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SUBJECTED
March 04, 2023
Okay, recently, while trying to write
about my process in reading poetry,
as an aside I said things like this:
Now, on the flow of the language,
the musical style... Obviously, even in the
absence of a clearly defined
Meaning, even in the absence
of consistent use of what we
like to think of as "full
sentences", there's still a
feel to the phrases, the
author might be painting a
scene, hinting at moods.
And even if there's something
unsettlingly vague about the
language-- deploying a hazy
cloud of meanings that don't
quite resolve-- that sense of
disquiet might be the point.
At that point, I was acting fussy about finding complete
sentences (picking out nouns and verbs and such)
but they're often not that critical really.
The key thing might be more like a list of phrases,
and conventionally we'd work those phrases into
"full sentences", but you can make a case that
that's sometimes just extra verbiage that isn't
really needed.
There's sometimes a false clarity about presenting
"full sentences", a pretense that there's
necessarily a precise meaning when really it
was imposed by convention.
Consciously hunting for the subject of sentences
seems a little strange in the light that the
subject can be arbitrarily chosen:
Consider:
Morning
Roses
Bees
Buzzing
"The morning brought with it buzzing bees in the roses."
"The roses were adorned with buzzing bees that morning."
"The bees were buzzing in the morning roses."
"The buzzing sound of bees could be heard in the roses that morning."
"On that morning, I saw the bees buzzing in the roses."
I've heard Japanese described as a language where things
are much more context dependent than they are in English.
Consider the opening lines of the song "Linda,
Linda" by the Blue Hearts. In English translation,
I've ssen something like this:
Like a sewer rat, I want to be beautiful,
Because sewer rats are beautiful in a way not often seen
The first line is ambiguous-- are you
longing for beauty in just the way a sewer
rat longs for beauty? That would be the
"proper" reading in English. The second
line makes it clear that there's another
sentiment in mind-- a more familiar one for
an early punk song-- he wants to be
beautiful in the way a sewer rat is
beautiful, in a way that often gets mistaken
for ugliness.
A basic English teacher response to this
sort of ambiguity is to dismiss it as Bad I remember reading Algis
Writing, but really there's *always* some Budrys making dismissive
need for context to resolve an ambiguity, remarks about the flaccid
and there are other cultures that are more sloppy writing that
comfortable with this. seemed so popular in the
mainstream "bestseller"
world.
LUDLUM
What Budrys was suggesting--
if I remember right-- is that
Science Fiction couldn't get
away with writing quite so
badly. If the things being
described (and ideas
presented) are genuinely new
(perhaps "alien") then clear
language gets much more
important.
In contrast, according to
Budrys, in something like
pornography everyone
is already pretty familiar
with what's being
described, and the
important thing is "deliver
the recognition symbol and
get out of the way".
I can see the point...
But don't see how any
writing can get away from
those recognition symbols.
What else are words?
And actually, it's excessively
dismissive of sex writing--
in a sufficiently complex
scenario, it can be challenging
just to clearly describe the
positions of the players, let
alone make clear motivations
and reactions...
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