The Elegant Variation: BACK TO SCHOOL FOR YOU, JK

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

July 28, 2004

BACK TO SCHOOL FOR YOU, JK

JK Rowling apparently has never read a history book. How else can one explain her total surprise to have learned:

"I saw one in the Holocaust Museum in Washington when I had already devised the ‘pure-blood’, ‘half-blood’ and ‘muggle-born’ definitions and was chilled to see that the Nazis used precisely the same warped logic as the Death Eaters.
"A single Jewish grandparent ‘polluted’ the blood, according to their propaganda."

Yes, the term for it was mischlinge and there were these things called the Nuremburg Laws and ... oh fuck it.

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

MY NOVEL

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BEST SMALL PRESSES

Barking at the Moon

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July 28, 2004

BACK TO SCHOOL FOR YOU, JK

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The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog. A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog "Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

BEST SMALL PRESSES

Barking at the Moon

TEV DEFINED

SEARCH ME

Other Stuff

About

July 28, 2004

BACK TO SCHOOL FOR YOU, JK

TrackBack

Comments

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

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RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

LITERARY LOS ANGELES

BUY INDEPENDENT!

Archives

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism