“And here we shall of necessity be led to open a new vein of
knowledge, which if it hath been discovered, hath not, to our remembrance, been
wrought on by any antient or modern writer. This vein is no other than that of
contrast, which runs through all the works of the creation, and may probably
have a large share in constituting in us the idea of all beauty, as well
natural as artificial: for what demonstrates the beauty and excellence of
anything but its reverse? Thus the beauty of day, and that of summer, is set
off by the horrors of night and winter. And, I believe, if it was possible for
a man to have seen only the two former, he would have a very imperfect idea of
their beauty.”
-Henry Fielding, Tom
Jones
The current public obsession with PowerPointilism and Web-Writing has
led to some interesting commandments from the latest authority of orthodox textual criticism.
The gurus, a race of Asiatic mystics responsible for those
wordy juggernauts, the Vedas, Upanishads,
Mahabharats, Purana etc. have in the
last few decades turned their attention to “online writing”. In this mode they
have taken a turn for the terse. These “web gurus” have broken with past sects
of Vedantic verbosity and today suggest that online writing (somewhat
presumptuously referred to as “content”, but which in two cases out of three deserves
the prefix “mal-”, and in the final third “un-“)must be:
- Brief
- Simple
- To the point
- Use Bullets
- Avoid complete sentences etc.
Yet, as is usual in all fields of criticism, the “why” is so
much easier to spell than the “wherefore”.
The exact reason WHY impious web writers are to swear themselves to this
Trappist oath of silencio can be
found nowhere explicitly stated in Saints Augustine, Origen, Paul, or even the
Book of Jobs. Some generalities about the distemper caused by computer screens
are hardly sufficient in a world where so many will stare for so long and with
perfect concentration at pixilated Geschlechtsverkehr
(for those who don’t speak German, this word is as dirty as it sounds).
“But! But! The research shows…” Does it? By what Mephistophelean
agency has research been given the power to speak for itself? It may very well
be your interpretation that “most people who read web content scan for key
words, they don’t read for whole sentences.” The fact is, my charming academe,
you have merely stumbled upon the tip of what critics of the race have long
since known: most people are piss-poor readers in general. And if you think they
only scan writing for key-words, you have only to look at the way your standard
Carleton student reads expressions, gestures, and situations involving the
opposite sex. “Scanning for key words” is giving the poor brute too much
credit.
The history of brief writing is as old as the book itself.
Callimachus first expressed the notion in his slogan “big book = big trouble!”
His disciples have been legion, from the pseudo-mathematicism of Spinoza to the
“piths and gists” of the modernist movement, and finally, the clinical malice
of Strunk and White’s “omit needless words”.
In short, no matter when, this school has always demanded
texts be:
- Brief
- Simple
- To the point
- Use Bullets
- Avoid complete sentences etc.
There is nothing new in the so-called “web writing” of
today’s gurus and sannyasins. The modern
web-guru who thinks he is preaching a new doctrine can read the aphorisms
of Vauvenargues as if they came from the latest blog "in the industry": “La clarté orne les pensées profondes. L'obscurité est le royaume de
l'erreur.” And for the good.
This tendency in literature has always been an excellent
companion to the more baroque and florid school of the Homericans, Rablesians
etc. of which the present Blogger humbly appends his own person. Nevertheless,
I believe the pendulum is swinging, as can only be expected, to the opposing zone of influence.
Printed text is so 1939-1945. We live in a world of CTRL+F
and unlimited mouse-scrolling fuel in the form of caffeinated potables. We’ve
got computer chairs with wheels, children! Put some on your brains too. Every
Joyce has his Becket, and, since the world of Internet writing has been
bombarded by the brevity-boobs ad nauseam,
I propose that we few , we happy few perambulatory sentenceers once more take
the helm of the Ship of State, and leave our short-mouthed companion some time
for a spit, sleep and a smoke.
My ultimate hypotheses here:
One) Online writing is much closer to what we call “thinking”
than “doing” – at least much more than static print based writing. The
attendant pleasures of “thinking” – editing, repetition, alternation,
sublimation (and other pseudo-Hegelian usages) can and should come to the
foreground. Why shouldn’t we spin out full – no, beyond full, overfull, chock-full sentences?
B) Like the printing press, which first compelled a network
of carts to deliver Bibles and pornography across Europe, and only afterwards
Enlightenment, the Web fundamentally ought to exist for the purposes of literary
expression. This is clearly a bias on my part, perhaps malicious, but a
conceit which I will happily stand-by. I am pleased to define the web-writer
himself as part of that atavistic class in which Kenneth Rexroth once placed
Tacitus, “a clerkly individual who has discovered that his kind is no longer
useful and who therefore has lost hope in the future, faith in natural process,
and charity toward his fellows.”
iii) The “Homerican Scholar” is in need of a declaration of independence,
self-evident and uncompromisingly patriotic, in which all citizens of the Rhodomontade
Republic will feel themselves represented (for they are taxed enough!) in this
new space of literary expression.
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