----- Original Message -----
From: "paul murphy" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 13 November 2002 11:14
Subject: Re: Padraic Fallon
| Laurence
Lawrence
| your not reading my mails.
I haven't been, no. Ive been away and built up too much email so I ditched
most of it out of necessity, just hope I didnt delete an invite to win the
forward prize
| Are you an expert on child psychology? I'm not, but I have worked with
children and I think they're ontologically different from adults up to the
time when they are in their early teens.
You didn't say "children", you said "young people" and I was responding to
that; I even distinguished between young people who are children and those
who are no longer children
| Academics sit in their ivory towers
please
| and conceive projects as assessing the impact of 'bad' writing, when they
are entirely incapable of bringing themselves down to the level of the
wo/man in the street in order to influence his or her mind and also writing
something that might make them financially independent of the system they
serve.
are *you an expert in *this area
there are so many assumptions and cliches here I hardly know where to start
| Archer, for instance, surely overlaps or defies political stereotypes -
he's a Conservative but he's not an elitest, he's clearly a populist or
popular,
There's a world of difference between being a populist and being popular;
maybe he's just a con man - a great many seem to be in it for the con as
much as the proceeds - but I am uncomfortable with all these categories
| he's at least fulfilling the goals of entertainment and literacy.
excuse me?
| they must be utterly dim, or maybe not.
Yes, you're on safe ground there
| Academics do not have the freedom to objectively assess writing or
writers because they're tied into a system which is anithetical to 'freedom'
but wholly welcoming of a PCness they sometimes or most of the time
uncritically impose on others who often know better.
"PCness" eh?
Ivory towers and PCness, yes...
Glad we're having a rigorous debate
L
|