#don watson

[gilgai]

‘After all,’ the Queen observes in Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, ‘novels are not necessarily written as the crow flies.’ If one is denied straight lines in Henry James, one should expect them even less in a book about the bush. Readers will soon find the story straying all over the place, as the bush does, and as I did.

—Don Watson, “Acknowledgements”, The bush: travels in the heart of Australia (Melbourne: Hamish Hamilton-Penguin, 2014) 

[alexanderpearce]

okay mr "anthropomorphism is unavoidable in politics" whats ur fursona

[wordshaveteeth]

Writing contains mysteries which only exertion can uncover. If you are possessed of rare empathy, or Keats’s ‘negative capability’ and can imagine what it’s like to be a sparrow, the task will be easier sometimes. If you are master of your subject, and of writing as well, so much the better. But even for geniuses there will be gruelling times: for those of us less blessed, if it doesn’t hurt, probably we’re not trying hard enough.

- Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

[wordshaveteeth]

We will not write as well as we can, however, if we make a meal of our deficiencies. We must not be intimidated, but find some agreeable place between awareness of our limitations and submission to them. It may help to know that experience has persuaded many average to good writers that while it is never possible to rise to the level of literary genius if you’re not one, you can always improve.

- Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

[wordshaveteeth]

There can be no respect for the truth without respect for the language. Only when language is alive does truth have a chance.

- Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

[wordshaveteeth]

They will tell you it is in the interests of leadership, management, efficiency, stakeholders, the bottom line or some democratic imperative, but the public language remains the language of power. It has its origins in the subjection or control of one by another. In all societies, ‘To take power is to win speech’. Whatever its appearance, intimidation and manipulation come as naturally to public language as polite instruction, information and enlightenment. That is why vigilance is needed: an argument concerning the public language is an argument concerning liberty.

- Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

[wordshaveteeth]

Public language is the language of public life: the language of political and business leaders and civil servants — official, formal, sometimes elevated language. It is the language of leaders more than the led, the managers rather than the managed. It takes very different forms: from shapely rhetoric to shapeless, enervating sludge; but in every case it is the language of power and influence.

- Don Watson, Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language

[dougwallen]

Don Watson book review for The Big Issue Australia