The Writer's Voice

I never quite know what to think when this happens. It is one thing to type this stuff in my little kitchen study and press the publish button. It is quite another to have people whose professional status I admire not only read it, but consider it worth reading and criticizing (yeah, even that long-ago link by David Frum is something I treasure).

Having said that, Scott makes an important point, one I missed completely.

Actually I don't really praise it so much as emphasize it. Or rather, to be more precise, note how Danto emphasizes it

This is a fundamental misreading of the original post. I made the mistake of saying the person who wrote the post said such-and-such, while in fact the author was actually quoting someone else. He does so for a reason, to be sure; yet, it is not his voice, and I made that fundamental error.

One would think that someone who does this whole reading-and-writing thing for a very time-consuming hobby would understand the basic difference between the writer's particular voice, and that same writer citing another for a particular point. It really is reading comprehension 101, and I goofed.

I can quote another writer here, either favorably or not, to my heart's content; yet in doing so I am usually pretty careful to make both the context of the quote in question as well as my own perspective on the quote pretty clear. This is especially necessary because of the very bad habit many folks have, say, of cherry-picking a comment or two and attributing it to the author of the post to which the comment is posted. Bill O'Reilly is well known for this particular trick.

I think this is an important point. Every writer seeks out like-minded souls to bolster an argument, or to draw out a particular point, or with which to contrast. Making the distinction clear between one's own voice and that of someone else is necessary. Understanding that distinction is also necessary, from the reader's point of view. Part of the problem on the internet, at least from my own experience, is the confusion of voice - we far too often misread something as coming from a particular voice (the writer of an article we are reading), when in fact it might very well not be that person's voice at all.

So, I take this as an object-lesson. I need to be far more careful in my reading. I need to be more careful in citing another's writing to make sure attribution is clear.