Re: [bookclub] Prose style in 'Losing Your Grip'

[spatula@!nnuendo.com (tv's Spatch)]

What would Nick Montfort <nickmontfort@my-deja.com> do?

>The word "wheep," and the idea that medical monitors wheep in
>response to electrical signals, is wonderful. This combination of
>onomatopoeia and metaphor could have been developed further,
>though. Syntactically, the sentence is cumbersome, with too many
>short prepositional phrases shoved together. And of course there
>is no way to know, perceptually, for an observer to know that
>signals are traveling along the leads -- except by reference to
>the wheeping of the monitors. This line of description could have
>become something like "Electrical leads run from you to boxy
>beige monitors nearby. Signals are no doubt traveling invisibly
>along the leads, for green lines undulate on the glass eyes of
>the monitors. They wheep with each pulse." Or it could become
>something better. As is, it's just a difficult sentence with the
>beginnings of a nice idea.

Mr. Montfort, we've never met, but already I await your complete
rewrite of the game, surely entitled "The Grip Which You're Losing".
Godspeed and good luck.



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