Question by Michelle H: Can someone explain this short new york times article to me?
http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/22/barack-obamas-prose-style/#comments Its puzzling me. Its about Obama’s inaugural speech

Best answer:

Answer by laholly1
This is one of the most important articles I have ever read. Save it to disk.

Mr. Fish is bringing to light something that most people who heard President Obama’s speech would have missed. He is (Mr. Fish, that is) explaining to us that the President’s speech was extraordinarily powerful–not because it was eloquent–but because of the specific way in which it was decidedly NOT eloquent.

The President’s speech was riveting; listeners were compelled to listen to it not because it was inspirational but because it led each listener to ideas–to one, then another, then another, then another–as if each one were a star in the galaxy; and the listeners were led without being aware that they were being led.

Mr. Fish uses a metaphor for “idea”: “Obama doesn’t deposit us at a location he has in mind from the beginning; he carries us from meditative bead to meditative bead, and invites us to contemplate.” This says that President Obama did not have a specific end result for us in mind as he spoke. In other words, he was not carrying us along on the wings of hope to deposit us at happily ever after. He had some specific things he wanted us to consider deeply. The word for that is “contemplate.” Fish calls these things “meditative beads,” which is pretty good, because it creates a visual image of beads–such as rosary beads, for example. There’s a bead, then there is a connector in the space, then a bead…

So it was with our thoughts as we listened to the President. He led us from topic to topic, provided no final outcomes, and asked us without asking to pause and consider each topic deeply–more deeply than we have done with regards to anything political in decades.

Mr. Fish says that President Obama used this style on purpose. It is called Parataxis, and takes the reader from thought to thought without explaining the relationships between any of the thoughts. He left that thinking up to us–quite a demonstration of faith in us, as none of us has been required to do much serious (profoundly serious) thinking…in those same aforementioned decades.

He left the contemplation to us, the pause at each thought to us, the recognition of the importance of each one to us, so that there would be shared participation and shared responsibility for the course we take for the future.

Finally, Mr. Fish says that the literary pundits around the world are finally recognizing the importance of Mr. Obama’s speech–that it is being immortalized in special edition printings…and becoming the topic of study for students all around the globe.
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True enough, isn’t it!

Hope this helped a bit.

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