August 2, 2005

"Maybe Posner should stop composing his essays with a paint roller and switch to a Sanford Uniball Micro."

Jack Shafer slams Judge Posner's writing, especially his recent essay in the NYT Book Review. I didn't read that very long essay, about journalism, even though it talked about blogging, but according to Shafer I don't need to bother.

Oh, well, there are always many, many things that one could read, that you pass by. Some things reach out to you and some things give off the vibe you don't need to spend time with this. Maybe you pick up the wrong vibe, but you can never even read all the things that reach out to you. If there is one thing that turns me away from someone's writing it's a windy, padded style that might be meant to say I've gone into great depth but really says I'm so busy generating more prose that I won't spend any time turning it into less prose.

Funny to write about blogging verbosely, when blogging puts a high value on concision.

Ah, but I really just wanted to write this post to say: the Sanford Uniball Micro -- damn, that's a great pen. Best pen ever!

3 comments:

NotClauswitz said...

My favorite pen for writing. Sharpie Ultra Fine Point for cartooning. But when I type it's like switch to German: two-thirds longer.

Ann Althouse said...

Dale: To me, the initial liquidity is part of the perfection. The ink flows, like fountain pen ink, not like dry ballpoint pen ink. And if you use it to draw -- and it's good for that because it's permanent -- you might sometimes want to deliberately smear it. Run your little finger across it for a feathering effect.

Ann Althouse said...

Thom: I agree. I also think his books are relatively readable. Not sure what got under Shafer's skin about this particular article.