I’d say the dog got it even if your fellow humans did not. I missed Adams during my sci-fi salad days, and almost didn’t get it either, but I think you nailed it.
In the new Stan Lee documentary, he tells about how early on his publisher told him not to use words longer than two syllables. But later, as Lee and his fellow Marvel writers became more ambitious, they had the idea they should use college vocabulary since so many college students were reading their comics. These guys had not been to college, I don’t believe, but to them that apparently meant words of multiple syllables.
I wonder if Adams’ view of certain writing (and its jargon), like Lee’s of college vocabulary, was a little cartoonish (sorry).
I happened to read Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” with that documentary still fresh in my mind and noticed how few words of more than two syllables he used (I see only four in a poem of over 280 words). So it seems to me there are plenty of examples, and influential ones, that serve as counterweights to the notion that sophisticated writing has to be difficult or dull. Perhaps a moot point since people outside academe normally never see academic writing.
I’d say the dog got it even if your fellow humans did not. I missed Adams during my sci-fi salad days, and almost didn’t get it either, but I think you nailed it.
In the new Stan Lee documentary, he tells about how early on his publisher told him not to use words longer than two syllables. But later, as Lee and his fellow Marvel writers became more ambitious, they had the idea they should use college vocabulary since so many college students were reading their comics. These guys had not been to college, I don’t believe, but to them that apparently meant words of multiple syllables.
I wonder if Adams’ view of certain writing (and its jargon), like Lee’s of college vocabulary, was a little cartoonish (sorry).
I happened to read Frost’s “After Apple-Picking” with that documentary still fresh in my mind and noticed how few words of more than two syllables he used (I see only four in a poem of over 280 words). So it seems to me there are plenty of examples, and influential ones, that serve as counterweights to the notion that sophisticated writing has to be difficult or dull. Perhaps a moot point since people outside academe normally never see academic writing.