top | item 43290672

(no title)

grantmuller | 1 year ago

This sentiment seems sort of sad. The medium is the message. If the medium is small, the message will be small. It may be succinct and you may think you "get it", but without evidence, examples, and context, they won't stick. It's like a good tweet: repeatable and rolls of the tongue, but easily refutable and without context. I cannot imagine compressing all of the ideas in a book like "Antifragile" or "Godel, Escher, Bach" in 10 pages. It would be so short as to be meaningless, the ideas are too big.

Same for fiction. I don't want 10 pages of world building. I want immersion. "The Sun Also Rises" would be miserable at 10 pages. Nobody is trying to communicate an idea in this case, they're communicating an aesthetic, a "vibe" or a mood. 10 pages of that and on to the next thing? Sure, if that's your medium, but the medium is the message, and the book is a unique medium for communicating big ideas, immersive worlds, and extensive moods and aesthetics. I sure hope the medium for those things isn't out of date or the world will seem a little shallow.

discuss

order

No comments yet.