On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Philip Hart wrote: >On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, David Silberstein wrote: >> As a particle physicist, you might get a chuckle out of Anderson's >> short work "Uncleftish Beholding". It's a bit of a linguistic >> exercise rather than an actual story; the entire text is basic science >> written in Anglo-Saxon or Germanic words and phrases where we would >> use terms from Latin or Greek derived roots. As you might guess, an >> "uncleft" is an "atom", and it goes on from there. > > >This is another kind of thing I think about a lot - I believe this piece >comes across as a stunt more than anything else. Some works - like the >French novel by Perec, translated as A Void (because the work eschews the >letter "e") - turn a literary exercise into something powerful, if one's >tolerance for play is high enough. Well, I suppose it might be a stunt; Anderson was kinda showing off his linguistic prowess. But I thought it was heaps of fun; such is my taste. >For comparison, check out this recent poem, which has two "stunt" >features, but ones which are intended to support the content: >http://www.slac.stanford.edu/~philiph/bagel.htm > I am not sure what stunt features you refer to. I see that there is alliteration and repetition, but perhaps you are referring to something more complicated? Even thought I have eaten a filling supper, I find that reading it makes me hungry all over again. Bother. Memo to self: pick up dozen freshly baked bagels.