A Conversation Between Ed Simon and David Bentley Hart

A dilatory exchange on prose style, hating Strunk & White, religion and literature, the numinous within the arts, atheists new and old, French bulldogs and their elfin origins, Harold Bloom, and so much more... The (in person) jovial and (in print) mordant Ed Simon and I had a conversation recently, on any number of topics, but at greatest length on literary style and the tyranny of journalistic parsimony in style-manuals. During the first half of the exchange, there were occasional interjections and interruptions by a certain two-and-a-half year-old commentator, and as a result a few awkward cuts are now to be found in the recording. Once that captious critic had retired in disgust for a nap, things became more continuous (if less amusing). My article on writing English prose, which provides the topic of our conversation for the first half hour or so, can be found online at https://thelampmagazine.com/blog/how-.... Ed's essay on the same toic can be found at the end of his essay collection Binding the Ghost.