Grice-esque?

--- by JLS
----- for the GC

--- WE ARE DISCUSSING THIS INTERESTING PhD dissertation (*) that compares Jameson and Grice. The author discusses the way in which Grice wrote English and Jameson failed to do so. The main source of the dissertation is a blog entry located (when last accessed) at:

http://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/aa072297.htm

The ... loser -- of an academics' "Bad Writing Contest" announced Friday [July 20 1997] was Frederic Jameson, a professor of comparative literature at Duke University in North Carolina. His book, Signatures of the Visible, opens with this sentence below.

Jameson:

The visual is essentially pornographic,
which is to say that it has its end in rapt,
mindless fascination; thinking about its
attributes becomes an adjunct to that, if
it is unwilling to betray its object; while
the most austere films necessarily draw
their energy from the attempt to repress
their own excess (rather than from the
more thankless effort to discipline
the viewer).

The source quotes:

"Jameson has a significant academic following. ... Reading his prose, [Denis Dutton comments] [is] "like swimming through cold porridge.""

"Telephone calls to Jameson's home Saturday were not answered."

And we cannot say there was a snow storm in the Karoleens.

"All the entries in the contest were gleaned from published academic works. The top three offenders were all English professors. The judges observed: "This reliance on jargon is an indication of the death throes of English as an academic discipline.""

On the other hand, Grice taught fee-lo-so-fee, and that redeems him and his lot.