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by ofalkaed·6mo ago·view on hn ↗
>David Foster Wallace (on KCRW? Or oft-repeated elsewhere) about how he had to come to terms with the purpose of writing not being to show off how smart you are to the reader.

He expands on this in his conversation with Bryan Garner (of Garner's Modern English Grammar) published as Quack this Way, and I think he gets to the core issue, which is that your ideas are not interesting to anyone but you; if you are showing off how smart you are, you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care.

Infinite Jest is a also a good example of something which goes against TFA's point, it opens with a very sterile, impersonal, literal and completely disconnected first person narrative, he gives us nothing to care about. But it evolves, but he still doesn't give us anything to care about, just has the narration turn in on itself despite it seeming to have nothing to turn in onto. All he really gives us is the suggestion that there is something more than what we can see. He gets us interested and curious but I don't think we really care at that point.

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> "you are assuming the reader will find your ideas as important and interesting as you do. It is the writer's job to show the reader why they should be interested, why they should care."

This is writing-as-bookselling and marketing. If you find your ideas interesting and want to write about them, it's not your job to show the reader why, you only expect readers who share your interest to be potential readers. You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?

>You may not think the reader should be interested or should care at all?

You can but that does not mean you should. If you write under such assumptions your writing will likely not be of much interest to people who don't share your interest, you will be preaching to a choir and much of the choir may be interested in a different aspect or care about it in a very different way than you do. Writing under such assumptions means your writing depends on those assumptions. No idea why you think this is writing-as-bookselling and marketing, preaching to the choir is almost always better for sales than trying to win over people who don't care and are uninterested.

To his credit and with the exception of mentioning an objective to show his smarts off to readers (which I don’t think he wants to do anyhow) Gwern informs us that he is assuming that we will find what he writes as useful as he does, because his objective is to write things that are useful to himself:

> The goal of these pages is not to be a model of concision, maximizing entertainment value per word, or to preach to a choir by elegantly repeating a conclusion. Rather, I am attempting to explain things to my future self, who is intelligent and interested, but has forgotten. What I am doing is explaining why I decided what I did to myself and noting down everything I found interesting about it for future reference. I hope my other readers, whomever they may be, might find the topic as interesting as I found it, and the essay useful or at least entertaining–but the intended audience is my future self.

— <https://gwern.net/about#target-audience>

We can reconcile this with the purport of the writing of his that we’re discussing now—it’s a notice with his future self in mind. And we can compare and contrast the above quote and the aforementioned piece with some of PG’s writing which I find is meant to be public-facing literature at full bloom. [1][2]

I think there’s a difference between 'writing for my future self’ and ‘writing with the public in mind’. Howard & Barton (1986) would argue that they represent separate stages of the writing process and I agree with that and prefer writing that is primed for the latter form. [3] I associate the maxim “First, make me care” with the latter as well and by-and-large feel like Gwern’s writing—that which I’ve come across most frequently—is geared toward the former form. Which I’m sure serves him well, as well as I’m sure it’s served well to those who enjoy his work. I’m yet to determine whether that’s a good or bad thing.

As I’ve cited earlier, some consider Gwern's writing to evoke a sort of misanthropy. But hey...I’m sure there’s someone else to say the same about Paul Graham and his stuff. I’ll withhold judgement against the both of them on that matter—for now—lest I get caught unprepared to be deemed one myself.

[1] <https://www.paulgraham.com/field.html>

[2] <https://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html>

[3] <https://search.worldcat.org/title/13329813>

I don't think we need to credit him or reconcile anything, what he says is not wrong or hypocritical, it is just his view of what makes a good blog post. I disagree with him but the only consequence for him is that I won't read his blog unless I feel compelled to because I want to join in the discussion on somewhere like HN and don't want to be one of those people who interjects into a discussion on an article they did not read, even if the conversation is clearly about the title and not the article or marginally related topics or I simply want to make a marginally related comment.

For me, it is the way he presents and develops ideas that prevents me from reading, it reminds me of reading a tutorial on how to reach his conclusion. Some people probably like the style, some probably don't care about the style, and some like me struggle to even skim a short post like TFA. But I find a great deal of what is on the internet to be difficult to read and think nothing of reading a book like Infinite Jest in a week. I am not the target audience.

Edit: Fixed some editing weirdness, I think.

We seem to be of like mind on this matter then. I look forward to us reconvening the next time Gwern hits the front page and we each feel compelled to voice some kind of informed dissent on the subject. Dissent probably isn’t the right word here because I don’t think either of us actually disagree with what he’s saying.

How fun is a conversation once it’s established that both parties are in agreement about something in principle? Does one probe to be provocative?

I place high expectations on writing that 1) I feel is right up my alley because I think I’m already familiar with the topic and 2) I’m unfamiliar with but am eager to learn about—it sparks my curiosity. Not all writing meets these expectations and this is probably why I’m disgusted by the though of using LLMs for information about subjects I have a genuine enthusiasm for and can care less about doing so for others, at least until I can figure out whether I want to know more about it. Then the subject becomes forbidden to prompt about.

> For me, it is the way he presents and develops ideas that prevents me from reading, it reminds me of reading a tutorial on how to reach his conclusion.

My assumption is that this kind of writing exists somewhere along the same strand of writing that lends itself to what’s expected from some writing in public school (‘Good writing is what shows the reader/teacher that you correctly grasped the material that was taught to you’); writing that is received well by ’The Masses™’ or some in-group (‘Good writing is what shows the reader/audience that you’re beliefs are in correct alignment with theirs’); something like a mathematical proof (a more literal representation of how to reach a conclusion if I correctly understand what a mathematical proof is); and a well-formed atomic note written for private consideration.

If your goal is communication, isn't being well received by the masses a very applicable measurement of good writing? David Foster Wallace's contribution to the world is primarily indirect, filtered down to the masses by "bad" writers who are more pragmatic about things and take into account that most people don't want to spend 1000 pages analyzing a topic, don't even want to spend 10 pages doing it, they want it boiled down to a simple choice so they can decide if it is of value to them, if it can improve their life and I can't blame or judge them for that. Wallace certainly did not blame them for it, just felt they should be conscious of why they came to a conclusion instead of blindly accepting it because it is their conclusion.

His general style is simple and direct, how we all learn to write essays in school. He writes his outline, diligently follows it while writing his draft, edits the draft and then publishes it. There is nothing inherently wrong or bad about this, I just would rather read something which explores the idea instead of makes an assertion about it, but he is writing about what he looks for in his reading. I would not call it good writing but I also would not call it bad, it is just uninteresting to me.