Frere-Jones DID put up capital… intellectual capital. He transferred the rights to famous typefaces he had designed, including Whitney, to the company with the understanding that he would be full partner.
Hoefler shafted F-J so hard it’s unbelievable. The foundry’s reputation was built on Gotham which F-J designed. There’s no other way to see it.
He reminds me of Ayn Rand hating on government handouts while taking them. He promotes stoicism while practicing the opposite.
You can say he’s promoting “logical stoicism” just like Ayn Rand fans can say that “it’s okay to be ideologically against handouts while taking them,” but we both know deep down that these people aren’t practicing what they preach.
I like Taleb a lot but it took me a little while to understand that he was writing an idealized version of himself and his philosophy that is frankly fictional but still has great value.
I almost spit out my coffee when you mentioned TALEB as a stoic, much less a member of the “big three”
He’s as far from stoic as I can possibly imagine. His hairtrigger easily offended argumentative twitter presence is maybe even more sensitive and reactive and thin skinned than trump.
I think it’s the most direct way to communicate because the connotations are so culturally well-understood.
“Wanna get dinner and maybe have sex?” might be more direct in a textbook way but it’s also unecessary because the second part is already implied, and unecessary words make a question less direct IMO.
I think “wanna get dinner” is the most direct way possible of stating your intentions unless you’re talking to someone who’s not familiar with, or can’t interpret, cultural shorthand.
This dude’s article could alternately be titled “my experiment with treating everyone like they have autism and seeing how that makes them feel.” Prediction: not great
I don’t think he writes or communicates in a vulnerable way at all.
“I could be interested in a variety of relationships with you” = not vulnerable, not a question, not direct, not clear.
Also I don’t respect this article so I don’t feel compelled to demonstrate respect — I’d rather practice what he preaches to demonstrate its fundamental rudeness than do any preaching of my own
He’s using the language of self help (“clear and direct communication!”) but interpreting it in a manner reminiscent of the “truth telling sessions” enacted by Synanon: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synanon
> > Last night I told someone I could be interested in a variety of relationships with them. They told me they weren’t interested in romance but they were interested in friendship. We had a nice talk and teed up another talk.
He considers himself to be a “direct” communicator, when this is an example of very indirect communication. The guy wants to date and/or be intimate with someone — telling them “I could be interested in a variety of relationships with you” is so much more indirect than asking “wanna get dinner?” it’s not even funny. His barometer of “clear and direct” is totally off in this case.
This guy’s take on “clear and direct communication” is sophomoric and there’s a reason adults don’t communicate in the most direct manner at all times. Sometimes you need to give the other person plausible deniability: asking “wanna see my etchings?” is a cultural shorthand that is just a more respectful way of asking “wanna sleep together?”, but this guys interpretation of clear and direct communication doesn’t seem to have room for a question like that.
Sometimes speaking vaguely rather than directly is a way of respect to your conversational partner. This guy doesn’t get it
> My criticism would honestly be that his writing is overly stylized and lacking in nuance. He inherits the hyperbolic, poetic quality of McCarthy but often applies it to the mundane and the result sometimes feels overwrought and overdramatized vs realistic.
Could not agree more.
Bob Dylan and DFW deserve Nobels, IMO. Both of those guys have fans of all generations.
I feel like DeLillo is a “writer’s writer.” People like DFW applaud him, as you point out.
I just don’t agree that DeLillo has anywhere near the amount of influence as, say, DFW.
I’m frequently amazed how large and diverse DFW’s fan group is.
DeLillo seems to only appeal to writers. His work is very obscure, even within educated niches.
I completely disagree. I think Don Delillo has an unbelievably cool writing style (especially how he only writes one paragraph per page and makes sure his words LOOK AESTHETIC in addition to conveying meaning). But DeLillo has essentially zero significance in American culture.
No millennials read or connect with his work, and only very few boomers do. I find Delillo’s work largely hostile to readers that don’t share his exact super-wide frame of references and age.
I like DeLillo but the idea of giving him a Nobel is an absolute joke, save the Nobel for artists who actually influence other artists and cultures. DeLillo just doesn’t have much influence and his highly verbose style is transparently hostile.
The title is extremely sensationalistic, Occam’s razor points to undetectable(by humans) scent trails that lead the ants to the same harvesting locations every year.
There are no revelations about memory or collective consciousness to be found in this article. Every Occam in the world would infer human-undetectable scent trails from the evidence presented here, not some cosmic revelation about “how memory works” like the title and first paragraphs of the article heavily imply.
@pg @dang this title and article in general is outrageously misleading.
And therein lies the problem: as a youth there is ZERO INCENTIVE to contribute to society since you can't get paid. On the other hand, in the SF bay area at least, every self aware teenager realises that they LITERALLY have a free pass to do petty crimes because their records will be expunged at 18. The result is teenagers shoplifting with utter impunity when they COULD be WORKING AND GETTING PAID at the same stores they're shoplifting from. From the perspective of a savvy teen in the bay area in current year, this is actually the most rational course of action in a self interested sense. And since we're all self interested as humans, shoplifting > working simply IS WHAT ONE DOES as a teen because there is no incentive to work and EVERY incentive to shoplift with impunity.
Source: been there, done that, sparkling clean criminal record. :)
>This is a controversial opinion, but one that's shared by almost every close friend of mine: labor laws for adolescents (I hesitate to call them "child labor laws," because infantilizing adolescents is the thing that caused the problem to begin with) have had a disastrous effect on society.
I am in full agreement with this opinion. At 14, I was ready to WORK! After school AND during summer! Yet "Child Labor laws" and related bullshit prevented me from contributing to society at a time when I was fully able and willing to.
Frere-Jones DID put up capital… intellectual capital. He transferred the rights to famous typefaces he had designed, including Whitney, to the company with the understanding that he would be full partner.
Hoefler shafted F-J so hard it’s unbelievable. The foundry’s reputation was built on Gotham which F-J designed. There’s no other way to see it.