Stats for nerds
2recommend
6mentions
3people
2012–2016years
83% recommend17% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > i suspect that the blog format discourages the latter.
I don't really see how the blog format makes this any worse than writing published essays did.
The foreword to "American Essays"[1] edited by Shaw is remarkably relevant and on-point for what I would consider the good parts of blogs and on-line writing. There aren't all that many that I am aware of that write consistently and well - apart from the odd article in The New Yorker, Greenspun, Spolsky, Graham as well as Norvig are a few that come to mind (and I'm reminded I've not really read anything by any of them lately).
Many of the blogs that are posted here on hn are good first drafts, that if the author found the time to put in about three to five times the effort, might be considered decent essays. I absolutely understand why people don't do that -- it is a lot of work, for little immediate reward. But I think that a lot of writers could do well to aspire to match Hemmingway or White, rather than just trudging out interesting first-drafts and sketched ideas.
I believe the greatest benefits to the authors, other than improving their writing skill, would probably be improving their thinking - the level of understanding needed to write simply and delightfully about a subject is significantly above the level needed to jot down a few ideas and join them into sentences by rote application of a few stylistic guidelines.
We should probably all aspire to write better than a well-trained neural network that takes a few keywords as input ;-)
[1] Unfortunately I only have the paperback, and can't find the time to transcribe it all. Should be available as a preview in the Kindle edition, I assume: https://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B00...
The volume appears to be oddly missing from Google books, I would think that has been scanned, but it appears not: https://www.google.no/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=e+b+white+essay...
I also came across an old note on another essay collection, "Essays of E.B. White" - from his own foreword:
"The essayist is a self-liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about, everything that happens to him, is of general interest. He is a fellow who thoroughly enjoys his work, just as people who take bird walks enjoy theirs. (...) Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.
There are as many kinds of essays as there are human attitudes or poses (...). The essayist (...) selects his garb from an unusually extensive wardrobe: he can pull on any sort of shirt, be any sort of person, according to his mood or his subject matter -- philosopher, scold, jester, raconteur, confidant, pundit, devil's advocate, enthusiast. I like the essay, (...) but I am not fooled about the place of the essay in twentieth-century American letters -- it stands a short distance down the line. The essayist, unlike the novelist, the poet, and the playwright, must be content in his self-imposed role of second-class citizen. A writer who has his sights trained on the Nobel Prize or other earthly triumphs had best write a novel, a poem or a play, and leave the essayist to ramble about, content with living a free life and enjoying the satisfactions of a somewhat undisciplined existence. (...)
There is one thing the essayist cannot do, though -- he cannot indulge himself in deceit or in concealment, for he will be found out in no time. Desmond MacCarthy, in his introductory remarks to the 1928 E. P. Dutton & Company edition of Montaigne, observes that Montaigne "had the gift of a natural candour....". It is the basic ingredient. And even the essayist's escape from discipline is only a partial escape: the essay, although a relaxed form, imposes its own disciplines, raises its own problems, and these disciplines and problems soon become apparent and (we all hope) act as a deterrent to anyone wielding a pen merely because he entertains random thoughts or is in a happy or wandering mood.
I think some people find the essay the last resort of the egoist, a much too self-conscious and self-serving form for their taste; they feel that it is presumptuous of a writer to assume that his little excursions or his small observations will interest the reader. There is some justice in their complaint. I have always been aware that I am by nature self-absorbed and egoistical; to write of myself to the extent I have done indicates a too great attention to my own life, not enough to the lives of others. I have worn many shirts, and not all of them have been a good fit. But when I am discouraged or downcast I need only fling open the door of my closet, and there, hidden behind everything else hangs the mantle of Michel de Montaigne, smelling slightly of camphor."
https://books.google.no/books?id=wkTusWRWdlQC&pg=PA4&dq=e+b+...-- E. B. White, 1977, in foreword to Essays of E. B. WhiteAs a mental exercise, substitute "blog" and "blogger" for "essay" and "essayist" as appropriate...
