One is the type where as you work your way through its palatial paragraphs, you find yourself thinking and feeling over and over, “Wow, this is great writing.” Interestingly, the simultaneous sentiment seems always to be “Wow, I read really great writing,” which comes accompanied with the sensual pleasure that the beautiful enjoy in mirrors. The pleasure in having arrayed before you the evidence of your greatness. That alone justifies a mirror, and it justifies reading the kind of writing that proves to you that you read “great writing.”
Then there is the writing that moves you, teaches you, changes you. It is writing which points to your soul and to the world you live in, not to itself, and not with labels reading “great writing here.” The writing that does not have to be proven great, because people will read it and recommend it whether it is “Certified: Officially Great” or not.
I don’t think highly of snobbery, and I don’t mean to be a reverse snob here, snobbishly looking down on snobs and proudly displaying my *true* superior taste by putting down the books that only the snobby naive think to be great. And actually, I kind of recognize the fun that people have being snobbish, and don’t necessarily begrudge them their fun. There is a place for the kind of writing that dances before you with colored ribbons and then leaves you the same person after, no more educated or purified.
But it’s still worth understanding the difference between the two. And while both are valuable, one is the kind that makes a bigger difference in the world. For now, when change is needed and survival is fragile, we need powerful writing. Perhaps someday, when our power extends to every atom of the earth and sky, and nothing can uproot us in our strength, we will find that flowers and flowery writing are all we have use for, and we’ll admire those most remarkable souls of times past, who cultivated beauty in a tumultuous world.
But for now, my vote goes for the educational, the insightful, the moving, the powerful. And if we someday live in a world where we can afford to luxuriously look back on them and call them trite and unrefined, this will be their victory.
There are two kinds of great writing.
One is the type where as you work your way through its palatial paragraphs, you find yourself thinking and feeling over and over, “Wow, this is great writing.”
Interestingly, the simultaneous sentiment seems always to be “Wow, I read really great writing,” which comes accompanied with the sensual pleasure that the beautiful enjoy in mirrors. The pleasure in having arrayed before you the evidence of your greatness. That alone justifies a mirror, and it justifies reading the kind of writing that proves to you that you read “great writing.”
Then there is the writing that moves you, teaches you, changes you. It is writing which points to your soul and to the world you live in, not to itself, and not with labels reading “great writing here.” The writing that does not have to be proven great, because people will read it and recommend it whether it is “Certified: Officially Great” or not.
I don’t think highly of snobbery, and I don’t mean to be a reverse snob here, snobbishly looking down on snobs and proudly displaying my *true* superior taste by putting down the books that only the snobby naive think to be great.
And actually, I kind of recognize the fun that people have being snobbish, and don’t necessarily begrudge them their fun. There is a place for the kind of writing that dances before you with colored ribbons and then leaves you the same person after, no more educated or purified.
But it’s still worth understanding the difference between the two. And while both are valuable, one is the kind that makes a bigger difference in the world. For now, when change is needed and survival is fragile, we need powerful writing. Perhaps someday, when our power extends to every atom of the earth and sky, and nothing can uproot us in our strength, we will find that flowers and flowery writing are all we have use for, and we’ll admire those most remarkable souls of times past, who cultivated beauty in a tumultuous world.
But for now, my vote goes for the educational, the insightful, the moving, the powerful. And if we someday live in a world where we can afford to luxuriously look back on them and call them trite and unrefined, this will be their victory.
I’m curious, do you have examples in mind of each?