Yes, good...and thanks for grappling with this book (email has been awfully
quiet lately), but what's the face value of Dark Decade? Phrases, rhythms,
syntactic
patterns (there are a lot of sentences that are shaped the same in that
book), words and syllables? I honestly think that abstract art in words is
more difficult than abstract art in other media, not only because we expect
words to mean rather than just be, but also because we have no vocabulary
for talking about the way words might "be."
I'm curious, after finishing the book, are there those who preferred this
book to Baker's? They seem like opposites--one minutely realistic and
obsessed with local details, but also focused on specialized language at the
vocabulary level, the other painting a more abstract picture but with more
"normal" vocabulary.
John Unsworth / Director, IATH / Dept. of English
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http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~jmu2m/