From: MFaizi5009-AT-aol.com Date: Tue, 31 Aug 1999 02:00:22 EDT Subject: Reason and Vision John Foster wrote: > >Ariosto's writing is so originally his writing. Now one could parrot his > >style, his mind, his art. Now, this is truly laughable. I think that Ariosto has the potential to be a good writer if he ever learns to drop the absurdity in which he regularly indulges himself. Clarity is an important quality in writing. It is one thing to type out a string of words. It is another thing to use words in a way that can be understood. When I first wrote to this list, the first thing that I addressed was the obscurity of the writing that was being displayed here. There was absolutely no communication occurring at all. I was receiving these posts that had little or no relation to another. That might have been fairly acceptable if the posts had been sensible or decipherable. But that was not the case. Reading the posts here was like trying to decode hieroglyphics or to swim in quicksand. I would never have written to this list at all if not for the fact that I had forgotten how to unsubscribe and, though I asked, no one was willing to tell me how. I decided that, if I could not leave, then, I would tackle things head on. I did that and, for a while, the posts became much more coherent. The writers began to communicate with each other in ways that could be understood. The list became more alive than it had ever been. That phase did not last long but, for the time that it did last, it was something, at least; instead of the nothing that it was before my insistence on clarity and the nothing that it will be when I stop writing to it again. I can parrot Ariosto because I have parroted Ariosto. I have parroted him and I have taught him some lessons and I have shown him some things that have benefited his writing. If one insists upon imaginative writing, one needs to do it well. Ariosto enjoys citing for me the gifts that he has given to me. He forgets the one gift that I gave to him and that was the gift of vision. Without the sharpness of vision, one can never come to reason that is capable of everything. Reason is not rationalism. It is no -ism at all. It is a tool to be used. Faizi
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