6 ms·

A lot of the comments in this thread confirm that a) the Internet and social media are problems that distract us, and b) there are ways to fight the addictive b

A lot of the comments in this thread confirm that a) the Internet and social media are problems that distract us, and b) there are ways to fight the addictive behaviors they encourage. They can be made succinctly. (I agree with both points, and admire those who attempt to regain control of their attention.) This comment is about the tone of the post in The Paris Review. There's a kind of elegiac primitivism circulating among the cultural elite that rubs me wrong, both in Birkerts and the contemporary reviewer. The constant evocation of "loss" associated with some intangible trauma seems like a cheap trick to hack our empathy. By cheap trick, I mean, "a trick that a lot of people use, which like Hollywood's emotional manipulations, is getting old." One hallmark of this genre is that an essay that seems like it's about one thing ("reading in an age of distraction"), is really about the author's "I", a foray into autobiography. Another hallmark is that it says nothing new. It is completely safe, a piece of writing well within the received wisdom. Readers of The Paris Review would be hard pressed to object to any substantial point the writer made, except, maybe, that those points did not need making to that audience. I hope that we get more people working on tools and methods that save us from the Internet, and fewer posts asking for our attention while they lament it.

patcon 6y ago
First off, thanks. I really appreciate your comment and the chance to reflect. Hoping my comment comes across as fair :) > is really about the author's "I", a foray into autobiography I do feel there's some irony here on this "anti-narrative" perspective being at the top, as it always is on HN. (No disrespect intended, as I empathize with what you're saying, blueyes.) To explain: I feel with "distraction",we're all talking around patience, information and narrative. Novels and long-form storytelling are information (wisdom) buried in complex narrative. And these stories, in a way, are a microcosm of the world we live in. They are perhaps practice for grappling with and distilling meaning from the complex world. To revel in a fuzzy and meandering story is to revel in a sandboxed version of the same process by which the world delivers us most lessons. And I would argue there is huge value in sharing information in narratives, because that data/knowledge is "warmed" by empathy and grounded in imagery of physical space and experience and other things that lodge in our minds (moreso in some than others, true) in some very human ways. But we all here (and I include myself) cannot seem to focus on even this article's grounding personal narrative, because we want the succinct information, the quick fix, the distilled solution... like addicts who've abdicated responsibility for parsing that same wisdom and personal revelation from the complex and ambiguous narrative itself. I'm personally trying lately NOT to believe any set of universal fixes can possibly be prescribed, and that there are instead a million appropriate fixes that will take shape in the minds of each reader. That feels like a step toward the complexity that is more like the real world I live in. I found myself reading the whole comment, adding "to me" to each line. And I can't disagree with it in that reading. > I hope that we get more people working on tools and methods that save us from the Internet, and fewer posts asking for our attention while they lament it. The general (ish) perspective of the larger comment (and proposed cure) feels very symptomatic of the disease to me <3
- blueyes 6y ago
  Hi patcon - thanks for the comment. I can see why you would read my comment as anti-narrative. (It looks anti-narrative to me in retrospect!) For the record, I'm not anti-narrative. I love narratives. I think great narratives are made of engaging sequences of actions, characters faced with decisions where the stakes matter, great writing, and a persistent thread of surprise that emerges from the weirdness of life. They are enlightening and moving. (If you like great narratives, too, I highly recommend "Naples '44".) I did not find any of those traits in this sometimes autobiographical book review, which suffered from a weird passivity, and attempted to create emotional effects in predictable ways. It was more like a series of ahistorical snapshots, a medley of impressions and allusions, which is typical of much creative non-fiction being produced in universities and workshops today. Was there a protagonist who struggled? How much agency did they have? If so, what was the outcome? Did they surprise us? I didn't have clear answers to those questions after reading the piece. It left me neither moved nor enlightened, so from my perspective, it failed. You mention one of the reasons why I like narratives. They capture the paths through complexity that hint at what can be done, without prescribing rules for everyone. Narratives and case studies are one of the only ways of conveying those lessons, without over-reaching as a formula might. But, for that to be valuable, we need to follow someone down the corridor of their experience and have some idea of the context they could observe, which led to the decisions they made. Narratives do not have to be fuzzy and meandering. In my experience, the best ones are not. I think the work of the writer is to distill from life a sequence of words that intensify and condense the writer's experience when it is reproduced in the reader. Yes, you can add "for me" to the end of any sentence, and that does make the author's sentence indisputable. But I believe that when we write, we are writing to try to convey something beyond ourselves, a truth that may be shared by others. The more an author retreats into "for me", the less they are doing the work of keeping their readers in mind. The central question answered by a published piece of writing should be: why would anyone care? I care about "reading in an age of distraction"; I might care a little about Sven Birkert's opinions about that; but if you asked me before breakfast whether I care about a stranger's medley of impressions about reading in an Internet age, the answer is probably not. So part of my objection here is to the bait-and-switch of clothing a memoir in the form of a book review with a title that seems universal, when the substance of the piece is utterly subjective.
coldtea 6y ago
>This comment is about the tone of the post in The Paris Review. There's a kind of elegiac primitivism circulating among the cultural elite that rubs me wrong, both in Birkerts and the contemporary reviewer. Funny! It's the exact opposite that rubs me wrong, and I see it all the time from both fellow nerds, pundits, and so on... It's like many people believe all of history is either a blob with no ups and downs - it just is what it is forever -, or a straight arrow to even better things. It's like loss, nostalgia, or even the hint that some things could have been better is if not forbidden strongly discouraged... - lest one be considered insufficiently modern, which appears to be one of the big crimes today...

