Seems that they tell me to generalize; that ‘anecdote is not data’. Or rather, that others, perhaps poor observers of the minutiae inherent to the world around them, follow that line of reasoning voluntarily, even unthinkingly. I simply can’t.
What the purpose of someone who commits her observations to print, if not to convey her most intimate perceptions? No hard news journalist (ever), I’m first and foremost a ruminator over what they used to call ‘the personal essay’ (always preceded by a reasonably clever title!). It shouldn’t be necessary to state what seems obvious to this crushed analogueist: the social media age has dramatically reduced writerly capacity (and permission) for deeply literate composition. That, I sincerely hope, will never be the case amongst these virtual pages.
Victorian authors were compensated for each and every word: the more, the merrier (and increasingly lucrative.) Hence the supernaturally romanced, malevolent and wry prose of Charlotte Brontë, whose Jane Eyre I consider the greatest single novel ever. But the penultimate example of that era’s verbosity is another hero of mine, Charles Dickens. Copious vocabulary dances around and frames his myriad settings and personages. And yet ironically, as I cite these two nineteenth-century legends, have any examples of their descriptive powers jumped so firmly into my mind that I’ve felt compelled to copy them herein?
Perhaps, over time, I myself have come to an acceptably modern crossroads: understanding that a veritable laundry list of identifiers is untoward, but a few carefully chosen ones are germane.
analoguegirl.org 