After reading David Antin’s essay, “The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto,” I noticed that many of the features of a radio essay are captured within this essay. Kern States that, “A reader who becomes confused at any point in the sentence or elsewhere in the story can just go back and reread it – or even jump ahead a few paragraphs to search for more details. But if a listener doesn’t catch a fact the first time around, it’s lost. (26)” Because of this, in a radio essay the writer needs to dispense the information he releases in bite-size chunks. Stylistically, this is exactly what Antin is doing in his essay. Each sentence is written in small snippets. Antin does this so that no information is lost or forgotten when the listener hears the information read. Antin also leaves spaces after reach sentence, allowing the reader to pause. This also allows the listener to take a moment to grasp what has just been stated to them.
Not only this, but Antin uses language that comes out in ordinary speech. He doesn’t write things in an elegant and stylish way, but in a casual and commonplace way. This is much more conventional to the way we actually interact with people. He is not writing to an audience of millions, but just an audience of one; like regular conversation. Kern states, “exchange should remind us that real people don’t talk the way newspapers reported write. They don’t pack everything they’ve got into one long, dense sentence. We use sentence fragments. We add force to what we’re saying by speaking in short, repetitive sentences. We don’t do this consciously it’s just how people talk. (29)”
All of these methods are captured in every single line that is written by Antin. Each line is a fragmented piece of information, that is scattered and disjointed like regular thought. He repeats himself for impact. Most importantly he doesn’t lose the listener by doing all of this.
Although it can be found in almost every line, one example is the following.
“Our expert carol has been an expert in anything domestic that we’ve ever done all our lives because we’re definitely not carol has been our great expert on everything gardeners carpenters schools Eleanor calls carol and its hard sometimes carol may have a new husband and then she’s living somewhere else and you’ve got to find her she is an expert on everything but men or maybe or she is an expert on men … (115)”
Each sentence is brief. The paragraph is jumbled with pauses and repetition. When it is read aloud it sounds similar to common conversation. It is also important to note that it also incorporates the active voice. “she is an expert on everything…” and “ shes living somewhere else…” All of these elements combined make this a clear example of a radio essay.