If you are looking for a reason to be cranky, check out
this snotty, condescending, know-it-all explanatorium about us benighted prairie-dwellers lost in flyover country that was vomited up in the NYRB blog section. The comments are a kick, too. Dissect at your leisure.
3 comments:
I missed it, Reid, or don't know how to find it.
JW
I did find the NYRB website -- they are a little full of themselves but expect that from New Yorkers.
I found this little piece on Patrick Leigh Fermor that I'd not seen on the blog.
http://www.npr.org/2011/02/10/132708398/spare-and-sublime-a-monasterys-spell-of-silence
Anyone who needs to drop a word like "quotidian" instead of using the clearly superior 'mundane' within the first paragraph is just trying to vainly impress language snobs. I hate writers like that.
Rich vocabulary is best used to express a complex idea in fewer words in a way that adds clarity and where there isn't a more widely known word that captures the intent.
I look at "SAT words" like spice, you use them to get flavor you can't get anywhere else. People who add excessive spice just to be the hottest dish on the block have forgotten about flavor and nuance and are actually in a pissing contest for the sake of ego instead of effective communication.
It's those same people that coin terms like "flyover country." Seeing first hand how they drive on the coasts, I'm glad they choose to fly over versus drive through. It's safer and much more pleasant when they're 30,000 feet above you instead of 2 feet behind your bumper.
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