metaphors I’ve never much liked

1. “The Great Conversation” as a nickname for the great books of the Western Canon. It’s not really a conversation; that’s a bit too pious and also too lighthearted, both at the same time (“Oh, we may disagree, but we will have such a great conversation!”). I think of the Canon instead as “The Great Inventors’ Lab.” They’re doing it and showing us how it’s done, not just conversing about it.

I’m with Deleuze on this one– discussion is important, but in a subordinate sense: as a manner of clarification and communication, not as a primary medium of thought. Good new ideas will always be tougher to defend and develop in conversation than mediocre, polished, currently dominant ones.

2. “Reading between the lines.” This isn’t a very potent metaphor for what is meant, and I would assume that other languages have far more vivid metaphors for this phenomenon. You’re not so much reading “between the lines” as “into the background.” When we speak of reading between the lines, we are speaking of listening to the tone and noticing what is omitted, rather than allowing ourselves to be hypnotized by the surface content of a statement.

There’s a third one that I strongly dislike, but it’s slipping my mind at the moment.