No Holds Barred
January 04, 2006
I did not have the occasion to quote it earlier, but I like this line in Harry Stout’s review of The Mind of the Master Class so much that I’ll leave it here for handy use next time someone complains about the distinct lack of niceness around these parts:
Both Miller and the Genoveses adopt a style of discourse and argumentation that might best be labeled bombastic. For both, ideas are not trivial matters for casual talk at cocktail parties but utterly serious pursuits worthy of being treated in life-and-death terms. Occasionally humor appears, but usually with the object of satire or reductio ad absurdum arguments. Neither are they shy to put forward their interpretation or belittle their opponents, both historical and contemporary. It is a style of discourse whose roots are ultimately medieval, grounded in what the Jesuit scholar Walter J. Ong termed “agonistic structures,” in which words are weapons. In these embattled terms, the really critical question becomes, do they fight fair? And to this reviewer, the answer—in both cases—is yes.
This is No Holds Barred in The Japery, a part of The New Pantagruel. Previously: Good Girardians | Next: Blogging Kills, Part II | TrackBack (0) | Comments (0)
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