4 ms·

I feel like you could've made yourself sound a lot more sympathetic than you actually did. You come across as an asshole?

• stevejohnson 16y ago
  I think you mean "worthy of sympathy." And while I agree with you, I wish you would provide examples to back up your assertion. I came to my opinion by observing that he spent most of the article cataloguing his unsuccessful writing career, and then brings in a one-paragraph love story out of absolutely nowhere.
  • apotheon 16y ago
    Contemplating suicide plus insurance fraud in a single act without talking about the background for why he would have thought this was a good idea is not well-calculated to induce sympathy. Foisting books he thought sucked onto editors while scamming them for ever-larger advances by bushwhacking them with out-of-nowhere agents is not well-calculated to induce sympathy. Talking about how he lies to people about his career -- especially when casting the reader directly in the hypothetical role of wronged target of these lies -- is not well-calculated to induce sympathy. Writing a book about how to claw your way to riches as a means to make money off credulous readers to forestall your own bankruptcy (and/or suicide) is not well-calculated to induce sympathy. Acts of desperation redolent of co-dependent personal issues, such as writing strident appeals to the most vulnerable people on the insides of one's books in the hopes of essentially tricking people into buying them, is not well-calculated to induce sympathy. He paints himself as an asshole and a fuck-up who lucked out despite his best efforts to make a lot of money (off and on) and uses that to get people to listen to him. It's certainly not the most sympathetic picture he could have painted of himself. Also . . . whether the previous person meant "sympathetic" or "worthy of sympathy", it is entirely reasonable -- and in the context of literary criticism (formal or otherwise), quite common -- to refer to a "sympathetic character", which is exactly what Altucher is not by his own presentation other than once probably by accident, and another time at the end quite surprisingly. This is because "sympathy" is not the same thing as "empathy", though many think it is. From the American Heritage Dictionary, third definition of "sympathetic": > Agreeably suited to one's disposition or mood; congenial: sympathetic surroundings. Other definitions hint at the idea as well. That idea is, simply put, that there is a sense of connection and sameness between subject and object. Even those who are not much different from Altucher in all the myriad ways he presents himself poorly are likely to feel his is an unsympathetic character, if only because they would not want to admit to themselves the same depths two which they have descended. If it were not for the engaging style with which he beats the crap out of his own image, I suspect almost nobody would read all the way through such a painful litany of character flaws as he presents. It helps that he ended it when he did. If it went on for another half-dozen paragraphs, I might have gotten sick of it, engaging style or otherwise.
    • jaltucher 16y ago
      - never contemplated insurance fraud. not sure where in story you got that. - i never foisted a book i thought sucked onto editors. i liked all my books and the only one i dont like right now is Supercash. - i never lied to anyone about my career. not sure where you got that. - i never needed to write a book to forestall bankruptcy. i was already well-recovered. please read the story. I dont think you really read the article. but maybe i did paint myself as a "fuck-up".
      • danhak 16y ago
        You explicitly talked about contemplating ways to make your suicide look accidental as to allow your family to collect the insurance benefits. i.e. insurance fraud.
        • jaltucher 16y ago
          no , i did not. most insurance policies actually allow for suicide after a year. The real reason for making it look accidental is for effect on daughters. its an insane way to look at it (any discussion of suicide is insane but this was 10 years ago) but thats the way it was.
          • delackner 16y ago
            Normally I would not reply to anything in this whole thread because people are saying a lot of rather harsh things to you. But it may help to know that your perspective on how you wrote the text is clouding how the text actually reads to someone who is not in your own skull. I don't know a single person who actually has a life insurance policy, but movies have taught us (rightly or wrongly) that people who buy life insurance policies and then talk about killing themselves to make it look like an accident, these people are trying to do so specifically because, in movie-plot-reality, and who knows, maybe in some actual contracts, suicide would not be covered. The appropriate response here is to say "gosh I didn't think of that, you're right, people are likely to get the wrong idea since I didn't say WHY I was thinking about making it look like an accident." Simply saying "no no you're wrong, I never said anything like that" is fighting with the reality that what you think about what you say has little bearing on the most natural way that other people are going to perceive what you say.