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  • 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."
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April 07, 2005

JSF ON THE RADIO

The Connection has posted its interview with Jonathan Safran Foer, no doubt giving certain bloggers out there shivers of anticipatory delight ...

For his second novel, Foer has fixed his literary sights on the terrible events of 9/11. The book is called "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." It is the tale of nine-year-old Oskar Schell, who sets off on a journey across New York City in search of a lock that will fit a key that he found in his father's closet. He hopes it will also unlock details of his father's death in the twin towers.

As the story unfolds, it draws in past tragedies like the firebombing of Dresden, in an attempt to reconnect a family with too many secrets. A conversation about memory, meaning and writing 9/11 with Jonathan Safran Foer.

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birnbaum

Has anyone listened to this?

The Conncetion doing literature under Dick Gordon is, to my ear, a droning buzz of vapid generalities by a man who does a fairly convincing act of having once read a book (The Corrections).

Anyone out have anything to say about the Gordon /Foer matchup?

Posted by: birnbaum | April 11, 2005 at 05:53 PM

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