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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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March 24, 2008

NEIL ASPINALL DIES

Neil Aspinall, the man who George Harrison said deserved to be called "the fifth Beatle," has died.

When the American manager Allen Klein was brought in to sort out the Beatles’ finances, Mr. Klein fired much of the staff but was told by John Lennon, “Don’t touch Neil and Mal, they’re ours,” referring to Mr. Aspinall and his assistant, Mal Evans, who had also been with the group since its Liverpool days.

Mal Evans died in a run-in with the LAPD in 1976.

Posted by TEV at 01:29 PM in Obsessions |

Comments

When I was a young twenty-something, I must admit, I suffered the odd moment of Beatle-envy (a by-product of rabid retro-fandom and too much guitar twanging). But if I woke up tomorrow to find myself having been transformed into Sir Paul overnight, it wouldn't be a dream, it'd be a Kafka-esque *nightmare*, wouldn't it? And who would want to change places with George or John, at this point? And, erm... sorry, Ringo.

It may well be some form of generational therapy, living to see the day that you'd prefer your own life to a Beatle's.

Posted by: Steven Augustine | March 25, 2008 at 10:22 AM

Mal Evans was killed just a few blocks from the old Blackburn residences. I don't know the address but it was somewhere on 4th St. around Crescent Heights.

Posted by: C- | March 25, 2008 at 12:14 PM

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