- Re: Essay vs Blog -- I had the good fortune to come across "American Essays"[1] edited by Charles B. Shaw in a thrift shop some years ago. Shaw opens the book with, in-part:
"The Essay In America (...) There is no literary form that embraces so wide a variety of inclusions. Adjectives commonly used to describe the sorts of essays indicate this diversity: familiar, critical, didactic, informal, nature, expository, historical, reflective, travel, personal, descriptive, and humorous are a dozen of these qualifiers. The noun, too, is varied: article, character sketch, causerie, feuilleton, fantasy, anecdote, paper, satire, miscellany, ephemera, impressions, and reverie are another dozen terms applied to the multiformity of the essay. The composition that can be thus diversely denoted cannot be rigidly defined. The essay may be as personal as a toupee or as austere and sublime as a Himalayan peak; it may be as light as the foam on faery seas or erudite as the disquisitions of him whose
"... words of learned length and thundering sound amaz'd the gazing rustics rang'd around';
it may be fun or the prickliest sort of intellectual stimulation; its ideas may be straws which build bridges or rugged ores polished to the texture of satin. Its range of subject matter is infinite. One might substitute "essay" for "man" in the sentence from Terence's The Self-Tormentor: "I am a man, and nothing that concerns humanity do I deem a matter of indifference to me." In place of a sedate definition perhaps we may compromise on the analogy of the twentieth-century American essayist, Stuart Pratt Sherman: "The ordinary life indeed is itself an essay, starting from nowhere in particular and arriving at no definite destination this side of death, but picking its way, like a little river, now with 'bright speed', and now with reluctance and fond lingerings over all sorts of obstacles and through all sorts of channels, which would be merely humdrum but for the shifting moods and humours that play over a bottom of commonplace with the transient magic of shadow and light."
Words from 1954 that I think are a fine lens with which to view both the "blogosphere" and our evolving social media in general.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B001...
- If you haven't read "Diamond Age" yet, I highly recommend it. I loved "Snow crash" too, but DA is arguably his best book. Let me know if you ever finish anything he wrote later than that, to be honest I think he is in dire need of a strict editor that cuts his books in at least half.
I see we disagree on "The Unberable Lightness of Being", but that is fine, I guess.
I think Murakami is at his best in "Norwegian Wood" and "South of the Border" -- in different ways. You might also enjoy "Chrome Yellow" by Huxley.
For something a bit different, try: "American Essays" edited by Shaw (http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B000...).
If you enjoyed the books on Steve Jobs, you might enjoy "The new new thing" by Lewis (on the founder of SGI and Netscape).
I don't know if you've read any William Gibson, if not, at least read "Burning Chrome" (and everything else he's ever written ;-).
Finally, you should read "The Code Book" by Singh.
- Before reading these articles, you HAVE to read this: http://www.amazon.com/Best-American-Essays-Century-Series/dp...
- The best single source I've come across that helps with writing, is "On Writing Well":
http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Nonficti...
It has plenty of examples and advice on various types of writing.
Beyond that, my advice is to simply read good texts. One starting point would be:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Essays-Charles-B-Shaw/dp/B000...
Or, for something newer:
http://brevity.org/misc/bestswi.html
While doing a quick search, I also came across this:
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2009/05/20/need-examples-...
Which seems to be a great starting point.
- I don't have favourites I just go up on gutenberg and look for collections. This way I get to read essays from authors whom I hadn't read before.
For example couple of months back I found 'all things considered' [1] a collection of selected essays by GK Chesterton. While the entire collection is good my favourites were in no particular order:-
1. On running afters ones hat
2. The fallacy of success
3. The worship of the wealthy
These days I am reading Oxford book of American Essays[2]. I liked Benjamin Franklin's essays (The whistle was also in his autobiography). Consolation for the old bachelor (Francis Hopkinson) is very funny. Calvin a study of character (Charles Dudley Warner) is the strangest thing I have read in recent time, it is good though.
Related
2011–2026
Essays
20 recommend · 43
Essays of E. B. White
2 recommend · 5
The Grapes of Wrath
56 recommend · 194
The Atrocity Archives
13 recommend · 24
Blood Meridian
105 recommend · 260
Crime and punishment
113 recommend · 312
A Canticle for Leibowitz
69 recommend · 127
