[1] From: Charles Young <youngc@cgs.edu> (21)
Subject: Re: 11.0087 bad writing
[2] From: Michael Guest <guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp> (34)
Subject: Re: 11.0087 bad writing
[3] From: BRUNI <jbrun@eagle.cc.ukans.edu> (23)
Subject: what is "good" writing?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 1997 19:12:53 -0700
From: Charles Young <youngc@cgs.edu>
Subject: Re: 11.0087 bad writing
Jeff Finlay wrote:
>
> > We are pleased to announce winners of the third Bad Writing
> > Contest, sponsored by the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature
> > (published by the Johns Hopkins University Press) and its internet
> > discussion group, PHIL-LIT.
>
> It doesn't seem very philosophical to single out poststructuralist
> prose as the only kind of bad writing in academia. One would think
> a philosophy scholar would give second thought to what constitutes
> "badness." I don't see any writing in here by Lynne Cheney or ED
> Hirsch, but it seems they are equally "bad" to my way of thinking
> as any of the postmodern mouthfuls quoted in your message.
I myself disagree with much of what I've read of Cheney's, with
rather less with what I've read of Hirsch's, but I've not noticed any
special problems with either's prose. Quite the contrary, in fact, my
impression is that Cheney is ususally quite clear, and that Hirsch is
not only clear but sometimes elegant.
Do you have any passages to cite of bad prose by either of them? I'm
genuinely curious; this is not a bash.
Best wishes,
Charles
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 18:30:11 +0900 (JST)
From: Michael Guest <guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>
Subject: Re: 11.0087 bad writing
> It doesn't seem very philosophical to single out poststructuralist
> prose as the only kind of bad writing in academia. One would think
> a philosophy scholar would give second thought to what constitutes
> "badness."
>
> Jeff Finlay
Me too.
I suppose that one difficulty is that poststructuralism works against
conventional grammar (c.f. Nietszche: "God is not yet dead while we still
have grammar"). So too certain literatures, such as Joyce's "world's most
famous unread book" _FW_ and Beckett of course. It would be easy for
someone to pull bits out of Beckett and poke fun at him in the same way, on
the grounds of impenetrable prose. At random:
"nothing too to be sure often nothing in spite of everything dead as mutton
warm and rosy always inclined that way ever since the womb if I may judge
by what I know less and less that's true of myself since the womb the
panting stops I murmur it" (_How It Is_ woops, lost the page).
The most incredibly boring, thickheaded reading is without exception
grammatically and stylistically scupulous. Moreover, from a
poststructuralist point of view, I guess you could say that "transparent"
writing is a priori crap, posited on an ideological illusion of the sign.
The more you try to describe it, the worse it gets, as you see here. Wasn't
one of the references to that stupid so called "parody" of postmodernism
written by some illiterate?
I had a giggle and accepted it underneath for what it is, some kind of
retro backhander to have them haw-haw and hem-hemming. All mockery is
self-mockery, after all.
Dr Michael Guest
Associate Professor, Faculty of Information
Shizuoka University, Japan
guest@ia.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 1997 10:20:19 -0500 (CDT)
From: BRUNI <jbrun@eagle.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: what is "good" writing?
It doesn't seem very philosophical to single out poststructuralist
prose as the only kind of bad writing in academia. One would think
a philosophy scholar would give second thought to what constitutes
"badness." I don't see any writing in here by Lynne Cheney or ED
Hirsch, but it seems they are equally "bad" to my way of thinking
as any of the postmodern mouthfuls quoted in your message.
I agree wholeheartedly with Jeff Finlay's comments regarding the "bad"
writing contest. The judges of the contest, it seems to me, have a fairly
obvious ideological bias: that they wish to discredit ideas they don't
like or approve of, such as Marxist or feminist theory, simply by
discrediting how these ideas are expressed in writing. Thus, the judges
kill the message along with the messenger.
Let's look at this issue from the opposite side: what, then, is "good"
writing? From whose perspective? I think we will find that writing
standards can often appear as somewhat arbitrary, according to who gets to
set the rules.
John Bruni
University of Kansas