It's the 200th anniversary of the birth of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and in a
review in the New Yorker John Updike quotes the following passage from his
journal -
All writing should be selection in order to drop every dead word. Why do
you not save out of your speech or thinking only the vital things - the
spirited mot which amused or warmed you when you spoke it - because of its
luck & newness. I have just been reading, in this careful book of a most
intelligent & learned man, a number of flat conventional words and
sentences. If a man would learn to read his manuscript severely - becoming
really a third person, & search only for what interested him, he would blot
to purpose - & how every page would gain! Then all the words will be
sprightly, and every sentence a surprise.
Doesn't this have a familiar ring to it?
Michael Healy
|