[HN Gopher] The Best Essay
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The Best Essay
Author : tosh
Score : 63 points
Date : 2024-03-10 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (paulgraham.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (paulgraham.com)
| herdst wrote:
| Paul's blog looking a bit different!
| windowshopping wrote:
| how?
| nedbat wrote:
| I don't know if it looks different, or what it looks different
| from. To me, it looks like it was designed in 1999 (which it
| may have been).
| woopwoop wrote:
| This is not the greatest essay in the world. No, This is just a
| tribute.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Tenacious reference.
| saltyoutburst wrote:
| He asked us, "Be you angels?" And we said nay. We are but men,
| write!
| paulpauper wrote:
| The hardest part of writing is it's hard to predict how it will
| be received. You cannot 'focus group' writing, unlike other
| mediums of information.
|
| Disney can predict with a high degree of certainty that its
| superhero movies will do well, as there is a large, built-in
| market for those movies, and they tend to be conceived on the
| same creative blueprint or foundation. Even its 'duds' are still
| profitable.
|
| But this is not possible with writing, especially not internet
| writing. What is the market for short-form contrarian non-
| fiction? Who knows. It's hit or miss, mostly miss
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > Disney can predict with a high degree of certainty that its
| superhero movies will do well, as there is a large, built-in
| market for those movies, and they tend to be conceived on the
| same creative blueprint or foundation. Even its 'duds' are
| still profitable.
|
| Google something like "Marvel superhero fatigue". It seems that
| either the movie quality is decreasing or the audience is
| becoming more and more bored by these movies.
| arcanemachiner wrote:
| "Customers are like roaches. You spray 'em and you spray 'em
| and they become immune after a while."
|
| - David Lubars
| criddell wrote:
| Is it important to predict how it will be received? If you are
| trying to tailor your work for your audience, then you are on
| your way to being yet another content farm and when's the last
| time any of those published something great?
|
| I know Paul does have some trusted readers that he shares early
| drafts with. Maybe he uses those readers as his focus group?
| cool-RR wrote:
| First sentence reminded me of
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lK4cX5xGiQ
| BobbyVsTheDevil wrote:
| Speaking of tributes
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lK4cX5xGiQ#t=217
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoAGasPLh30#t=213
| mistermann wrote:
| > One thing I like in an initial question is outrageousness. I
| love questions that seem naughty in some way -- for example, by
| seeming counterintuitive or overambitious or heterodox. Ideally
| all three.
|
| I believe it is possible/likely that the best essay in the world
| could not be realized as such (thus, it _wouldn 't/couldn't be_
| the best essay in the world), because most people couldn't even
| get by one of these let alone all three...and, there's likely to
| be many other hurdles one would have to make it over.
| dpc94 wrote:
| Really liked this quote.
|
| "While breadth comes from reading and talking and seeing, depth
| comes from doing. The way to really learn about some domain is to
| have to solve problems in it"
| gmd63 wrote:
| Much of the restricted depth of this nature is a consequence of
| deliberate obfuscation or neglect by the people who are
| involved in the doing, such as trade secrets, or simply
| choosing not to write about or share the actual things that
| impact their craft.
|
| You can easily accumulate depth of knowledge from reading in
| areas that are well documented.
| timeagain wrote:
| > The best essay would be on the most important topic you could
| tell people something surprising about.
|
| The premise is wrong (or at least not obviously right) IMO, so I
| have a hard time taking any of the rest of it seriously. Could
| the best essay not be the most emotionally moving? The best when
| heard aloud? The most convincing call to action? The most
| accurate? The highest grossing? Driving the most engagement? What
| about the topic (any topic) that you could tell the /most
| interesting surprise/ about?
|
| If Paul Graham didn't run this company he certainly would not
| make it to the front page for his lazy philosophy.
| clooper wrote:
| Hemingway once said just write the truest sentence you can
| think of and I think he was right. Good writing and good essays
| are truthful in a way that wouldn't be expected from commercial
| and marketing copy. But to write truthfully one must know what
| is true and this is surprisingly hard.
| geor9e wrote:
| Anyone can nitpick anyone by listing whatabouts they didn't
| intend. Whatabout this OTHER sense of the word "best". It's in
| the dictionary. You didn't address it, therfore you're a lazy
| man of straw. The only defense to that type of attack is to
| write everything in a way that never chooses any one path,
| spends all it's time mounting a defense to every whatabout,
| vaguely floating over eggshells, immune to attack. Who wants to
| read something like that? Or, you can trust the reader to try
| to understand the context. The context is a man who calls
| himself an essayist, has about a hundred essays spanning a
| decade, all in a very distinct style, where most folks reading
| them are fans of the prior ones. The context is the Paul Graham
| Essay sense of the word essay. It's not discussing emotional,
| spoken, money grossing essays. And to help the reader not get
| hung up on those whatabouts, he even explicitly spelled what
| sense of best he is talking about.
| timeagain wrote:
| I'll concede my point, I think you're right. Everyone's a
| critic.
| RheingoldRiver wrote:
| > It probably wouldn't be about this year's lipstick colors.
