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I like Cal Newport's ideas and have read and liked his book Deep Work. > Neither our economy nor the demands of a live well-lived dictate that everyone should
by _hao 5y ago
I like Cal Newport's ideas and have read and liked his book Deep Work.
> Neither our economy nor the demands of a live well-lived dictate that everyone should aspire to be sitting alone at a desk in rural Narashino, crafting literature to the light of the rising sun. My growing concern, however, is that such real commitment to thought has become too rare.
With that said generalisations like the one quoted are not substantiated. I don't think real commitment/passion to anything was that popular to begin with if we take the general population. Even historically if we take education levels back then.
In every field there are people that excel, people that go by and people that shouldn't be there. All of these are based on an individual's choice and priority/circumstances. Do I want to be the person that excels and be one of the best in this field or not? Murakami decided he didn't want to be just a writer, but a great one. Whether he succeeded is another matter, but he tried because he could and wanted it. I've read only "South of the Border, West of the Sun" and it was ok, but not really something special (IMHO).
- richeyryan 5y agoI've read a fair bit of Murakami and I think he's at his best when he's deep into the surrealist, magical realism stuff. South of the Border only really touches on that. Kafka on the Shore, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World are books of his that I rather liked. I thought The Wind-up Bird Chronicle was a bit flabby but there is an excellent section of the story about Japanense soldiers in Manchuria during World War 2 that makes up for it. I know a lot of people that just don't really connect with his work though so there is that.
- RobertKerans 5y ago> With that said generalisations like the one quoted are not substantiated. I don't think real commitment/passion to anything was that popular to begin with if we take the general population. Even historically if we take education levels back then. If take this a slightly different way: I think it is common, very common, but that it's normally for some specific thing that isn't fashionable or going to produce a measure of fame. A helluva lot of people are experts at one thing (edit: that they care deeply about and devote huge amounts of time to), it's just "growing unfeasibly large marrows" or "fixing bikes" or "building model railway layouts" or "training dogs" or "cage fighting" or whatever don't have the mystique or social cachet of the underachieving creative who drops everything and isolates themselves to produce award winning novels. I quite like Deep Work as well, but with this post he seems very taken by romantic ideals of creativity and stereotypes of modern life