Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Where is Clay Harvey?

I hired a supposedly-excellent sales lady one Christmas. I was familiarizing her with our stock and we came to our signle four-layer show-case full of Rolex watches, she asked: "Rolex (laugh), isn't that something like Timex? (Huge laugh)"

Ummm, she didn't last long.

Blessings,

Steve

PS. In retrospect, I surely wish I'd sent Clay a Timex.

I like watches.

Jeff

Right it's all about you and your watch ??.

Right it's all about you and your watch ??.

That was worth posting twice?

[quote=dogzapper Any writer, indeed any editor, who hides behind words that the common man does not know, or even pronounce, disqualifies himself from our adulation.

Indeed, there are those on every sporting web site, the 24HCF, who are posers. Big words, long words, do not proved education and learning, they simply show that some hide behind words.

Yeah, wasn't it great to read a few words of Allen Day's? I truly miss Allen.

God Bless You Allen DAy,

Steve

I agree where DZ's comment about writers is concerned, I consider Elmer Keith to be THE American gun writer, due to his immense practical knowledge of guns and game, based on a lifetime as an active outdoorsman and Elmer certainly did not use arcane or polysyllabic words to try to impress his readers.

While Elmer did not kill the ...truckloads... of animals that so many current scribes boast of in their repetitive articles, he actually hunted on his own and on public land rather than in fenced enclosures in foreign lands. Elmer, was impressive enough to anyone with real bush experience and did not need to enhance his prestige with pretense.

I do not totally concur with my friend, Steve, concerning appropriate words as I tend to consider these a "learning experience", IF, the writer KNOWS correct usage and employs them in a manner which augments the material he is presenting.

Clay Harvey, who impressed me as an azzhole with the first article of his I read (and one of the last, as well), often used katachrestic syntax as a method of enhancing his mediocre journalistic abilities. This, is a sophomoric trick that most writers outgrow by age 25 or so and his continual self indulgence in such antics merely demonstrated how little real talent he possessed.

Poseurs are everywhere in life and why would gun forums be any different?

I also miss and was fond of Allen Day and he certainly was NOT one. I will read Keith, his protege, Bob Hagel, Phil Shoemaker, Finn Aagard, Brian Pearce, and that young fella, John Barsness and a few others and find most contemporary gun mags.-writing boring, imitative and repetitive.

Clay Harvey, was a dork and we are better off without his presence in the gun sports.


[/quote]

Well it was worth just re reading something Allen Day wrote and posted. My god keep him, one of the truly good guys. I miss the PM's from him from time to time. As for Clay Harvey, he is not the first clown to do what he dose nor would he be the last. I tried this writing business, its hard work, harder that you would believe. I once told Ed Matunas, he is an old friend of mine that I wanted to be a gun writer and that If I just change a few word on some of your stuff would it be ok, he said with a big grin, its all hash and re hash for a hundred years, you wouldn't be the first or the last. As for stealing stuff that is lent on good faith, will nothing lower than that, there is but you all know what I mean.

Friends,

There is something that some might not know; Clay Harvey came to us out of the power lifting sport. Whether he wrote while he was involved with lifting, I cannot say ... probably.

Amazon has a book A Flash of Red, by Clay Harvey. ISBN 9780425159347. One of the comments is as follows:

His middle name must be Roget
It must have taken forever for him to write this book, what with referring to the thesaurus for a suitably obtuse replacement for every other word.

Yup, that must be "our" Clay Harvey.

Blessings,

Steve

Any writer or editor who's worth the salt on his omelet uses words that he knows. Not every reader is limited to "See Jack run" and "Run, Spot, run!"

One of the worst possible ways that a writer can insult his readers is to "talk down" to 'em as if they're six-year-old cretins.

Who can write anything that's worth reading if he limits himself to such extreme simplicity as "Birds fly" and "Fish swim?"

Some readers would have to look-up adulation (above). Does that fact disqualify it?

Should a good gun writer or editor never use obturation or digressive?

Any good writer or editor, on any subject from hop-scotch to neurosurgery, is familiar with words that some of his readers don't know.

A very good writer friend of mine once used � precisely, correctly, appropriately � a word that his boss's secretary said that he shouldn't use "because the boss doesn't know that word." My friend replied that if the boss didn't know that word, that wasn't the assistant's fault.



BTW, FWIW, a number of 24HCF posts have sent me to a dictionary, where I learned words that I hadn't known before. (In this very thread, in fact.) I welcome and embrace 'em eagerly. My vocabulary has grown significantly in the eleven years that I've been on the 'fire. Thanks, guys!

Ed is indeed one of the best among the good guys! An excellent writer and an excellent host!