|
| Instead, the best movie [0] is about this.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL-KQij0I8I
| superb-owl wrote:
| > Writing about the best essay implies there is such a thing,
| which pseudo-intellectuals will dismiss as reductive, though it
| follows necessarily from the possibility of one essay being
| better than another.
|
| Not to be a pseudo-intellectual, but this confuses partial
| orderings and total orderings. It makes for a fun discussion, but
| I hope Paul would agree that there's obviously no "best essay",
| real or hypothetical.
| gizmo wrote:
| > Writing about the best essay implies there is such a thing,
| which pseudo-intellectuals will dismiss as reductive, though it
| follows necessarily from the possibility of one essay being
| better than another.
|
| What is the best car? Some cars are real stinkers. It's not hard
| to find cars that are better than Zastava Yugo in every way. For
| most cars you can find other cars that are in the same class, but
| just better. Clearly, a comparison between cars can be made. Car
| reviewers make this their job.
|
| But from the existence of bad and mediocre cars it doesn't follow
| that there is such a thing as a "best car". How large is your
| family? Do you want to tow a boat? Do you like to go fast on
| curvy roads? Do you care more about acceleration or range? How
| tall are your rear passengers?
|
| There are good essays and there are bad essays. Some essays,
| perhaps, can be considered the very best in their category. But
| you can't rank order essays across categories, just like you
| can't argue that a Ford F150 is objectively better or worse than
| a Mazda Miata.
|
| (And if this makes me a small-minded pseudo-intellectual so be
| it.)
| joshuamorton wrote:
| Or formalized, a partial ordering over some set doesn't imply a
| total ordering or a maximum value.
| plemer wrote:
| Beautifully put
| libraryofbabel wrote:
| Isn't it pretty strange to write about what makes a great essay
| without mentioning a single _actual_ essay except Charles
| Darwin's natural selection paper from 1844?
| y1n0 wrote:
| no
| pedalpete wrote:
| > The best possible essay at any given time would usually be one
| describing the most important scientific or technological
| discovery
|
| To a hammer, everything is a nail. I love technology and science,
| but that doesn't mean that is what makes the best essay.
| Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal
| relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific -
| yes, I'm suggesting that social science isn't really a science.
|
| This also then leads to timelessness. The essay on natural
| selection is timeless. It wouldn't be written today, but it is
| still a viewport into the discovery, and of the time, and the
| knowledge is still valid. Maybe I am misunderstanding the point
| about timelessness.
|
| > The other reason the initial question matters is that you
| usually feel somewhat obliged to stick to it.
|
| I also disagree with this comment. I'm currently writing a talk
| I've been asked to present, and in the process of my writing and
| researching, I've discovered a whole new and better question. I
| find the point of a good question is that it can lead to better
| questions. I do feel that PG is suggesting this as well, but
| maybe this one sentence just stuck out to me.
| mckn1ght wrote:
| > Relationships are key to our survival, so I suggest personal
| relations could be just as good an essay as anything scientific
|
| Some of my favorite books are old literature that describe
| relationship dynamics I still see playing out between people
| today. Swann's Way, The Brothers Karamazov, even Canterbury
| Tales...
|
| I think it was Vonnegut that wrote that the best books are the
| ones that tell you what you already know [but maybe you didn't
| know you knew till you read it]. That's something like
| surprise, and yet something like the opposite.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Good essay! Shame he doesn't talk about taboo. Taboo subjects
| could make for great essays but it takes a lot of guts to write
| about them. Anything from collapse of your life, work, prison or
| death threats may ensue. Breaking taboos move society forward
| though. Keep an eye on "exceptions to free speech".
| tptacek wrote:
| "It probably wouldn't be about this year's lipstick colors."
|
| Why not? "Death of a Pig" didn't convey any new scientific ideas,
| and might not even have been surprising in any kind of
| intellectual way.
|
| You could title this piece "Great Essays" and it would be
| entirely defensible. But Graham gave himself a higher goal here,
| and I don't think he's really presented a recipe for writing the
| Best essay. Look what he's up against: Baldwin, Didion, Oliver
| Sacks; it's easier to come up with examples of great essays that
| don't set out to develop surprising new ideas, and that probably
| didn't start out with a mischievous look in the author's eyes.
|
| I'm not saying this isn't good advice for developing great
| essays, just that it's advice that narrows the solution space a
| bit much.
| gizmo wrote:
| When he mentioned lipstick and evolution right after I figured
| he was going to remark on the obvious connection later in the
| essay, but no.
| skylurk wrote:
| When the GP mentioned lipstick and pigs, I thought they were
| going somewhere too.
| kashyapc wrote:
| Excellent point on "Death of a pig" by E.B White. What a lovely
| essay without a big "scientific idea".
|
| For others unaware of it, that essay was written in 1948[1], go
| read it in full. It starts like this:
|
| _" I spent several days and nights in mid-September with an
| ailing pig and I feel driven to account for this stretch of
| time, more particularly since the pig died at last, and I
| lived, and things might easily have gone the other way round
| and none left to do the accounting."_
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240227003736/https://www.theat...
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