patcon 6y ago

First off, thanks. I really appreciate your comment and the chance to reflect. Hoping my comment comes across as fair :) > is really about the author's "I", a foray into autobiography I do feel there's some irony here on this "anti-narrative" perspective being at the top, as it always is on HN. (No disrespect intended, as I empathize with what you're saying, blueyes.) To explain: I feel with "distraction",we're all talking around patience, information and narrative. Novels and long-form storytelling are information (wisdom) buried in complex narrative. And these stories, in a way, are a microcosm of the world we live in. They are perhaps practice for grappling with and distilling meaning from the complex world. To revel in a fuzzy and meandering story is to revel in a sandboxed version of the same process by which the world delivers us most lessons. And I would argue there is huge value in sharing information in narratives, because that data/knowledge is "warmed" by empathy and grounded in imagery of physical space and experience and other things that lodge in our minds (moreso in some than others, true) in some very human ways. But we all here (and I include myself) cannot seem to focus on even this article's grounding personal narrative, because we want the succinct information, the quick fix, the distilled solution... like addicts who've abdicated responsibility for parsing that same wisdom and personal revelation from the complex and ambiguous narrative itself. I'm personally trying lately NOT to believe any set of universal fixes can possibly be prescribed, and that there are instead a million appropriate fixes that will take shape in the minds of each reader. That feels like a step toward the complexity that is more like the real world I live in. I found myself reading the whole comment, adding "to me" to each line. And I can't disagree with it in that reading. > I hope that we get more people working on tools and methods that save us from the Internet, and fewer posts asking for our attention while they lament it. The general (ish) perspective of the larger comment (and proposed cure) feels very symptomatic of the disease to me <3

blueyes 6y ago
Hi patcon - thanks for the comment. I can see why you would read my comment as anti-narrative. (It looks anti-narrative to me in retrospect!) For the record, I'm not anti-narrative. I love narratives. I think great narratives are made of engaging sequences of actions, characters faced with decisions where the stakes matter, great writing, and a persistent thread of surprise that emerges from the weirdness of life. They are enlightening and moving. (If you like great narratives, too, I highly recommend "Naples '44".) I did not find any of those traits in this sometimes autobiographical book review, which suffered from a weird passivity, and attempted to create emotional effects in predictable ways. It was more like a series of ahistorical snapshots, a medley of impressions and allusions, which is typical of much creative non-fiction being produced in universities and workshops today. Was there a protagonist who struggled? How much agency did they have? If so, what was the outcome? Did they surprise us? I didn't have clear answers to those questions after reading the piece. It left me neither moved nor enlightened, so from my perspective, it failed. You mention one of the reasons why I like narratives. They capture the paths through complexity that hint at what can be done, without prescribing rules for everyone. Narratives and case studies are one of the only ways of conveying those lessons, without over-reaching as a formula might. But, for that to be valuable, we need to follow someone down the corridor of their experience and have some idea of the context they could observe, which led to the decisions they made. Narratives do not have to be fuzzy and meandering. In my experience, the best ones are not. I think the work of the writer is to distill from life a sequence of words that intensify and condense the writer's experience when it is reproduced in the reader. Yes, you can add "for me" to the end of any sentence, and that does make the author's sentence indisputable. But I believe that when we write, we are writing to try to convey something beyond ourselves, a truth that may be shared by others. The more an author retreats into "for me", the less they are doing the work of keeping their readers in mind. The central question answered by a published piece of writing should be: why would anyone care? I care about "reading in an age of distraction"; I might care a little about Sven Birkert's opinions about that; but if you asked me before breakfast whether I care about a stranger's medley of impressions about reading in an Internet age, the answer is probably not. So part of my objection here is to the bait-and-switch of clothing a memoir in the form of a book review with a title that seems universal, when the substance of the piece is utterly subjective.

coldtea 6y ago

>This comment is about the tone of the post in The Paris Review. There's a kind of elegiac primitivism circulating among the cultural elite that rubs me wrong, both in Birkerts and the contemporary reviewer. Funny! It's the exact opposite that rubs me wrong, and I see it all the time from both fellow nerds, pundits, and so on... It's like many people believe all of history is either a blob with no ups and downs - it just is what it is forever -, or a straight arrow to even better things. It's like loss, nostalgia, or even the hint that some things could have been better is if not forbidden strongly discouraged... - lest one be considered insufficiently modern, which appears to be one of the big crimes today...