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All of those seem like they’re actually much worse career choices than being a writer. Why would he recommend people to do this? Is it a joke Reminds me of som

All of those seem like they’re actually much worse career choices than being a writer. Why would he recommend people to do this? Is it a joke Reminds me of some weirdo bodybuilder on YouTube who advised a viewer suffering from depression to become a mercenary in Africa to cure it

roymurdock 8y ago
read the whole thing in context and it might make more sense...basically he's saying don't be a self absorbed a hole and go out into the world and do things
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Just to give the context, OCR text of the book: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834/2015.222834.The-Conquest_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834/2015.222... Search for "talented". This is such a great quote I had to read it in some context and although I've only read a few pages around the quote it seems that he is talking about tragedy and specifically the idea of how one escapes from essentially being a nobody in the world. "...the death of Cinna the poet is comic, whereas the deaths of Cesar, Brutus and Cassius are tragic." (Speaking of the works of Shakespeare). The idea is that our concept of tragedy is bound up with the consequence to society rather than the consequence to an individual. So if you die having accomplished nothing of note, we feel that we have wasted our time -- no tragedy has resulted from our death. From that perspective, I think he's trying to say that instead of writing because you want to make a mark, you should try to avoid writing. That desire to do something notable will cause you to ultimately feel as though you have failed -- we can never overcome our own ambitions. But if you go to extreme lengths to avoid writing and fail to succeed, then your writing will never seem (to you) to be a waste of time. It will be of great importance (if only to you).

roymurdock 8y ago

read the whole thing in context and it might make more sense...basically he's saying don't be a self absorbed a hole and go out into the world and do things

mikekchar 8y ago
Just to give the context, OCR text of the book: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834/2015.222834.The-Conquest_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.222834/2015.222... Search for "talented". This is such a great quote I had to read it in some context and although I've only read a few pages around the quote it seems that he is talking about tragedy and specifically the idea of how one escapes from essentially being a nobody in the world. "...the death of Cinna the poet is comic, whereas the deaths of Cesar, Brutus and Cassius are tragic." (Speaking of the works of Shakespeare). The idea is that our concept of tragedy is bound up with the consequence to society rather than the consequence to an individual. So if you die having accomplished nothing of note, we feel that we have wasted our time -- no tragedy has resulted from our death. From that perspective, I think he's trying to say that instead of writing because you want to make a mark, you should try to avoid writing. That desire to do something notable will cause you to ultimately feel as though you have failed -- we can never overcome our own ambitions. But if you go to extreme lengths to avoid writing and fail to succeed, then your writing will never seem (to you) to be a waste of time. It will be of great importance (if only to you).