
The Essayification of Everything (2013) - Tomte
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/the-essayification-of-everything/?_r=1
======
devishard
Ugh, this is horribly written and even worse when you figure out what she's
saying. It's not until the eighth paragraph that we get to find out what the
author is actually talking about when she uses the word "essay", and at that
point we realize she's talking about philosophical fluff pieces:

 _" When I say “essay,” I mean short nonfiction prose with a meditative
subject at its center and a tendency away from certitude."_

She follows by prescribing that her definition of the word is the correct one,
despite openly admitting that hers is not the common definition of the word:

 _" Much of the writing encountered today that is labeled as “essay” or
“essay-like” is anything but."_

And finally, she finishes her definition of "essay" with a profoundly anti-
intellectual tirade against attempting to share opinions which are based in
facts, evidence, or logic:

 _" These texts include the kind of writing expected on the SAT, in seminar
papers, dissertations, professional criticism or other scholarly writing;
politically engaged texts or other forms of peremptory writing that insist
upon their theses and leave no room for uncertainty; or other short prose
forms in which the author’s subjectivity is purposely erased or disguised.
What these texts often have in common is, first, their self-conscious hiding
of the “I” under a shroud of objectivity. One has to pretend that one’s
opinions or findings have emanated from some office of higher truth where
rigor and science are the managers on duty."_

Nobody in their right mind believes a writer of an essay to be objective. But
that doesn't mean we should just eschew any attempt to base our written
opinions in reality. Speculation is fine for generating ideas, but well-
formed, informed opinions are both harder to find and more valuable.

Ironically, nowhere in this tirade does the author use the word "I", or admit
that this is just her opinion, or allow for any doubt in the certitude of her
assertions. Neither does she provide any evidence to back up her claims. It
seems that she thinks that the problem with certitude is not really certitude,
but "rigor and science", and she has decided to lead by example in removing
these from her writing.

~~~
theoh
I think the point is that the essay as a form is supposed to be speculative,
it's supposed to be an attempt, a wager. Your last paragraph suggests that you
don't allow the possibility that this piece is intended to be reflexive. In
other words, it's an essay, so of course it's speculative. As a fan of the
form, it shouldn't surprise us that she feels and writes this way.

She seems to have experience of a very real problem, which, as a postgrad
student in art, I'm also familiar with. In domains where feeling and intuition
are appropriate, there are people pushing academic, rational agendas which
kill the subject matter dead. If you haven't experienced this problem I
respectfully suggest that you may not be in the target audience of this
article.

~~~
devishard
> Your last paragraph suggests that you don't allow the possibility that this
> piece is intended to be reflexive.

If that's the intent, then maybe she shouldn't write it in _exactly the
absolutely certain voice that she 's criticizing_, except without the only
part of that voice, the rationality, that makes that voice sometimes
worthwhile.

> In domains where feeling and intuition are appropriate, there are people
> pushing academic, rational agendas which kill the subject matter dead. If
> you haven't experienced this problem I respectfully suggest that you may not
> be in the target audience of this article.

I've experienced a problem which I think you may be talking about:

A lot of times people reject ideas or decisions that are based in intuition or
feeling. They do so because they believe that intuition and feeling aren't
rational.

The problem is, _that 's not rational_. Intuition and feeling are based in
rationality, especially in domains where it's more important that a decision
be quick than accurate, or when extended application of logic or search for
evidence isn't likely to yield useful results.

The flipside of that is what I think you're doing now: claiming that
rationality kills domains where feeling and intuition are appropriate. Nothing
is farther from the truth: killing a domain based in intuition and feeling by
applying logic or evidence inappropriately _is an irrational behavior_. Julia
Galef calls this "Straw Vulcanism"[1] and I recommend her talk; she does a
better job of explaining it than I can.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLgNZ9aTEwc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLgNZ9aTEwc)

~~~
theoh
Well, it is the "Opinionator" column, and she states the thesis she is
proposing very clearly using "I believe" language in the third paragraph.

You seem to claim that only rationality can make assertions worthwhile, but
that's not universally accepted. See William James' notion of the Will to
Believe. He argued that sometimes you must accept an unproven fact in order to
take advantage of its implications.

If you are expecting every sentence in the Opinionator piece to contain a
"this is just my opinion, but", caveat, I'm not sure what viable model of
writing you have in mind. There are rhetorical allowances that must be made,
and it feels pedantic to complain about the author's tone of certainty. She's
trying to lead a charge, inspire courage, etc.

To address some of your later points: We know that humans have many cognitive
biases, so intuition is not necessarily a rational thing.

I should have put "rationality" in quotes in my comment -- I have no beef with
rationality per se. However, in art, propositional knowledge is thin on the
ground, and attempts to place the study or practice of art on a rational basis
are necessarily reductive (because propositional approaches are just not
adequate or available).

One of my colleagues is a devotee of a quantum quackery approach to
psychotherapy. I'm happy to accept that it's "rational" for them to follow
this idea if it leads to good results in their artistic career. If they don't
believe it themselves there are issues of sincerity when they participate. If
they do believe it, they aren't being rational.

I'm usually the guy who gets shouted down when I try to claim that aesthetic
pleasure should be included in the category of rational "functions" of
objects, so I think we essentially agree on the power and legitimacy of a
rational approach to all aspects of experience.

Quantum quackery and Skepticon talks are, it seems to me, totally incompatible
and it's futile for any of us to reconcile those two audiences, for the time
being. Ok?

------
douche
Maybe everything is an essay, because that is the only form of writing most
people have ever been taught to write? The SAT/college application five
paragraph essay style gets beaten to death for at least two years of high
school English class in the USA.

~~~
cJ0th
We could write everything

as a list of nice haikus

if that's what we want.

~~~
mcguire
There was a young man from France

who kept his essaies in his pants.

But that's not what we want

when we want a good rant,

So I'm left with this pseudo-limrick.

------
mcguire
I had to chuckle at " _Phillip Lopate’s reflections on the relationship
between essay and doubt_ ". I have a copy of _The Art of the Personal Essay_
edited by Lopate on my shelf from roughly 1989 or so.

There's nothing "lately" about it.

------
firethief
The original was better:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html)

~~~
ideonexus
As someone who graduated with a Major in English before going into a 20-year
career in programming, thank you for posting this link. This article sums up
everything I eventually came to hate about my college education: the heavy
focus on analyzing long-dead writers, the silly idea of having to take a
position _before_ you start writing, and his quip about the last paragraph
being the first paragraph re-worded well enough so that no one notices is
absolutely spot on. When I tried to get a job as a writer after graduating,
one editor looked at my resume and said, "BA in English? I'm sorry, but you
just spent the last four years learning how _not_ to write."

I think he's right on target about what essay-writing really is: an
exploration of complex and beautiful ideas. For the last 10 years I've been
blogging purely as an exercise in researching and learning about complex
topics. An essay doesn't need to argue anything, but can simply appreciate a
subject and express its ideas from a new perspective and in novel ways in
hopes of others appreciating the subject as well.

