The most valuable thing about GEB for me was how self-indulgent it is. The book is entirely Hofstadter having fun: all those tricky dialogues, acrostics, puns w

The most valuable thing about GEB for me was how self-indulgent it is. The book is entirely Hofstadter having fun: all those tricky dialogues, acrostics, puns where the setup and payoff are hundreds of pages apart, the marrying of form and content, just the overall tone of excited sharing…. Hofstadter has put a lot of himself into it—it's a deeply personal book—and it was revealing to me to see that one's emotions don't have to be set aside when writing, nor is it necessary for the kinds of feelings that mathematics evokes to be “translated” into more familiar ones. (Edit: As an aside, Hofstadter's translation of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin is similarly self-indulgent, and a joy to read. Of course one ought to read a couple of other translations first and keep them nearby, to become familiar with the content, but in terms of sheer wordplay and outrageous rhymes, it tops anything.) (Edit 2: Ha, a search reveals I posted a similar comment a little over a year ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32830008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32830008 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32878471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32878471)