Inexperienced scholars often imagine themselves writing for people more intelligent and knowledgeable than themselves. In other words, they are trying to break into the field or impress their professors. When I read my own sentences I am usually asking another kind of question: will a stupid person understand them?
What I mean is the following: I have trouble understanding the prose of Charles Altieri. Given that I am not excessively stupid, I see that as Altieri's fault, not mine. (Suppose I were average intelligence for an academic: Altieri would be eliminating at least 50% of his audience, by that measure.) I want to get to where the least experienced beginning graduate student could see what i am saying very easily.
I don't see this as condescending because I see myself as someone who doesn't grasp other writers' meaning all that quickly. I am willing to put the time in to understand Lezama Lima, but not Charles Altieri. In other words, there are enough difficult primary texts in m field, so I don't want to spend energy deciphering secondary texts.
2 comments:
In the preface to my master's thesis I wrote something like, "In writing this thesis I have endeavored not to appear more or less intelligent than really am for the purpose of passing an examination." It felt very necessary at the time, a corrective to a posture that I could feel myself adopting. I didn't like the feeling.
These days, however, I find myself trying to make PhD students feel good striking a knowledgeable pose—always with the understanding that they're just practicing until they develop the musculature to stand that way as a matter of course.
Bad writing, I think, is fostered by the habit of pretending to know rather than the discipline implicit in training one's posture. I think your suggestion of trying to make what you know comprehensible to people who are not as smart as you is very good advice indeed.
I just found an essay by Altieri that I, I think, says something interesting, but I had exactly the same reaction to his prose right from the first few paragraphs. Interestingly, I also immediately thought, "Jonathan must have an opinion about this guy." (Not just on style, but because he writes about modernism.) So I searched the blog. Sure enough, I had seen his name here!
In this case, I'm so interested that I am actually willing to put in the time. But I feel like I want to rewrite the whole thing. I guess that's one role for paraphrase.
Post a Comment