3 Dec 2007
simon robins

trying to read Hugh Fitzgerald is an exercise in frustration. With me, he's preaching .to the converted anyway.  I look out for anything by Theodore Dalrymple, Mark Steyn, Helen , MacDonald, etc. etc. But Hugh seems to be writing in the grip of  an unreflective hysteria (and don't you do any editing at NER?). It takes far more sympathy than I'm willing to bestow to constantly say to myself 'Yeah I know what he means to say' when confronted by NON-sentences such as this one: "But the United States, England, France, and all those other places to which so many others, especially Muslims who arrive, their inculcated hostility undeclared at customs, packed carefully in their mental package, and to be unpacked as soon as they are safely in the country."

4 Dec 2007
Hugh Fitzgerald

You are right to mock that non-sentence. When it comes to the subject of Islam, my method of composition is to merely post things, a great many things, ordinarily as a one-man�rapid-response team, swatting at something written or said. And because of the amount of such stuff that comes out that�cries out for comment, I never compose off-side, but do so at the speed at which I type, and I type very very fast.��I never look back, for fear of what my Lot in life might then be, not on �a paragraph, a sentence, even a phrase. I instead assume that readers will understand. But why should they?� It's a ridiculous assumption for me to make. I then compound the error by relying on others to look the things over, should these things be put up as "articles" (meaning presumably that time has been put into them)more permanently, to assume that all problems will have been addressed by others.

This reliance on the kindness of non-strangers , whose main fault is that they sometimes show too great a faith in me, and my failure to�attack the coiled anacolutha that enwrap me as I stand, not Laocoon-like but strangely�indifferent�, cannnot be justified. In other kinds of writing I have been, at times, paralyzingly self-critical.. When it comes to Islam, such a boring and second-rate subject, one t that I can hardly stand to deal with it, day after day after day, I have been grossly inattentive.�

The piece this month consists of �several past postings�spatchcocked together. I was given the chance to review the result by the spatchcocker, who had left the task of editing them up to me. For some reason I never did so, and the piece appeared without that indispensable review. The result is the would-be sentence you hold up for inspection and right ridicule; no doubt there are others to be found for similar criticism and mockery.

I will, sometime today, go through the damn thing and hack away. Will I mend my negligent ways, and actually check�postings that have�been promoted from being the insects of an hour to the insects of a month? I hope -- for my sake and that of infuriated readers�-- so.�

4 Dec 2007
Rebecca Bynum

Sorry about that sentence. Fixed now.

-The Spatchcocker

4 Dec 2007
Hugh Fitzgerald
Okay, Miss, but don't let it happen again. You know how I  rely on the kindness of strangers.

5 Dec 2007
ares demertzis

I for one thoroughly enjoy reading Hugh Fitzgerald, run on sentences, lack of punctuation, and all.  I travel within his mind, as the tiny sparks jump across the synapses, effortlessly making unexpected and delightful connections.  It is a provocative Joycean stream of consciousness experience.  Thank you for sharing, Hugh

5 Dec 2007
Mary Jackson

It is a provocative Joycean stream of consciousness experience.

Fair play to him - it's not that bad, so it isn't.

6 Dec 2007
Rebecca Bynum

It's a commentary on the age that many editors now assume their readers can't follow complex sentences and must be spoon-fed simple ones, preberably in bite-size paragraphs using an eighth-grade vocabulary.

Hugh's work is ingenious and liberating.�I love googling some obscure word or phrase he uses and learning something new.

If the dull become�frustrated, who cares?

11 Dec 2007
alfred
"Spatchcocked." I love it.

I would not criticize the odd solecism in the stunning repertoire of a brilliant warrior for the working day in the common cause, like H. F.

Although it may be amusing (though dangerous) to twist the tiger's tail, now and then, I do not advise it.

For if you make him get his knickers in a twist, he will come after you.

He will.

I think the quote, from a line by Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams" "Streetcar Named Desire," is, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," rather than "rely".

Small change, chump change. For living dangerously.

17 Dec 2007
ZZMike

I keep running across alternating histories for the word "Palestine".  If you read old Bibles (old being before 1900 or so), you'll find "Palestine" on the maps.

Mark Twain, in "Innocents Abroad" (1867), recounts a visit to "Palestine".  He found it uninviting:

"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince.  The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape.  ...

Palestine is desolate and unlovely.  And why should it be otherwise?  Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?

21 Dec 2007
Hugh Fitzgerald
Of  course "Palestine" existed as a toponym. It was the word that came to be used, in Western Christendom, after the Romans, in a deliberate attempt to efface all toponyms that connected the Jews to what was called Judea (roughly, and not exactly, what Jews call the Land of Israel) , renamed the place "Syria palaestinorum"  which was the Latin version of "Syria of the Philistines, after the people who dwelt in five towns near Gaza, and who disappeared from history three or four millennia ago. I was writing about the word "Palestinian" used not adjectivally, modifying the word "Arab," but carefully promoted to the status of noun. This is particularly maddening because, in the period 1900-1948  the word ""Palestinian"  was applied to Jews who were in Palestine never to Arabs, and in that same period, many Arabs (whose descendants now call themselves "Palestinians" when talking to Westerners, though to themselves they are simply Arabs) actually arrived from outside Mandatory Palestine, especially from two Arab countries, Egypt and Iraq. Many books have been written on the actual demographic and cadastral records, some by Israelis. They are never looked into, seldom read, never referred to -- a conspiracy of silence about them, not only by the Arabs, but by the dimwitted Israelis who are in charge of that long-suffering country, that doesn't deserve the ruling political and media elite it has.

23 Dec 2007
simon robins

Dear Rebecca Bynum

Arthur Schnabel was once asked by Master-class student whether it was better to play in time or to play as one feels.

His reply: "why not feel in time?"

I have respect for Hugh Fitzgerald's learning and understanding, which, like Hegel's essence, is as broad as it is deep. But your misleading (" can't follow complex.......",

..." bite-size paragraphs.."), defensive and silly ( "ingenious and liberating") response brings to mind the tale (as recently reported in the Telegraph) of the head of an English state school, who, when confronted by a father complaining that

his child's spelling test contained a correction by her teacher

that was MISSPELT, said, "So what. You can tell what she means."

24 Dec 2007
Phineus
Endless diisplays of evidence for this or for that rest on the false assumption that somehow the evidence will sway an opinion. We are all waiting for the end of the deferral of violence with fatalistic angst. It's a lot like an old theater premist that you never introduce a gun into the plot if you have no intention of having it go off. There will be a "boom" regardless of the arguments. Not to be a party pooper, but this particular party is pooped. But I will continue to read your lively debate!