From: cbcox-AT-rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu (Carrol Cox)
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Karl's requ...Ebert's Prose
Date: Thu, 26 Jun 1997 00:18:02 -0500 (CDT)


Doug, Deb,

    I must have missed Doug's post in which he refers to Ebert's
prose as too much like an English professor's. A couple remarks:

    1) As a matter of fact, it is extraordinarily hard to write *really*
well, and no one should be blamed for not writing better than they can.

    2) The Buffalo comrades of Ebert *did* give the impression (and have
never yet actually erased it) that they had absorbed the habits of their
alleged enemies, the pomos, and wrote bad *deliberately*. Deb does not
at all give that impression; neither does Ebert in any of the work of
hers I have read. (Neither, incidentally, does Morton, though he has
more of the Syracuse tics than Ebert does.)

    3) English professors (and assistant professors emeritus) are
just people too, and at least many of them write as well as they can,
and I think we should only *explicitly* raise the question of style
when it appears someone writes badly on principle. I don't believe
that can be said of either Ebert or Kelsh.

Carrol


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