This was one of the best articles I've read lately, it's not filled with empty prose as is the style today, it's just filled with the history of a man who was one of several who founded the internet and no more.
I agree with him that we need to keep iterating the foundations of the internet and keep it open and protect against the corporate takeover. I'm not sure how best to do that so I guess all I can do is work on my small areas of influence at work and in my personal projects.
I do subscribe and enjoy it. On the other hand, I definitely don't read it cover to cover. I imagine they're the most comprehensive magazine in the world in covering political and business affairs in places that I imagine a lot of people would have trouble finding on a map. And there's a limit to how much time I'm going to spend reading about those sorts of topics that just aren't all that interesting (or important) to me.
Writing concise prose is harder than the stream-of-consciousness style; while the former may start off as the latter, it takes a lot of editing to hone it into a sharp implement.
> Writing concise prose is harder than the stream-of-consciousness style...
Totally true, but I think that's not what's happening. Yesterday an HN post was made about this https://lithub.com/the-wolves-of-stanislav-an-improbably-tru... It's carefully written to be like that, it's verbose by design, and I started skimming then closed it. I don't know why these timewaster articles are produced either, but it's not accident or laziness. Plenty irritating though.
If I've read you correctly, you've dismissed a generally well regarded literary writer as an author of a "timewaster article".
You may be correct, but considering the author's long career and standing, you should consider the possibility that the issue here is your personal taste rather than the merits of the writer.
Perhaps there's a generation that has seen little else, and takes this to be the best or only way to write? Are we teaching people to write this way, with examinations having a time limit and where, in practice, the score correlates strongly with length? (Though that has been the case for a long time.) Is concise writing taken to be difficult-textbook style, and undesirable anywhere else?
Print media editors necessarily have to constrain length, and authors learned to write accordingly. Nowadays, a lot of writing is unconstrained either by physical limits or editors.
The specific example you give appears to be intentionally literary in intent, and so conciseness is not necessarily a prime virtue. When authors were paid by the word, prolixity was effectively encouraged, and this is obvious in some of Poe's work.
It's more than expressing a thought with more words than necessary: so many articles start with something along the likes of
"it was a sunny May afternoon in the office of Dr. Whoever, where the cobblestones in the entrance glinted the fading sunlight. When Dr. Whoever was a boy, his father would take him out fishing..." ... and rambles on with meaningless details, containing perhaps a handful of passages in the article that are actually relevant to what the title promised me.
Perhaps a clearer example is when you find a recipe online. You will find pages of how the recipe has been in the family for ages, and how the author's family is delighted with it, and the innumerous and unproven health benefits it has, and how it's so easy to make, etc. The actual recipe is half a page.
While that style personally annoys me, I feel as though a decent chunk of the American populace find the topic of an article more interesting if they understand the human context behind it. The recipe example is a perfect distillation of that point; while some (or most) people come for just the recipe, there is a subset that are interested in how the recipe came to be. Meanwhile, adding that context doesn't dissuade most people from scrolling to the bottom to get the actual recipe. At the end of the day, most (not all) of the population is either interested in the descriptive language and human aspect of a topic, or is interested enough in the topic to ignore the descriptive language and human interest parts.
I remember reading analysis of this. Basically, it had to do with how google search engine selects content to show. Real receipt is short and similar everywhere, hence it does not show in results. People who earn money from writing receipts online adjusted and add long winded crap so that google gods favor them more.
And generally speaking I appreciate the context for the recipe. It's why people still buy cookbooks these days and subscribe to the (sadly) diminished number of cooking magazines that are really about food and travel. (RIP Gourmet.) If I'm really only looking for a recipe it's really not that hard to spend 10 seconds scrolling down.
Conciseness isn't necessarily a technological limitation. During the Victorian Era "triple-decker novels" were the in-thing.
Then there's the old aphorism: Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
We want to claim that style obfuscates content. However, simplicity can also be a style that obfuscates content by its nature, just as much as any other, maybe sometimes more than any other.
Maybe the problem is we want to implicitly assume that communication styles are simply accretions around the true message which exists in non-physical being, and if we could just 'read minds', everything would be perfect, and as with Gnosticism, the 'Truth' gets weighed down with the sin of physicality (wrapped up in words in this case). So we try to be verbal ascetics, throwing our sentences, rather than our bodies, in the ovens to strip flesh. When in reality the words do not convey like boxcars carrying grain, but are the thing in themselves and solely such. So maybe this ends up back at a kind of radical materialism, a world were nothing is backed by the pure truth of God (or, in this case, 'pure information').
> Conciseness isn't necessarily a technological limitation.
Of course not, but I doubt that it is entirely coincidental that the article here is from a well-established print journal.
