The Botching Hour
It has been a bad day; luckily, it's only got fifteen more minutes to go.
One of the less serious botches on my part in the essay on Suck below (and believe me, I don't know how to begin detailing the more serious ones; maybe tomorrow) is the implication in the note I appended as an afterthough:
"how come two tracts in strong defense of elitism, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead and Vonnegut's"Harrison Bergeron" become the beloved works of so many extremely non-elite thinkers?"
In the context of the essay, it may appear that in some peculiar fashion I esteem these two texts, and even characterize them as pearls cast before swine. Oh, how I wish I had been clearer -- "tracts" seemed sufficiently perjorative at the moment of composition, but the sentence seems to leave open the possibility that I think they're nifty but liked by the wrong people. No, no, no. Maybe "irritating tracts" or "famous examples of propaganda" would have done the trick. Of course, those just sound awful. And I can't think of anything better right now.
So much for the new feature, "The Sharing of Editorial Afterthoughts."
Posted by B T at June 12, 2001 11:58 PM