Sunday, September 15, 2013

The Win-a-Wench contest -- ah, college years


Why I Read or Refuse to Read “One Small Voice”

This might be a very good question if it did not have an answer. Without an answer it would make excellent material for Mssrs. Cornell or Reichenbach. However, this query must step down from that pedestal before attaining its height, because there is an answer. I read “One Small Voice,” because in this column and articles by the same authors, going back to “Catch-22”, I have found a philosophy with which I can identify. (I just realized I had better start working the extra information in here if this is all to be one paragraph. Last date: January 23, 1972 if you could call it a date. Actually I have considerably atrophized and am writing more to say why I read “One Small Voice” than to win a WAW contest.) That philosophy is if you cannot say anything nice, say something argumentative and make it sound nice. (However, if the prize is won, I, as any gentleman of refinement would, will accept it.) As I interpret “One Small Voice,” it attempts, and succeeds, at getting across the point and laying low its opponents not by hitting below the belt, but by hitting in the head. In some instances, of course, no goal will be scored with some people, because there is nothing vulnerable up that high, but such trivialities need not bother me as a reader. And so, thus, I read. And laugh.

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