> However, simplicity can also be a style that obfuscates content by its nature.
Occasionally, in response to an editorial mandate, I have condensed something to the point where even I have difficulty following it after some time has passed. The point here, however, is that this article is both concise and clear.
> When in reality the words do not convey like boxcars carrying grain...
Indeed; if they did, style would not be an issue, and grammar would not be a thing.
>... but are the thing in themselves and solely such.
Words in themselves are nothing without an accepted vocabulary.
@mellosouls, @foldr: of course it's taste, let's agree on that. But I reckon my opinion counts, and sure, the author could have done lots of 'better' (= more readable to me) stuff. But when the articles are about wolves, get to the bloody point please; I'm working, my time is limited.
Also sloppy literary self indulgences: "And whether they were there or not, I choose to believe in the wolves"
In other contexts such as actual physical survival, reality matters 100% and ignoring it can get you killed.
>Also sloppy literary self indulgences: "And whether they were there or not, I choose to believe in the wolves"
I'm baffled by this statement. I really think you must be fundamentally failing to grasp the genre of this particular piece of writing. It's not a lonely planet guide.
OK, let's discuss. My subsequent sentence explained why it mattered; you can't negotiate with reality. qv. covid. You can try but reality always wins.
What is the genre here that gives it a pass? If it's fiction anything goes but this is supposed to be historical investigation. Therefore facts matter. Disagree?
Postmodernism is the genre although they would likely be mortally offended by calling it a genre - not only because of their "genre fiction vs literary fiction" snobbery but because postmodernists called themselves a movement.
Although if I recall correctly the sollipism really fell out of favor with the George W. Bush administration and that aspect has been in decline since.
I don't understand why you think that the article is supposed to be a piece of factual journalism or historical investigation. It's a personal narrative. It's not trying to settle the question of whether the wolves exist or not.
I've not had time to dig into Nasrudith helpful reply, so I'm replying to you possibly out of that context, therefore possibly wrongly.
That given the question about factual journalism appears answered in the article's 2nd sentence:
> And what if, in spite of your efforts to find out whether the event took place or not
So it's historical investigation. It may be personal narrative too, but that's an addition, not a displacement, of historical investigation.
> It's not trying to settle the question of whether the wolves exist or not.
From the bloody article, which you haven't read "In the weeks and months that followed, I did what I could to investigate the [that 'wolves had ruled the city'] matter more thoroughly" - so he did try to settle the question - if he was not then why was he investigating it?
Reality matters. It describes in the article about the jews' situation - in your view should the jews have simply risen above the reality of the situation? Stayed put and simply made it irrelevant with aloof, fluffy thinking?
Fuck this. This morning I received a text message from a woman who's parents (one still alive, though not long if covid gets to her) were directly affected by the nazis. I don't know the story, I think they escaped europe to come to the UK when things got nasty.
Time passes, people forget, the ground is laid yet again for all the bad shit to happen once more. This literary "can't be arsed" bollocks is part of that paving, and I'm not having it.
It's an article about the author's personal investigation of the story of the wolves and, more generally, the history of his family and the Holocaust. That doesn't mean that the aim of the article is to to settle the question of whether the wolves exist or not. You're confusing the purpose of the author in his journey to Ukraine with the purpose of the article itself.
Think about a detective story. It's the story of a detective who's trying to solve a case. That doesn't necessarily mean that the story ends with every loose end tied up and certainty as to who committed the crime. (Of course, that is what typically happens in a classic detective story, but it's not necessary.)
In the particular case of the wolves, it's obviously difficult to draw any firm conclusions about whether they were there or not, as the article explains. ("Which brings me back to the place where I began and the question that has no answer: What to believe when you can’t be sure whether a supposed fact is true or not true?")
I think we're just so far apart that we can't agree, or even meet on common ground.
I think you just like the article and are trying to defend it on that personal front. That's ok. I dislike it and attack it for ...various reasons. That's OK too. If we can't meet we can just accept that too, and depart on good terms. Thanks for trying to explain it, and good luck.
I think that it was more a thing in earlier years. When you had more time than you had stuff to read, long, meandering articles were wonderful. But that is, um, not the condition of most people on HN.
I doubt SEO which, in addition to metadata and so forth, is mostly about using terminology that people search for.
A lot of people naturally ramble and there are also certainly quality magazines that go for a longer more literary style (e.g. The New Yorker) that you apparently don't care for.
The Economist, while it likes its clever turns of phrase, especially in headlines, is both well-written/edited and direct.
I agree with him that we need to keep iterating the foundations of the internet and keep it open and protect against the corporate takeover. I'm not sure how best to do that so I guess all I can do is work on my small areas of influence at work and in my personal projects.