Re: FYA
On 1/18/07, Tariel, Lauren R <lt34 -at- saclink -dot- csus -dot- edu> wrote:
"Make a frappe from a couple of published sources and pour it out, for sale, to another market."
Got It! Thanks. That's my new business model.
heh.
But seriously, isn't that what writers *do*? Incorporate other works
into new and original works? reusign a chord progression doesn'tmake a
blues song 'unoriginal'.
OMG, you've taken me to the bridge, and what you say is true. When Miles Davis recorded Cyndi Lauper's pop hit Time After Time, it was a revelation to jazz listeners. Sheesh, that's what artists and performers do, they interpret. What a concept! And what a word--I want to know the etymology of it. I see a good old Latin affix 'inter-' (from Greek enteron, intestine) followed by the readily-understood 'pret' (let's just say it is as in 'pret a manger', ready to eat; also sometimes used as shorthand for present tense). Please, pardon my French, but an interpreter performs something already in the intestine? I can see how that might be--they digest it for the audience. Now I'm like, "Wow, how many times have I said that good technical writing requires first fully digesting a complex system before deciding how to structure and write the documentation!"
So yes, I think that this must be the bridge to Ian Frazier's piece that I wasn't seeing. Absolutely, in some sense he's like Chaucer or Shakespeare borrowing from traditional tales like Troilus and Cressida while creating their own unique masterpieces. Another possibility I hadn't thought of is that the Frazier essay is an homage to the original work that recognized shower curtains as an intriguing subject with lots of 'splaining to do. Still, I'm uneasy. I still feel that Frazier's essay evokes and accepts credit for the original work of others, a sign of author envy. Frazier is Salieri to David Schmidt's Mozart.
Finally, I ought to do a little 'splaining myself. I'm not trying to be right about anything here--this is just my own reaction to the essay. I accept the fact that I could be quite wrong about Frazier's inspiration and intentions in writing it, and New Yorker's in publishing it. As if to underscore that likelihood, when I googled Mozart and Salieri I found the one-act opera by Rimsky-Korsakov. The libretto is taken nearly verbatim from a work of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. Feh, this whole issue is going to give me indigestion. But thanks for the interpretation as vernacular, Susan, that really is able to account for this.
Have fun,
Ned Bedinger
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com
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Follow-Ups:
- RE: FYA, Tariel, Lauren R
References:
FYA: From: Janice Gelb
RE: FYA: From: Tariel, Lauren R
Re: FYA: From: Janice Gelb
Re: FYA: From: Ned Bedinger
RE: FYA: From: Tariel, Lauren R
Re: FYA: From: Susan Hogarth
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