Show That Snippet, A Conversation, A Paragraph, That Is Good...

enjoyed reading this by carl sagan
i have read : the cosmos by carl sagan
it is an entirely different science fiction , planning to read it again

 

Bummer! I don't subscribe to FT. The page was in read-domain when I bookmarked it a while ago. They might have changed their policy and shuffled behind the firewall. I hate it when media outlets do such things. Or may be FT lures passersby with five-a-month free pieces like NYT.

This is a lovely thread. The concept is nice. Enjoyed that Akbar dig.

Here's my contribution.

Original article: Linked here with excerpts from David Foster Wallace's essay titled “The Nature of the Fun”.

"In the beginning, when you first start out trying to write fiction, the whole endeavor’s about fun. You don’t expect anybody else to read it. You’re writing almost wholly to get yourself off. To enable your own fantasies and deviant logics and to escape or transform parts of yourself you don’t like. And it works – and it’s terrific fun. Then, if you have good luck and people seem to like what you do, and you actually start to get paid for it, and get to see your stuff professionally typeset and bound and blurbed and reviewed and even (once) being read on the a.m. subway by a pretty girl you don’t even know it seems to make it even more fun. For a while. Then things start to get complicated and confusing, not to mention scary. Now you feel like you’re writing for other people, or at least you hope so. You’re no longer writing just to get yourself off, which — since any kind of masturbation is lonely and hollow — is probably good. But what replaces the onanistic motive? You’ve found you very much enjoy having your writing liked by people, and you find you’re extremely keen to have people like the new stuff you’re doing. The motive of pure personal starts to get supplanted by the motive of being liked, of having pretty people you don’t know like you and admire you and think you’re a good writer. Onanism gives way to attempted seduction, as a motive. Now, attempted seduction is hard work, and its fun is offset by a terrible fear of rejection. Whatever “ego” means, your ego has now gotten into the game. Or maybe “vanity” is a better word. Because you notice that a good deal of your writing has now become basically showing off, trying to get people to think you’re good. This is understandable. You have a great deal of yourself on the line, writing — your vanity is at stake. You discover a tricky thing about fiction writing; a certain amount of vanity is necessary to be able to do it all, but any vanity above that certain amount is lethal."

 

Here's one of my favourite scenes from The Middle Class Gentlemen, translated in English by Philip Dwight Jones from Moliere's original French work Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, that sends me on a laughter riot any time I read the play. Full text of the play is available in public domain.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Please do. But now, I must confide in you. I'm in love with a lady of great quality, and I wish that you would help me write something to her in a little note that I will let fall at her feet.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Very well.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: That will be gallant, yes?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Without doubt. Is it verse that you wish to write her?

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: No, no. No verse.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Do you want only prose?

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: No, I don't want either prose or verse.

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: It must be one or the other.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: Why?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Because, sir, there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: There is nothing but prose or verse?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: No, sir, everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: And when one speaks, what is that then?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Prose.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: What! When I say, "Nicole, bring me my slippers, and give me my nightcap," that's prose?

PHILOSOPHY MASTER: Yes, Sir.

MONSIEUR JOURDAIN: By my faith! For more than forty years I have been speaking prose without knowing anything about it, and I am much obliged to you for having taught me that. I would like then to put into a note to her: "Beautiful marchioness, your lovely eyes make me die of love," but I want that put in a gallant manner and be nicely turned.

Only Moliere could capture such comedy of manners in his plays.

 

Smithsonian articles have great openings. Why is that important? In this short-attention span world where media constantly bombards us with salient and meaningless chatter, we are attuned to select our picks in a hasty and judgemental manner just by scanning the first few lines of a long-read article. Here's one such article that grabbed my attention with the opening line. Opening paragraph matters ...

"There once was a bull, an astonishing bull with a handsome, wide muzzle, stunning scrotal circumference and a square frame solid as a sycamore. He was the son of Cherokee Canyon, the grandson of Make My Day—a noble pedigree. The cowboy who designed him, who chose the semen, selected the dam, prepared and inseminated the uterus, named him Revelation. “We don’t intend to present this bull as divine,” the cowboy, Donnell Brown, would write in his 2005 sale catalog, “but we do count it a blessing to have raised him.” Brown was a salesman by nature, but not given to hyperbole. He believed in his heart that Revelation, at just a year-and-a-half old, could become the most storied bull in the history of the Red Angus breed. Finally, after decades of tinkering: might this be the masterpiece?"

Read more: Breeding the perfect bull

The article is done nicely. Not too stark. Not too poignant. Not too weepy. The right amalgamation of journalistic, factual and humane side of a story. I also loved the language and the sensitivity of expression. One more, lines like "To create the finest steaks, there really is nothing as important as a fabulous cow. Except, of course, an amazing bull" though appear quite simple to frame are smart innuendos in the writing. Again, why this article? Because Jeanne Marie Laskas maintains that curiosity she arouses in a reader right from the opening line throughout the article with her engaging style of writing.

 

And the daughter pretends to wash and dry the clothes while contemplating her uncertain future

 

This is so wonderful! Thanks for sharing. Surely, will try to read this book. Sounds very interesting.