The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 8.0632.  Wednesday, 4 June 1997.

[1]     From:   G. L. Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 03 Jun 1997 10:42:16
        Subj:   Re: SHK 8.0629 Hughes' Bad Writing?;

[2]     From:   Robert Applebaum <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
        Date:   Tuesday, 03 Jun 1997 12:23:01 -0500 (EST)
        Subj:   Re: More Bad Writing


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           G. L. Horton <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 03 Jun 1997 10:42:16
Subject: 8.0629 Hughes' Bad Writing?;
Comment:        Re: SHK 8.0629 Hughes' Bad Writing?;

A   Patrick Gillespie says

>There's a book I always carry round with me, Ted Hughes' "A Choice of
>Shakespeare's Verse". Mr. Hughes goes on in this vane until, like a
ticking time-bomb
>of metaphor, he explodes with the following paragraph:
>
>...One is aware of it as a signaling and hinting of verbal heads and
>tails both above and below precision, and by this weirdly expressive
>underswell of a musical near gibberish, like a jostling of spirits, a
>bustling pressure of shapes inside every syllable. Shakespeare holds it
>all in dodgy focus by the audial compass course that his aerobatic
>syntax plots through it. When Joyce takes this sonar amplification of
>the word's pun possibilities to the limit in Finnigans Wake, the blazing
>crackle of radio interference and writhing wave-bands, somewhat smothers
>the instrument panel, for the reader and co-pilot, in a sort of white
>out...

But this is delicious!  Hughes illustrates as well as describes the
effect. Surely you are teasing us?

G.L.Horton -- Newton, MA, USA
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
<http://www.tiac.net/users/ghorton>

[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Robert Applebaum <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date:           Tuesday, 03 Jun 1997 12:23:01 -0500 (EST)
Subject:        Re: More Bad Writing

SHAKSPERians should be aware that the institution giving awards for bad
writing has given the top prize to Jameson before.  They should also
know that the institution's agenda is fundamentally neo-conservative.
You will not find examples of bad writing cited from the work of
academics who are not associated with leftish, post-structuralist
criticism.

But you will find many expressions of _ressentiment_ by the
fault-finders, whose great reward in citing this "bad writing" out of
context seems to be to see their names in print on the same page as
people who have published books and received recognition for it.

Robert Appelbaum

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