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Goodness me, that's a lot of bloviation. I think there's a point buried in there somewhere that has been made far more succinctly by a lot of other people.
by ablation 11y ago
Goodness me, that's a lot of bloviation. I think there's a point buried in there somewhere that has been made far more succinctly by a lot of other people.
- RivieraKid 11y agoI usually think the same for vast majority of stuff on HN, i.e. most articles could be cut down to one or two paragraphs with little value lost, but... There are generally two reasons why I read - to extract information and for the experience of reading. Stephen Fry's blog is one of the rare cases where I just enjoy the writing and the information value doesn't really matter.
- coldtea 11y ago>I usually think the same for vast majority of stuff on HN, i.e. most articles could be cut down to one or two paragraphs with little value lost, Maybe life too. Instead of going through this whole redundant process of living through it, we could just be given some 10 word summary, like e.g.: "There was some fun, some sadness, a few regrets, a couple profound experiences, a lot of boredom, quite some pain, mostly ok, and then you died".
- RivieraKid 11y agoThat analogy doesn't make much sense...
- coldtea 11y agoHere's another way to put it: "I have heard many People say, 'Give me the Ideas. It is no matter what Words you put them into.' To this I reply, Ideas cannot be Given but in their minutely Appropriate Words." - William Blake
- RivieraKid 11y agoOh ok, I get the point... But for a lot of articles it seems that 90% of the value can be conveyed with 10% of the length, so I usually just quickly skim it - unless it's the type of text where the value is in the experience of reading and not information (stories, poems, ...).
- coldtea 11y agoI guess that can be true for technical articles the most (e.g. just get to the instructions, numbers, results etc), but probably not as easily for things like this Fry post.
- RivieraKid 11y agoYeah, that was my point, that this desn't apply for Fry's writing.
- sirtaj 11y agoOr as Woody Allen said, "I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia."
- gglitch 11y agoGood point. Weird how inefficient it is when people express themselves. If we had a dictionary where we could look up every idea, no one would have to say anything anymore, it'd all have already been expressed better, and we could all just stfu and not waste readers' time. n.b.: notwithstanding my unsubtle point, I upvoted RivieraKid, with whom I agree about the value of reading these woefully inefficient thoughts, like Fry's, that I love.
- tomw2005 11y agoDefinitely, it's just like those documentaries that could be summed up in 5 minutes or less. Although, come to think of it, YouTube does that pretty well nowadays.
- drb311 11y agoThe best part is the WH Auden quote, which provokes more thought in 10 words than the rest of the essay put together: "Poets love their handwriting, it’s like smelling your own farts." Don't I love to read my own Hacker News comments? And I bet Stephen Fry loves to read his own essays.
- goldbrick 11y agoIn fairness, that's kind of Stephen Fry's thing. He does have a certain way with words, but I can only tolerate it in small doses.