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This Man Moved to a Desert Island to Disappear. Here's What Happened
- miles 13y agoHe hardly disappeared: Dave did not cultivate this garden. Normally, about a dozen backpackers would arrive throughout the year as part of the Willing Workers on Organic Farms WWOOF program. Based on the title, I thought the article was about Tom Neale, who was the real deal: http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/ http://www.janesoceania.com/suvarov_tom_neale/
- contingencies 13y agoRight, anywhere with a WWOOF host is not very remote! For people unfamiliar with WWOOF, it's basically accommodation around the world on organic farm oriented properties for a few hours of work per day. You supposedly get to learn lots about different types of farming, meet people, and explore for less than it would otherwise cost. A friend of mine from California went through New Zealand WWOOFing a couple of years back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WWOOF
- contingencies 13y ago[Robinson Crusoe was] our first realistic portrayal of the radical individualist I'd say the Taoist ideal that emerged in China ~2000 years earlier would better fit that bill.
- teach 13y agoThis is an interesting story but the writing style is so poor I can't make it through. Prose this disjointed would probably make a decent screenplay but it's a bad fit for an essay.
- Hansi 13y agoI clicked the link without reading the comments and had the same thought straight away. Couldn't make it past the fifth paragraph despite trying my best.
- ZoF 13y agoHaha it seems a lot of people here did... Validating in an odd sort of way.
- finnh 13y agoNo joke. I kept scrolling, looking for the paragraph when he quits the "trying to be funny for the intro" style and switches to a normal, readable mode.
- ChuckMcM 13y agoI would definitely consider it a candidate for bad writing sample of the year. And as overly flowery and obfuscated as the writing is, it can't really dress up a pretty mundane story.
- ripter 13y agoI read your comment and thought, It can't be that bad. I've seen some really terrible writing before, but something on hackernews can't be that bad. It is. I struggled to make it through two paragraphs.
- contingencies 13y agoIt's perhaps part of the Australian culture to jovially dig at serious issues in life through stories and then cast them aside as incomplete potential tangents. You know, inflate the size of a crocodile over here, casually pull half a million a day back here, ethical about-turn over there. We call it "havin' a yarn". I'm not sure if the writer was Australian, but the style and the story sure are! So what makes you a literary critic anyway, mate? Get off ya high horse and crack a tinny will ya! Tell ya what, I've got an esky full of champpers back 'ere somewhere!
- nickthemagicman 13y ago"After a dozen cathartic strokes, he looked up, and there was Dave, his logorrheic caddy, yippy-yapping about: trickle-down economics and the importance of job creators (There being nothing wrong with making money!)." Is that even a sentence?
- cpncrunch 13y agoIt's written as if Dave is talking. Seemed pretty obvious to me, and it works well in my opinion.
- freehunter 13y agoThere were too many words that I did not know that seemed to be made up. Possibly they are just Australian English words, but it frustrated me in the way that reading a book in a foreign language I only partially understand frustrates me. More time is spent trying to guess the meaning of the word than is spent enjoying the reading. "logorrheic caddy, yippy-yapping about" or "the crash led to them having some pretty heavy ding-dongs" - this may as well be French from as well as I understand what is trying to be said.
- cpncrunch 13y agoYes, I think they are all Australian colloquilisms. A few I didn't know, but it didn't bother me. I thought "ding dong" and "yip yapping" were fairly obvious anyway, and words like "Sheila" would be known to you if you know a tiny bit about Australian culture.
- nickthemagicman 13y agoYeah but IS THAT A SENTENCE. Hint:(nope)
- cpncrunch 13y agoI just read it again, and it seems a perfectly valid sentence with all the usual bits in the correct places. What part in particular were you wondering about? caddy is a noun, logorrheic is an adjective, yippy-yapping a verb, etc.
- malandrew 13y agoSame exact thing happened to me. This writing style is impenetrable.
- jessaustin 13y agoThe style of writing is suited to its purpose. This isn't a news report; it isn't vital to impart maximum information in minimum space. Rather, the writer was conveying the feeling of the situation in which he found himself. "Dave" is ridiculous and disjointed, so it is fitting that prose devoted to him would be as well.
- cpncrunch 13y agoPerhaps the problem is that hackers don't do much reading apart from man pages. Literature...does not compute.
- sxcurry 13y agoI've read literature and New Republic this isn't literature!
- wambotron 13y agoI barely read man pages and read a ton of literature. It's written poorly and couldn't keep my interest. It's funny, because the idea of a desert island is really interesting to me. Somehow this guy made it dull and annoying.
- andolanra 13y agoBut the article submitted is in no way literature. It'd be one thing if the disjointed, rambling style served the content... but in this context, such a writing style is unnecessary at best and distracting at worst. Rhyming couplets in dactylic hexameter are similarly beautiful and 'literary', but that doesn't make them an appropriate vehicle for long-form essays, as well. And frankly, the style isn't very good to begin with. It feels inflated and cloying, like a freshman essay in strong need of an editor. But even if it were an exemplar of its style, I'd still hold it to be unnecessary here.
