> > I thought I had grown up, out, away, but reading John Lithgow today and > listening to an interview with Bruce Odland I suddenly understood an essay I > wrote years ago, one which has puzzled me since. Many people see what > they're about before they do it, which is a very good way to go. I, on the > other hand, often write or paint as a journey of discovery and then am faced > with making sense of things as one does after the final leg of the flight has > landed and the jet lag has worn off; it's a form of reconstruction, a piecing > together of meaning. This would perhaps account for the occasional gap > between my apprehension that I've been reasonably clear and occasional > confusion in the audience. In the instance I'm thinking of, the essay from > long ago, I concluded that what history needed, the written part at least, > was resonance, the thought being that we were to persuade not merely with > fact and interpretation; our task was to make what we write sound well, > resonate. This could be read as an appeal for improvement in style, a > complaint against the ugliness of some academic prose, and it's possible I > had that notion in mind, but what I now think I meant was that my first > approach to words, the home notes in my brain that apparently, as my students > would put it, "hold sway over me" (isn't it odd how such expressions become > fashionable among the young, "hold sway over") many of the home notes were > provided by early exposure to A. A. Milne and Dylan Thomas who, as John > Lithgow points out, were sound men. Perhaps there should be a course in > sound, by which I mean resonant ideas, things apprehended by sympathetic > vibration, concomitant wobble? I bet I invented all this simply to hear > those last two words. > > > Neuwig von Neuwigstein drank lots more wine than Dick of Dickersdorf, > measured as the crow flies, > but Dick had the last laugh, > Neuwig died. > > > David Ritchie, > Portland, Oregon > ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html