In defence of the sesquipedalian

Will Self is one of my modern-day writing heroes. A man who can drive you to a dictionary to make sense of one of his pieces of writing (a fact I regard as a good thing, given that it's such a powerful learning tool), and who is one of the very few people I've read who's used 'callipygian', one of my favourite words ever, in his work. He's written a piece for the Beeb website defending not only his own use of these words, but bemoaning the fact that he needs to make that defence.

He rightly points out that this is one more symptom of the dumbing down of our culture, one more piece of evidence of the overwhelming need for immediacy, even in reading these days. The idea that looking up words is somehow a chore is anathema to me, and to Will Self, fortunately. He's one of those people holding up the barricades against that tide of atrophy, a little flashing buoy in a huge, dark sea of ignorance. I offer him my fullest approbation. (Yep, looked that one up...)