My writing style relies heavily on the juxtaposing of radically different registers of speech: colloquialisms continually arise to deflate the high tone of complex theoretical formulations, slightly veiled allusions to biblical scripture or pop tunes proliferate, and puns become crucial to the rhetorical structure of individual essays....
But I write in this fashion in order both to resist the rigid conventions of traditional academic prose and to stimulate in my writing something resembling the shocking juxtapositions, reversals, and discursive disjunctions that characterize music itself. To describe music in stiff, colorless language devoid of pleasure is to belie the extravagant push and pull of music as it is experienced. I decided long ago... that if I could not have fun when I wrote, then I did not want to bother.
from Susan McClary's Feminine Endings, pg xii (the retrospect introductory chapter from 2002 edition)
No comments:
Post a Comment