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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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« SILVERBLATT'S 2007 FAVORITES | Main | TEV GIVEAWAY: DONALD SUTHERLAND READS "THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA" »

December 06, 2007

NYC EVENT: PINDELDYBOZ PARTY

Word reaches us from editor Whitney Pastorek about the December 10 shindig to bid farewell to the print edition of Pindeldyboz.  (The website, we're assured, is going strong.)  Pastorek advises us that "To celebrate this momentous occasion, we're also having a huge blowout party December 10th in NYC, at the Slipper Room on the lower east side. I've got $600 in the bank account and I plan to spend it all. At the very least, that means pizza for a lot of folks."

Pizza?  Literary types?  The Slipper Room?  If we were still in New York, we'd be so there.  Hope you'll stop in and check out the fun.  Details here.

Posted by TEV at 06:02 PM in Events |

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