On Oct 15, 2005, at 4:22 AM, charles matthews wrote:
I mean, 'populist' is _not_ necessarily well written. Jimbo's
point about the Gates and Fonda articles was not that that they
were arcane and highbrow, but that they were done in such a poor
style that you wouldn't want to tread in them, let alone read in them.
Which is why I didn't simply append this to Jimbo's discussion - it
is a separate one. This isn't just a matter of writing style - it' a
matter of focus. As a general encyclopedia, we need to be targetted
at a general audience - that means that, if nothing else, what the
New York Times identifies as major events in someone's life are, for
our purposes, major events. I'm not saying those are the only ones
worth paying attention to - but then, I'd support an article on each
of Derrida's publications, so I'm not worried, in the big picture,
about crowding out the academic stuff. I don't think Cambridge and de
Man should be the main focus of the article at all. I do think they
each need their little sections, and that it would be irresponsible
of us to exclude them.
-Snowspinner