Monday, August 16, 2021
Writing versus Speaking
Robert Kanigel, Hearing Homer's Song: The Brief Life and Big Idea of Milman Parry (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), p. 19:
Newer› ‹Older
Scholars and writers are apt to dismiss words not immortalized on the page, issuing merely from the lips. People lie, repeat themselves, contradict what they've just said, phumph and jabber endlessly. Singers and storytellers, bombastic preachers, drunken barroom rhetoricians, fast-talking salesmen, Don Juans purveying sugarcoated come-ons—all were past masters of the shady arts of speech. We may listen, but we don't entirely trust; many of us want to see it in black and white, laid out on the page in front of us. Without that reassuring superstructure of print, speech and song can seem deficient.Hat tip: Alan Crease.
