Monday, November 15, 2010

Vanishing Writers of Magic Words

While participating in a writing workshop, Irene Borger was asked to gather every word that came to mind within a few minutes, as if one were saving these words from destruction. Irene found herself happily jotting Abracadabra, Open Sesame, Presto Change-o, and the like. "Yet, sometimes," she notes, "I find myself wondering what magic words can do when too many people who write them are vanishing" (From a Burning House, 1996).

2 comments:

LoneIslander said...

Kind of makes you think........

Eccentric Scholar said...

Yes, LoneIslander. Irene Borger's statement resonates on several levels. There are vanishing languages (victims of cultures succumbing to world homogenization), vanishing authors (succumbing to AIDS, for example), and there is what's been called "that state of benign neglect or collective forgetfulness" (less ominous, perhaps, yet just as insidious).