Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 5, No. 0020. Monday, 10 January 1994. (1) From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Date: Sunday, 09 Jan 94 21:02:25 EST Subj: Re: SHK 5.0014 Re: E-Mail: A Thin Communication Medium? (2) From: William Godshalk <GODSHAWL@UCBEH> Date: Sunday, 09 Jan 1994 21:49:13 -0500 (EST) Subj: Re: SHK 5.0017 Re: Thinness (1)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Steve Urkowitz <SURCC@CUNYVM> Date: Sunday, 09 Jan 94 21:02:25 EST Subject: 5.0014 Re: E-Mail: A Thin Communication Medium? Comment: Re: SHK 5.0014 Re: E-Mail: A Thin Communication Medium? ----------hmmmmm--------a thin communication medium. Seems like what we used to call "a script." Seems like those old players used to have their writers sit down with them and read the scripts out loud, all the way through, maybe to avoid confusion in the distribution system when all networks were down. One way to thicken communication, whether face-to-face or in the thin atmosphere of scripted transmission, is to offer a quizzical "hey, wha'?" And then the script writer tries again, louder, or clearer, or different. Sometimes we call that second shot "revision." Or sometimes, without the listeners' prompts, we can think of it as a recursive or redundant style, as the writer or speaker listens to herself and goes back over the same ground. You might like to look at a neatly scripted instance: the line where the gravedigger scans the thin medium of Yorick's skull, trying to find its wit. It and its context appear three different ways in Q1, Q2 and F HAMLET, and I'd argue that we'd get a "thicker" experience of HAMLET if editors would think to lay these redundancies out for us to see . But that would be asking editors to open up multiple possibilities where they instead feel obliged to present straight and narrowly unambiguous text, authoritative text. Ah, well. Joy of the New Year to all, Steve Urthickowitz SURCC@CUNYVM (2)---------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: William Godshalk <GODSHAWL@UCBEH> Date: Sunday, 09 Jan 1994 21:49:13 -0500 (EST) Subject: 5.0017 Re: Thinness Comment: Re: SHK 5.0017 Re: Thinness Jim McKenna reminds me of Walker Percy. Need we be reminded that we are all Lost in the Cosmos, and that the person we know best in this world remains the primary mystery for us? If we were to live inside Jonson's skin, inside Joyce's brain, what would we know that we don't already know? The question is only one half rhetorical. Yours, Bill Godshalk