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“The war has used up words; they have weakened, they have deteriorated like motor-car tyres; they have like millions of other things, been more overstrained and knocked about and voided of the happy semblance during the last six months than in all the long ages before,…
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“…and we are now confronted with a depreciation of all our terms, or otherwise speaking, with a loss of expression through increase of limpness, that may well make us wonder what ghosts will be left to walk.” Henry James — The New York Times, March 21, 1915!
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Orwell though, is taking about the corruption and debasement of words. The early modernist and realist writers were more about the sheer horror of reality rendering speech harder.
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I think local calamities don’t have the same effect as global ones. Korea and Vietnam didn’t really have effects beyond the warring nations. So IMO only a very few global events shut writers up. Writers tend to be globalist in sensibility even if they write very locally.
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makes sense oh the vonnegut quote comes to mind but it just corroborates your point – it's an anecdote not an essay, and even if essays were written maybe they don't linger in mass consciousness. like how 90% of my "x happened tweet" tweets are forgettable
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