I can’t get to multiple Brunhildas just yet

...because something else, or rather someone else, caught my attention. Since I have never been one to leave a rabbit trail unexplored, off we will now go into the wild blue yonder (how's that for a mixed metaphor?) at least for a little while.

Although I like to think I am a fairly observant person who is fairly well-read, I have now reached the age (82 years, nine months) where every day makes me more aware of how little I really do know, the occasional Jeopardy! answer notwithstanding. This time the someone else who caught my attention, thanks to a fellow blogger named Rachel, was Umberto Eco. I had never heard of him even though he has been famous in certain circles for 40 years, ever since his book The Name Of The Rose was published.

Rachel mentioned that she was reading another of his works, How To Write A Thesis. Here is an excerpt from Rachel's blog:

"I wrote the introduction to my essay this morning between Wordle and breakfast or it may have been the other way round. I happened to read Umberto Eco's essay on How to Write a Thesis before breakfast and Wordle and the timing was good where he told me to get all the silly things out of the way in my first draft, read through, and then write the serious version. If I want to throw my chances of a good degree on to the fire, and by all means do so if I want to, then use the silly first version. If I am actually going to give it the respect it deserves then write the serious version now I've got the first out of the way. So that's what I did. And the serious introduction and outline of what I am going to write about looks much more professional and that of a serious MA poetry student. Thanks Umberto. (I wrote the silly version last night. Slept on it and morning came). Umberto Eco is an Italian writer and philosopher."

I thought Eco's advice to write your silly version first, then write your serious version was good advice indeed, advice that I wish I had encountered before writing Billy Ray Barnwell Here: The Meanderings Of A Twisted Mind that I converted into a blog at www.billyraybarnwellhere.blogspot.com (q.v.).

I decided to look Umberto up, found several articles about his How To Write A Thesis, and opened one. The first words actually written by Umberto Eco tbat I ever read besides the ones referred to in Rachel's blog hit me in the face like a wet dishcloth:

"You are not Proust. Do not write long sentences."

My alter ego Billy Ray Barnwell could have benefited from reading Umberto Eco. It is great advice, right up there with the famous "Omit Needless words" section of Strunk and White's The Elements Of Style. The fact that Eco also wrote "You are not e. e. cummings" will be left to another day to be dealt with.

Our foray into this part of the wild blue yonder is now ended. If anybody decides to check out my other blog (it's a Rolls-Royce), it will have been worth it.