now, here you raise an interesting point, Terrence. I am sure that you would agree that a beautiful piece of prose showcasing the Nazi philosophy would be reprehensible. Some people would argue that the virtues of its style can be separated from the vices of its content. It's not an argument that I would make, though. I would be more inclined to entertain a totally different (and probably equally controversial) argument, which is, that it would be impossible for a piece of prose "showcasing the Nazi philosophy" to be "beautiful." To my mind, for a piece of expository prose (I am not talking fiction here) to qualify as "good," let alone "beautiful," it must be, above all, lucid. In other words, the path its reasoning follows must be absolutely clear. Now, if the thinking that underlies the prose is muddled, the prose will be muddled, too. In short, you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. For that matter, can anyone think of any good expository prose produced by Nazi writers? However, I can't go along with this conclusion: It is, in the end, the idea that counts. It still has to be expressed well, in my opinion. More good ideas have been ruined by bad prose than I care to remember.