Please pass along a fervent "Howdy!" from a useless ol' fossil.

You can say that again.

Ken,

Your observations, as always are spot on. I am not a gun writer, though I pursued my degree in Journalism with that goal in mind. I have always been a voracious reader and expect to have my vocabulary challenged from time to time. I suppose many do not have a dictionary close at hand, but I've no shame in seeking Webster's assistance.

Growing up, our family had every meal together, all seven of us. And often more with friends, a bachelor uncle who visited often, and cousins who lived with us. The dining room table was a place of much conversation and education. Dad sat at one end of the table and had at one side of him a very thick dictionary and on the other side an immense, one volume encyclopedia. As meals progressed, and with children of many ages, the conversations invariably brought out a word or subject unfamiliar to at least one of us. Dad's response would be to hand us one of the books and direct us to, "look it up". We would look up the word or subject and share our findings with the rest of the family. It is one of my many fond memories of growing up. Dad still reads continually, he is never without three or four books going. Remarkable really at 83, considering he is actively attending auctions buying and reselling antiques, growing a huge garden and caring for my step mom. I don't think I have ever stumped him with a word.

I would be disappointed if my reading never took me to a dictionary. I know your writings have sent me there even recently, and I thank you for that. At 52 I still need to expand my vocabulary. Time permits me less opportunity to read like I used to. Most of my reading is confined to scripture, firearms and woodworking magazines and my beloved classic gun and hunting books. And these digital journals, of course.

Vocabulary is no substitute for depth of knowledge on any subject matter. There are some writers whose vocabulary is far greater than their subject knowledge. Those fellows generally get sorted out.

That was the long way around to say that I don't mind the occasional "big word" that sends me to the dictionary, as long as the writer in not masking a lack of skill and knowledge with an extensive vocabulary.

Mart

Shakespeare hammered (inter alia) the matter of sesquipedalianism flat and nailed it down with "Polonius's" wise parting advice to his son, "Laertes" � in Hamlet, Act I, Scene III �

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man. � "

The year when the teacher let me skip the fourth grade, a serious family situation had me farmed-out to relatives in a "Nawth'n" city for several months � quite an experience for a south-Alabama hick kid from a one-room country school.

All over "our" part of town � on walls, fences, sidewalks � I kept seeing a grafitto that was obviously familiar there but I'd never encountered. I couldn't find it in any dictionary, so at the supper table one night, I asked "What does 'F, U, C, K' mean?" (I didn't spell it � I said it, and not by any means in a whisper.)

I got a panoply of quite dramatic and memorable responses, but no answer.

Before I learned to read, I could ask "What does 'xxxxxxxxxxx' mean?" and one of the grown-ups would tell me.

After I learned to read, the answer was always "Look it up," so I grew-up with dictionaries. The wrinkled pages of the huge unabridged were always open and handy. I now have three unabridged dictionaries on my hard drive, including the long-coveted OED, and I use 'em daily to confirm that I'm using the right word and spelling it right, never to look for a fancier word than whatever is already on the tip of my tongue or the tips of my fingers. (Tongue didn't look right, for some reason, so I just looked it up in the Random House unabridged to make sure that I was spelling it right.)

Ken,

There you go again, sending me to Webster for his assistance.

With the always abundant crowd of adolescents at our supper table, there were more than a few of those, shall we say teachable moments, when definitions were deferred to more appropriate settings. Some definitions were best left to the confines of the milk barn, as to not despoil the atmosphere of the table.

Mart

A lady author of some renown told that when she was a lass, she'd come-across cartel and asked her father what it meant. He brushed her off with "You're too young to understand that," so she assumed that it was something too naughty for tender ears.

She said that although she eventually learned what it means and knows about denotations and connotations, she still feels a bit of a girlish thrill whenever she encounters it.

You can always tell a Real Gunwriter when he speaks of;
Wheelguns, Roys & Bobs, And things that are "Woefully
Inadequate".

hawkins,

You might enjoy the introductory essay in my book OBSESSIONS OF A RIFLE LOONY, entitled "Gunwriterese."

"The obvious is preferable to the obvious avoidance of it." � H W Fowler, Modern English Usage

Clich�s are a special category of weak, flimsy, lazy expression. There's neither elegance nor eloquence in "elegant variation" from plain, unvarnished English.

Ever read a Louis L'Amour western that didn't include prominent mentions of a Colt revolving rifle, Spaniards' armor found in a cave, or English boxing champion Jem Mace?

I've seen one Colt revolving rifle, plus one carried by Arthur Hunnicutt in El Dorado. I figure that the rest of 'em that Colt made all went to Louis L'Amour's characters.