Thursday, December 6, 2007

So, is it Blather or is it Dross? (Another Rhetorical Question)

From a recent critical piece in The New Yorker:  

In a diary, the trivial and inconsequential — the "woke up, got out of bed, dragged a comb across my head" pieces — are not trivial and inconsequential at all; they are defining features of the genre.  If it doesn't contain a lot of dross, it's not a diary.  It's something else — a journal, or a writer's notebook, or a blog (blather is not the same as dross).  

Interesting hair-splitting; but true, I suppose.  Funny how much more serious dross sounds than blather, though.


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