The Elegant Variation: COMPARE AND CONTRAST

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November 28, 2006

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Our pal The Rake finds some significant differences between Dave Eggers' original impressions of Infinite Jest and his more recent take.

Should I even bother pulling a quote out here? Just glance upstairs again. Now we have all that "lexical diarrhea" to go with "extravagantly self-indulgent" and "incredibly verbose" and "exhausting...jargon" and "excess" (1996) up against "unpretentious" and "not one lazy sentence" and "drum-tight" and "relentlessly smart" (2006).

Posted at 09:48 AM in Litlinks | Permalink

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What the Rake does not make clear is whether Eggers refers to his 1996 comments or not. If he does not, then his unremarked change of mind is just weird. If he does make clear that he has changed his mind, then it seems like a perfectly acceptable thing to do. Surely all voracious readers re-read things later and change their opinions on them!

Posted by: Andrew Shields | November 28, 2006 at 12:53 PM

He does not appear to acknowledge the volte face but you can see for yourself here:

http://www.laweekly.com/art+books/books/jest-fest/14990/

Posted by: TEV | November 28, 2006 at 01:31 PM

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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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*Now in Paperback*

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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

November 28, 2006

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE:
Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

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

November 28, 2006

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

Comments

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

TEV DEFINED

RECOMMENDED

THIS GUN FOR HIRE: Reviews & Criticism

SECOND LOOK

Categories

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