Perhaps it's a subtle influence; perhaps I only see it glaring out at me because I'm the author. But my last few posts have been much in the style of F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose short stories I've been reading as of late. I always worry about this sort of thing: that is, whether my writing style is unique and personal, or if it's as overtly technical as a musical etude.

In fact, when I tried my hand at writing string quartets many years ago, I found myself composing the harmony by what sounded most resonant at any note. I was entirely unable to write a melody that was much more than variations on arpeggios or an accompaniment that was more than an amalgamation of technically pleasing chords. And, most inescapably, everything I wrote sounded derivative of a stereotypical Mozart quartet: repetitive sixteenths, scales, and predictible syncopations.

So, even as I write this very sentence, my current conception of eloquence seems to lie almost entirely within the style of Fitzgerald. I certainly hope that I'm wrong. I can't see for myself if there are passages here that have their own nuance; I see very little in the way of a unique voice flowing through all my posts. Instead I see excruciatingly economic uses of semicolons; many scentences beginning with "and," "but," or "yet;" and a reliance on "however," "therefore," "thus," and "perhaps." Is my eloquence a sham? Am I doing no more than stringing together technically pleasing verbal harmonies?

Maybe it takes more than words to evoke a true respone in the reader; rather, it is the uniqueness of the ideas or the vision underlying the writing that truly makes a writer compelling. Maybe eloquence at the technical level is like Mozart's core understanding of music, Salvador Dali's literal painting skills, or Meselsohn and Stahl's hard knowledge of science. It is the genius that made the music emotinally captivating, that made the artwork open new worlds, or that made the experiments simply beautiful. Eloquence, in the end, may be little more than window dressing in need of an exceptional home.  ¶ 10:55 PM

  It has been my greatest blessing and my greatest curse that I am anally retentive about virtually nothing in my life. Save for a few indiosyncracies (such as the naming of mp3 files), I approach nearly everything with a distinct knack for aiming just below the level of perfection. I've always hated stress, and perfectionism seems to me stress purified and manifest. So it was with a particular sense of oddity and irony that I've come to realize that how I read is the one glaring facet of perfectionism that taints my otherwise laid-back manner.

When I read -- whether it be a scientific paper or an article in the Onion -- I am nearly always unable to continue to the next scentence or paragraph until I fully understand the last one. And by understand I mean vizualize, digest, and sometimes even memorize. Consequently, it takes me far longer to read a book than on average. In fact, the current book I'm reading, The DNA Provirus, describes how the Nobel laureate Howard Temin was reading four books a week even in his last year of life. My thesis advisor as well has a stack of books in his office that he seemingly breezes through. Yet it's taken me five weeks to read half of this book, even taking into accout the density of its subject, because I'm never able to say "I'll get back to that paragraph later."

I often wonder which is better: to read broadly but not deeply, or vice versa. I suppose if great minds do the former, then it's probably the best way to learn. On the other hand, maybe they've aquired (or were born with) the ability to do both, while I at my age am mired in the necessity of slow comprehension. Perhaps I'm a late bloomer, and with time I will lose the over-caution that accompanies inexperience. I can only hope so. For reading is chore for me now, and I often have to consciously force myself to skip unimportant passages, if any, just to reach a reasonable pace. I hate the thought of being like so many of my peers in college who skimmed the readings, aced the tests, and promptly forgot everything. As much as it annoys me, though, I'm glad that of all the things I could be anally retentive about, it's one of the most important things I do.  ¶ 1:57 AM