- cpncrunch 13y agoI'm confused as to why you think a "disjointed, rambling style" is out of context when that is precisely how Dave's personality would be described.
- zwischenzug 13y agoI gave up trying to follow it. It sounded like it might be interesting, I just couldn't follow the thread and maintain any interest. There seemed to be no structure to the narrative.
- sxcurry 13y agoI tried to read the article while eating lunch, and had to stop (reading and eating). Does the word "florid" apply here?
- teach 13y agoIt does. Probably 'purple prose' as well.
- jlees 13y agoIsn't that the point? The author does more than just describe Dave's rambling brand of monologue; he translates that experience perfectly in the writing style.
- goshx 13y agophew, now I feel better. Being a non native English speaker, I was wondering if the problem was my understanding of the language or the writing style.
- goshx 13y agoprobably both :)
- floobynewb 13y agoDespite its disjointed nature I found that some interesting notions and feelings made their way out of the text and into my brain. I might even say that it was good. Definitely worth the effort for me.
- tomrod 13y agoIt's bad design for mobile on top of poor prose. I can barely scroll to read it.
- cpeterso 13y agoThe most impenetrable book I remember reading was A Tour of the Calculus by David Berlinski. Here's a representative sentence: Unlike Euclidean geometry, arithmetic rises directly from the wayward human heart, the lub-dub under the physician's stethoscope or the lover's ear (sounding very much like the words "so soon, it ends"), impossible to hear without a mournful mental echo: 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., the doubled sounds, that beating heart, those numerical echoes, cohering perfectly for as long as any of us can count.
- ScottBurson 13y agoI enjoyed it! To each their own, I guess.
- tluyben2 13y agoI was wondering why it took me so much effort to read this. I am interested in the story, but it's very tiring to get through it.
- carrja99 13y agoWhile articles like this are interesting, what in the world does it have to do with Hacker News?
- Aardwolf 13y agoI don't know, it depends, is there wifi on the island? :)
- contingencies 13y agoMcDonalds charman, dude. Russel Crowe, dude. "The Google Guys", dude. It's like, totally West Coast.
- cpncrunch 13y agoI suspect it is because many hackers find themselves in the same state as the author of being disillusioned / burned out and looking for meaning at some point in their life. I'm not sure if spending a week with Dave would be the best solution if you are in that position.
- hrish2006 13y agoHow many of you read the whole thing? I dropped after " the kind often found in sinewy men of a certain age and outlook." It does not hold your interest.
- nobodysfool 13y agoI did. I try to read everything to completion instead of flitting around the web like a chicken with it's head cut off.
- nollidge 13y agoReally? Everything? Despite the fact that 90% of writing on the web (like 90% of everything else) is crap?
- nobodysfool 13y agoYes, it takes practice, but it's worth it.
- eropple 13y agoI read it to completion. It certainly did hold my interest, though I don't claim to have any insight into yours. The voice isn't unfamiliar to me (I read it with the diction of a good friend who has an Australian's Australian accent) and I found it compelling throughout.
- wambotron 13y agoI read far too much of it, but not the entirety. It was a chore to read as far as I did, and I probably should've stopped sooner.
- jrn 13y agoThe ending is good, imo.
- scott_s 13y agoI found this NY Times article from a few years ago, "Embracing a Life of Solitude" (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/garden/15alone.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/garden/15alone.html), a better read on the same theme.
- Syeo86 13y agoThe style reminds me of Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea.
- jessaustin 13y agoLiving like this requires chutzpah more than hard work, wisdom, or skill, especially on a pension. It's too bad there aren't enough beautiful developed locations for everyone to live out his decades slowly dilapidating through misuse and neglect. Perhaps after the robots replace us, our last descendants will live like this. They too might babble constantly in cargo-cult theories about a world their previously-tenuous understanding of which has at last escaped them completely. Until then, however, good grief.
- jacquesm 13y ago" A marketer by trade, he’d tried to dabble in mineral exploration in Papua New Guinea. He lost all of his wealth, about $10 million, when his private venture went tits up. He thought the episode absurd—on paper he’s worth big bickies, then suddenly he’s not" There is a lesson about diversification and eggs in one basket in there somewhere.
- croisillon 13y agoWhy do this title reminds me Magnotta http://digitaljournal.com/blog/2957 http://digitaljournal.com/blog/2957
- alphadevx 13y agoIf you are interested in dessert island life, this is a wonderful read: "An Island to Oneself" http://www.amazon.com/An-Island-Oneself-Tom-Neale/dp/0918024765/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378413119&sr=8-1&keywords=island+to+oneself http://www.amazon.com/An-Island-Oneself-Tom-Neale/dp/0918024...
- superqd 13y agoThe writing is so confusing to follow, I gave up after the first paragraph. I'm assuming there was a guy who wanted to get away from it all, so he went to an island to be alone?
- chris_mahan 13y agoTwo eyes shined greenly. Muhahahaha