Today’s miscellany comes via C.S. Lewis’ 1959 advice to an American schoolgirl on writing prose, and Dr. Freud’s psycho-analysis of an unnamed (but recognizable) golfer.
I suspect had Lewis written after the birth of the World Wide Web, his #1 “Turn off the Radio” would be something more like “Log off the Internet” or maybe “Put Down Your Phone.” As for #7, the one about noise interference using a typewriter, my laptop keyboard is almost as quiet as a pen or a pencil, so, again, maybe that one no longer applies.
But beyond these technological quibbles, the really controversial one is #3, writing for the Ear rather than for the Eye. Though my own jury is still out on that, I will say this much: There are writers who can pen auditorily or visually beautiful prose who can’t write worth a darn, and others who know their way around the details of plot, pacing, and story-telling. As a reader, I’ll take the latter over the former any old day of the week. What do YOU think?
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Today’s cartoon juxtaposes two iconic characters who need no intro.
Fore!