Essayist Sven Birkerts, writes:The past feels slow and stodgy to us because that's how people lived before they knew what we know. The condescension implicit in our bemusement - bemusement whipped to a fine froth on every television set in the land - is a terrible betrayal of origins. I am often struck by the following paradox: We celebrate these enormous strides of progress, but it is not as though we had ever begun to exhaust the possibilities of the earlier technology. Content and depth and understanding, remain largely imprisoned in our pages of print. We never really ever set them free. We are not really adequate to our radically improved technologies.
In reference to this passage, an Illinois High School English teacher writes [to me]:
"I deal with students all the time who carry on their intellectual business seated in front of high-powered computers, but who cannot make their way with any confidence through a relatively straightforward paragraph of literary prose."
Wow.
Have a great Thursday!
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I agree.
ReplyDeleteFor the most part, I think that good penmanship has pretty much gone the way of the dodo, statistically speaking.
And also, bad-writing has got to have to do with more than lack of education. I say this because the worstest [in an illegible sense] writing [penmanship-wise] in the world is being performed by doctors and lawyers.
Has anyone else noticed this?