… Convincing performance: 3quarksdaily: A Refutation of the Undergraduate Atheists.
It is worth noting that the name of Unamuno's title character, Mañuel Bueno, translates into "God is with us Good."
… Asking the big questions: Will We Use Commas in the Future?
As long as whatever is used serves the cause of clarity and honesty, what difference does it make?
… Catterel response: ‘Again With The Dante’?
… On reader at a time forever: 75 at 75: Kay Ryan on William Carlos Williams.
And here’s a further mystery to ponder: the language in Williams’ poems feels authentic, wicked straight up from the pool of mid-twentieth-century American life. But if that were really so, the language would be dated in the way that DeSotos are dated; it would just be interesting for collectors.… Reading and forgetting: I love The Great Gatsby – but remembering it is another story.
Bart Kosko in a Wired interview about his book Noise:
ReplyDeleteQ: I noticed there aren’t any commas in your book. Is this your way of cutting back on punctuation noise?
A: Commas are a kind of channel noise. You’re not getting to the verb fast enough. Why make us wait? The comma is on its way out. Use small words. The perfect illustration is a swear phrase: Go to hell! Screw you!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.08/play.html?pg=4
Patrick Kurp on Samuel Beckett:
ReplyDeleteBeckett’s prose is the liveliest I know, at once concise and precise, often funny, always charged with thought and feeling. In Company he wrote: “Yet another then. Of whom nothing. Devising figments to temper his nothingness. Quick leave him. Pause and again in panic to himself, Quick leave him.”
In his review of Company, reprinted in Every Force Evolves a Form, Guy Davenport writes (typically, in parentheses): “(The only punctuation in this book is the period. Beckett gave up the semicolon years ago, and the comma several books back.)”
This is a rare slip for Davenport, as the passage I just cited contains a comma. Otherwise, the observation is correct. Like Joyce in the “Penelope” chapter of Ulysses, Beckett jettisons punctuation the way Molly Bloom pulls pins from her hair and drops them to the floor. His prose i[s] bone, not soft tissue – what survives.
http://evidenceanecdotal.blogspot.com/2006/06/back-to-beckett.html