It is truly an incredible ability.
I am trying to battle the idea of elegance over substance.
The idea that elegance comes first.
Many authors trying to sound more elegant (every high school english class is guilty of this) instead of putting in more substance.
I agree with the statement that there is no singular truth. Everything, especially in politics, is a bunch of shit on both sides, where it’s often hard to understand what is better. Usually, the truth almost always lies somewhere in the middle.
But many writers use hyperbole, exaggeration, and other literary techniques that push ideas to the extreme of one side; is that not pushing back on the idea that there is no singular truth?
Style is definitely not pointless, but I also would disagree with you that a painting carries only style and elegance and holds no meaning. I am often moved by a song by what it is trying to convey to me or the story it is describing. Again, without style, I would never listen to the song.
I do believe, though, that writers often put elegance instead of meaning into their writing for the sole purpose of getting popular. And this hurts our literature.
Yes I agree elegance is not directly bullshit. But putting elegance to hide the bullshit, is bullshit.
Many authors often don't even realize that they are saying nothing and are only writing flowery sentences that don't mean much.
I feel like the poetry of the 21st century is a great victim of this.
Poetry now sucks... Too little that convey with too many words.
I do agree that faux elegance is bullshit. Its important to distinguish between the two types though rather than generalizing.
Poetry has ALWAYS been mostly bullshit. It's only survivorship bias that makes it look any other way. The same is true of prose, music, art, and even science. There is more bad than good, but the good makes up for it and is what will be remembered.
Good poetry though exemplifies the real elegance I'm talking about.
I feel pretentious to continually quote 1984, but those slogans seem eerily close to the way that the Party instilled propaganda through slogans.
Every form of language is super effective. But I believe if 100 people around you say the same idea, and only 5 oppose it, you will believe the 100 people.
Since digital media is so easy to upscale to thousands, and even millions of users, I believe digital language has the biggest capability of making a change (good or bad (often bad imo)).
Yeah, its truly saddening to see the declining literacy rates. I feel like lots of social media, today, is creating a stupidification effect on people.
Yes I agree, different words do hold different meanings, and less common words hold less specific meanings, and I love reading well crafted, elegant writing.
I agree with your point. I guess I'm pouring out my hate on "fake crafted elegance". Like the one you mentioned: "using a thesaurus and agonizing over sentence structure" ONLY for the purpose of making it "sound" better. Not to make it sound truer to you, but to make it sound better to the ears.
Thanks for the response! I hear what you're saying, and I apologize for my joke.
I re-read your essay, and what you say about needing sophistication reminds me of the concept of proof-of-work -- "sophistication" could be a way to convey that effort was spent by a writer, even if it doesn't add meaning. That is kind of inherently annoying, because it implies a lack of trust between the author and reader, and in the thesaurus example, the reader would be rightfully annoyed to spent time parsing a sentence only to find that the "proof of effort" was actually just a "facade of effort".
Sorry I tried adding a click link onto the text but I failed miserably lol. I am new to substack I apologize!
I find Orwell's English essay one of my favorites.
