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For love of paralipsis
24 March 2006 07:33 amHow can you not love the trope that describes "I will not mention the rumor that my opponent fornicates with farm animals, because that would be unseemly"?
It's the have your cake trope. It's the explicit unstatement. Which is, of course, an understatement that points at itself. Vehicular misdirection. Perfect for either light ironies or character assassination. It softens your hands while you don't do the dishes. Stays crunchy in milk, too.
It lets you do things like, "I'd tell you about <insert two stanzas of description>, but I hear time's wingéd chariot hurrying near" or "but I'm not a good enough poet" or "but that would be a digression." Fermat's famous Last Theorem was paralipsical.* So was the fate of the bicycle named Beta.** I'd give more examples, but that would be cheating.
What's not to love? Aside from, yanno, its basic unfairness.****
* "I have a wonderful proof, but there's not enough room in the margin to contain it."
** "A Follower of Goddard / And a rising Astrogator / Were agreed that superthermics / Was a spatial hot pertater. // They reached a Super-Nova / On a bicycle named Beta / And I'd tell you all about it / But they fused with all the data." I'd describe my Frederick Winsor love,*** but there's not enough room in a footnote to contain it.
*** Mothers, don't let your children grow up without The Space Child's Mother Goose. Just sayin'.
**** Which is to die for.
---L.
It's the have your cake trope. It's the explicit unstatement. Which is, of course, an understatement that points at itself. Vehicular misdirection. Perfect for either light ironies or character assassination. It softens your hands while you don't do the dishes. Stays crunchy in milk, too.
It lets you do things like, "I'd tell you about <insert two stanzas of description>, but I hear time's wingéd chariot hurrying near" or "but I'm not a good enough poet" or "but that would be a digression." Fermat's famous Last Theorem was paralipsical.* So was the fate of the bicycle named Beta.** I'd give more examples, but that would be cheating.
What's not to love? Aside from, yanno, its basic unfairness.****
* "I have a wonderful proof, but there's not enough room in the margin to contain it."
** "A Follower of Goddard / And a rising Astrogator / Were agreed that superthermics / Was a spatial hot pertater. // They reached a Super-Nova / On a bicycle named Beta / And I'd tell you all about it / But they fused with all the data." I'd describe my Frederick Winsor love,*** but there's not enough room in a footnote to contain it.
*** Mothers, don't let your children grow up without The Space Child's Mother Goose. Just sayin'.
**** Which is to die for.
---L.