Sunday, May 14, 2006

My recommendation

is to construct elaborate dialogues in your mind, like performing your own mental movie. You can write and rewrite and vise and revise the things you think. As it is your own mind, you can artificially invoke whatever feelings you deem to be most aesthetically appropriate, and you can enforce whatever outcome you'd like.

Obscurity has two meanings when applied to literature what don't be understood. First, obscurity exists when the reader does not understand that which is being related. For instance, to snag from the OED:
1702 J. ADDISON Dial. Medals ii. 141 His obscurities..generally arise from the remoteness of the Customs, Persons, and Things he alludes to.
For example, a review of a Beatles cover band written so as to insert several cheeky song title references would make little sense to somebody yanked out of pre-60's history by a time traveling device disguised as a telephone booth.*

Obscurity also exists when the writer has failed clearly to communicate.
1751 JOHNSON Rambler No. 169 {page}13 One of the most pernicious effects of haste is obscurity.**
And so when one's unclear in one's writing, what's being said is hard to hear from a read of what's written. Poor and careless writing doesn't communicate well. And that, my friends, is why I became a blogger.

*Either a blue police call box or a fragile glass cage bearing a denuded umbrella. Both may carry an eccentric.
**Johnson, as always, remains an acquired taste.

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