Someone already did a postmodern analysis of quantum gravity, so it can’t be that…
I think the emal is inane and annoying. If I worked with you and you sent me emails like that I would would (without a doubt) tell you to cut the shit. Seriously, who has time to sort out treatises like this at the office?
(Though you’re right to say there was something particularly wrong about the many-comma’ed and unnecessarily dashed sentence you cited. :smack: Stupid sentence. )
-FrL-
Seriously, I’ll meet you halfway on this one. You concede it was a tedious email, and I’ll concede it wasn’t obscure. I will not budge on it being unclear! [bangs shoe on rostrum]
And you’re wrong in assuming they mean “little”.
Okay, wait, can we bargain a little more?
I’ll concede it was tedious and obscure if you’ll only concede that it was clear. My constituents* will simply never accept anything less. [Waves cane around unnecessarily, nearly hitting poor Omegaman on the head.]
-FrL-
*Me
Gah. No offense, but if you want our love and support or even our tepid approval (benign neglect), SHUT UP already! Stop explaining your individual choices and give us the bigger picture. The more you try to explain, the more tedious and pedantic you come across. I think you may well be right: such an email is only understandable and acceptable (never mind funny) within the context of the ongoing relationship you have with the much-to-be-pitied recipient (unless the said recipient is Charles Emerson Winchester II, then I say go for it, dude).
Then pistols at dawn it shall be, sir.
Again, you haven’t been in the slightest bit clear in your purpose for posting this.
Since when is “I was writing to an academic” (about a completely non-academic topic) reason to put words down like Friedrich Neitzsche at the world’s-most convoluted-sentence competition? Mate, you sound like you’re translating The Count of Monte Cristo for the Punctuation Lover’s Club.
Now, if “we just don’t get it,” why are you posting here, since it’s pretty obvious no one else in the entire freaking country writes like this? And if not, why are you complaining about it? You asked for opinions, and so far they seem to be saying it’s inappropriate.
As for me, I’m still wondering why you write like this at all. This is a prime example of bad academic writing. It’s the kind that makes people go to sleep. And it ensures that your stuff never gets read outside of a handful of specialists who feel they have to. It’s one thing to anticipate objections. It’s another to jazz up your work so it looks more impressive.
I agree, but- I think trying this level of communication via email is a mistake in the 1st place.
It’s unclear to me because I stopped reading after I couldn’t make it through the first paragraph. I’m not your target audience, though - if you know for a fact that your friend likes wading through obscure, dense language like this, go for it. He’ll have a ball. If you sent something like that to me, I’d delete it unread - reading it would be too much work for me.
Well hell’s bells.
I sometimes wonder if I’m actually getting anything out of my education. I sometimes feel like I’m not doing anything now that I couldn’t have done ten years ago with a bit of work.
That’s all changed. Because the more I read the email in my OP, the less I can shake the feeling that it’s easy reading. And if it seems like easy reading to me, but not to everyone else, then it looks like I’ve learned something after all. (Whether it was something worth learning, that’s another question.)
Some of your comments are really over the top. Comparisons to the writing style of Nietszche?* Oh come on.
The worst kind of example of academic writing? Really? I mean… have you read Derrida?**
Granted, the email uses jargon. I hadn’t realized the extent to which this is the case. And also, the email explains things that don’t need to be explained, which contributes to a sense of “wordiness”. But then–that’s the point of the thing. It’s written right into the content of the thing. The whole thing is written as though I find myself forced to explain things I know full well shouldn’t have to be explained. Get it? That’s the sarcasm at least one poster in this thread saw.
I’ve already said some other things in this thread about the issue of wordiness, and I don’t need to repeat them.
I appreciate comments on style, even when I am not convinced by them. (And if you can convince me, then all the better.) But I think the question I asked in the OP has been answered. Some of you think I am chiding, some of you think I am diplomatic, some of you think I am sarcastic, some of you think I am itchin’ for a fight, some of you think I am condescending. As the response has been so diverse, I consider the email a failure, and I regret having sent it.
Really, I should have posted this in IMHO. I just felt… pittish at the time of the email’s writing. Stupid of me, really.
I’ll continue to answer messages in this thread, as I know pile-ons are fun.
-FrL-
*To be honest, though, I’ve only just recently begun reading any of his stuff–and it doesn’t seem that hard to read. But maybe I haven’t read the right things. Or maybe it’s just because I’m used to reading things of that ilk.
**I actually like Derrida, or at least, what I read about him from others. But fuck if I can make out a word most of the time.
Dude, Tee Ell friggin’ Dee Arr, and I’m as sesquipedalian as they make 'em. And this:
- What you should have learned is that, if your own writing doesn’t look clear to yourself, something is seriously the matter with you, so no big pats on the back just because you can comprehend your own prose style. The purpose of communication is to get ideas out of your head and into another’s with the minimum possibiliy of confusion. If you ain’t doing that, it’s no defence to imply that your interlocutor is retarded. :dubious:
I wasn’t offering a defence. Just expressing the unshakability of my instinct.
I’ve got plenty of independent evidence that I know what it means for a piece of writing to be clear. On this, I’m going with my gut.
-FrL-
Got gutrot?
So, essentially this whole thread is a vehicle for you to show your superior intellect to us, the more intellectually challenged? Since this dense thicket of excess verbiage and ponderous humor is crystal to you, it must be us who suffer from a dearth of comprehension and appreciation? I beg to differ, kind sir. Your prose is pompous, overweening, convoluted and repetitive. If you can read it with ease, you have spent far too much time with it and material that suffers from the same handicap. At bottom, (and this is my salient point): it is as clear as mud.
No.
Fuck. :smack:
Read the OP. Read the title. I tell you the purpose very clearly there. I related my last post to that purpose. I said nothing anywhere about “intellectual superiority”.
That’s a stupid-ass (and uncharitable-in-the-extreme-ass) set of implications to draw from anything I said.
-FrL-
The irony of what I just did–pointing out the literal interpretation of what I said–is not lost on me.
I thought about adding “[/colbert]” to the end of that post.
-FrL-
Depends. Are you reading The Birth of Tragedy or Twilight of the Idols? His early writing seems very tedious and obscure because he is writing in the tedious and obscure style of most scholars of that era – though his formal academic tone couldn’t really prevent the general academic response to his work: are you on crack?
His later writings, though, are far more comprehensible. It takes less work to figure out that he is, indeed, on crack. What’s not to understand about chapter headings entitled Why I Write Such Great Books and Why I Am a Destiny? 
Frylock, I like you and always have. You’re an intelligent poster with whom I often agree. Having said that… the email in question is not something I would respond charitably toward. It reminds me of things teenage philosophers post on the internet when they’re trying to sound intelligent. That may in fact be how academics talk – and if your friend is a philosopher and would respond warmly to your email, you just reminded me one of the many reasons I dropped my major in philosophy.
The thing you are most concerned about – intent – is the very thing that is lost to me. I don’t know whether to interpret it as sarcastic, patronizing, insulting, whatever, because the intent is obfuscated by the writing style – but maybe your friend would get it. I guess that’s your judgment to make.
Hmm… and if I said the point was to pedantically over-explain the obvious, would you think “Oh yeah, that’s what it’s doing!” or would you think “Really? I don’t see that at all.”
-FrL-