The late American writer David Foster Wallace picked up some lifelong writing habits under Kennick’s tutelage. You already shared some advice for students: always give examples and make them vivid, and never be boring. And read lots of good prose. What else might help?
Free-associating on Baird and philosophers: David Armstrong and his second wife Jenny would occasionally play a little game, of trying to go a whole 2 days (? 3? week?) without ever uttering a cliché. I think they’d set up a penalty jar and put a shilling in when they slipped. Now, that is salutary! Try it. (I was thinking about that earlier today, and I inwardly used the phrase “without ever letting a cliché pass their lips”—CLANG!, oops, shilling in the jar.)
[---]
You get the final word!
OK, I’ll break the rule against repeating yourself: At a minimum, always give examples and make them vivid; never be boring, and be kind!
- The Art of Philosophical Writing: An Interview with William Lycan (by Nathan Ballantyne)
No comments:
Post a Comment