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Um, this article is bad. It takes a very long time to say not very much. I'm still not sure what the point is. I think that this article falls into the morass o

Um, this article is bad. It takes a very long time to say not very much. I'm still not sure what the point is. I think that this article falls into the morass of 20th century literary/critical intellectualism whose primary occupation is navel gazing and recursive commentary based off of the original navel gazing. It's endless writing for the sake of name dropping. Here is a good summary of this article: "Montaigne himself wrote a wonderful essay suggesting that the three best things in life are friendship, sex and reading, and the best of the three is reading. Your friend may die, your sexual partner may betray you, but literature is always there." I fancy a good book quite frequently, myself-- books can allow themselves to be complicated or un-understandable and have niche appeal. That being said, this article seems to be contributing a bit to the "cult of books" which has become a bit more prominent in the recent years. Books aren't magical, and they don't always contain better information than other media. The main strength of books is their ability to go into depth and exist a long time. Am I a better human being for reading a bunch of books? Probably, but the real self improvement comes from information transfer independent of source, not "books" intrinsically. Reading books just happens to be the fastest and densest information transfer from external world to brain, for me.

EliRivers 11y ago
You're not sure what the point is, but you still believe you can present a good summary of it? One might suggest that if you know you don't understand something, the odds of being able to present a good summary are slim. There's more to summarising something than removing words. On the plus side, kudos for saying "summary" rather than tldr.
- cryoshon 11y ago
  I was saying that the author didn't do a good job of being clear (which is often by design in these sorts of articles-- clear language is seen as anti-artful) so I tried to assemble a summary of what he's actually saying on my own.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    Well, I read the same article and in my opinion you've missed an awful lot. Your summary picks out one small aspect, and present that as the whole point. It's not a scientific paper that can have the finding compressed into an abstract (or as the hipsters say now, a "tldr"). It's a discussion; it's meant to engage you, and trying to pick out a single point as the summary is like saying the point of hiking is to travel from A to B. It even criticises inaccessible literary analysis: "...the problem with “academic” literary analysis is that too often it sounds like talking at the reader or, worse, talking down to him or her." So is it massively lacking in self-awareness, if it suffers this problem itself? I didn't find it at all difficult to read, but then English is my first language so that will always be an advantage I have in reading English. I think this writing is clear, but you're trying to read it like a mathematical derivation or the write-up of an experiment.
Jun8 11y ago
Agree on the "bad", the essay is written in a sophomoric style; however, it does have some good ideas. The Anna Karenina example is a good one, demonstrating how, sometimes, "Theory" obscures the pleasures that can be obtained from reading. If you like to read about reading, I would very much recommend Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.
muddyrivers 11y ago
I think you miss the major points of the article. It is long if it is judged by the "standard" length of an article in a blogging era, and thus shorter attention spans of readers. It is not that long if one considers that the author was trying a topic that is hard to illuminate. That doesn't mean it is a well-written article. Although he made his points clear, the writing could be better. I have read better articles on similar topics. I think writing is a universal skill in terms that good writing can be applied to both literatures and technical books. The ways to convey one's points are usually quite different based on the topics. An imaginary example, an extreme one, is to write a novel in a way like writing a book on a programming language. Similarly, as readers, we can't expect the same reading experiences on Madame Bovary and Gang of Four.
- cbd1984 11y ago
  > thus shorter attention spans of readers Is there any actual evidence of this, or is it another O Tempora, O Mores rant?
  - swsieber 11y ago
    There is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11607315/Humans-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-smartphones.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/1160731...

EliRivers 11y ago

You're not sure what the point is, but you still believe you can present a good summary of it? One might suggest that if you know you don't understand something, the odds of being able to present a good summary are slim. There's more to summarising something than removing words. On the plus side, kudos for saying "summary" rather than tldr.

cryoshon 11y ago
I was saying that the author didn't do a good job of being clear (which is often by design in these sorts of articles-- clear language is seen as anti-artful) so I tried to assemble a summary of what he's actually saying on my own.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Well, I read the same article and in my opinion you've missed an awful lot. Your summary picks out one small aspect, and present that as the whole point. It's not a scientific paper that can have the finding compressed into an abstract (or as the hipsters say now, a "tldr"). It's a discussion; it's meant to engage you, and trying to pick out a single point as the summary is like saying the point of hiking is to travel from A to B. It even criticises inaccessible literary analysis: "...the problem with “academic” literary analysis is that too often it sounds like talking at the reader or, worse, talking down to him or her." So is it massively lacking in self-awareness, if it suffers this problem itself? I didn't find it at all difficult to read, but then English is my first language so that will always be an advantage I have in reading English. I think this writing is clear, but you're trying to read it like a mathematical derivation or the write-up of an experiment.

Jun8 11y ago

Agree on the "bad", the essay is written in a sophomoric style; however, it does have some good ideas. The Anna Karenina example is a good one, demonstrating how, sometimes, "Theory" obscures the pleasures that can be obtained from reading. If you like to read about reading, I would very much recommend Anne Fadiman's Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader.

muddyrivers 11y ago

I think you miss the major points of the article. It is long if it is judged by the "standard" length of an article in a blogging era, and thus shorter attention spans of readers. It is not that long if one considers that the author was trying a topic that is hard to illuminate. That doesn't mean it is a well-written article. Although he made his points clear, the writing could be better. I have read better articles on similar topics. I think writing is a universal skill in terms that good writing can be applied to both literatures and technical books. The ways to convey one's points are usually quite different based on the topics. An imaginary example, an extreme one, is to write a novel in a way like writing a book on a programming language. Similarly, as readers, we can't expect the same reading experiences on Madame Bovary and Gang of Four.

cbd1984 11y ago
> thus shorter attention spans of readers Is there any actual evidence of this, or is it another O Tempora, O Mores rant?
- swsieber 11y ago
  There is http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11607315/Humans-have-shorter-attention-span-than-goldfish-thanks-to-smartphones.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/1160731...