In praise of brevity

(Note: The opening comment in this blog entry, by criticizing the blogger Vanishing American by name, offended her. While the offense was regrettable, as acknowledged both by the commenter and myself, the reaction unfortunately went well beyond the original offense, as is discussed here.)

Sage McLaughin writes:

I like to tell people when they’re doing something right, even if they didn’t ask for my opinion. I know you aren’t looking for my advice—this is just a compliment where I think it’s deserved.

If there’s one thing you do well at VFR, it’s keeping the length of your posts in right proportion to their content. One thing I’ve noticed about weblogs like Vanishing American and Mencius Moldbug’s (stupidly titled) Unqualified Reservations, is that they seem to be engaged in some kind of Tolstoy impersonation contest. I find them unreadable in their long-windedness. They meander on for pages, needlessly multiplying examples and packing twenty-five links and long quotes into each post, making it a near-impossibility to digest the content in a single sitting. Nobody has time to sit and slog through a single blog post for an hour. This is becoming a feature of the conservative blog world, I’m afraid, and to be honest I wonder where these people find the time. Given the meager conversation that these gaseous works tend actually to evoke, I wonder why it is they go on this way. I think it’s a function of insecurity, a desire that every detail and every tangential thought be included, lest someone get the idea that this person hasn’t already thought of everything.

Your sense of proportion, and your ability to attack big problems with parsimony, is one of the reasons VFR is such a treasure. Thanks very much for that, and please, don’t change a thing.

LA replies:

I’m LOL at your description of the longwindedness that is so common today. I agree. There are many people writing on the Web who have no sense of trying to put their thoughts into a manageable and coherent shape. And there are particular writers whom I respect but rarely read because they are so long winded. Everything they say has to be a dissertation. They can never make a point in, say, 500 or 1,000 words.

Also, it’s not just in the Web. I’ve been perusing Richard Dawkin’s The Ancestor’s Tale, and it’s disgracefully self-indulgent. He goes on page after page making a point he could make in one paragraph. I think this excessive wordiness today is a manifestation of the culture of self-esteem. Everyone that one has to say, is good.

Thank you very much for the kind comments.

Sage M. replies:

You’re very welcome. I should mention that I don’t always have a low opinion of the bloggers in question. Sometimes part of the frustration is precisely that I cannot swallow one of their columns whole, even if I know it contains valuable insights.

LA replies:

I’ll repeat my favorite maxim of La Rochefoucauld’s, which I once quoted in a plea to VFR commenters to keep their comments within a reasonable length (sorry for the missing accent marks, made necessary by the browser I’m using):

La veritable eloquence consiste a dire tout ce qu’il faut, et a ne dire que ce qu’il faut.

True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and no more than is necessary.

Paul K. writes:

Sage McLaughlin points out something that I too appreciate about VFR and I agree with what he says about other bloggers. A worthwhile point can be utterly smothered by superfluous verbiage. It’s not a good thing when the reader is thinking, “Get on with it!”

I don’t like flabby prose. Your writing is “ripped,” as they say.

Alan Roebuck writes:

There’s another reason writing is often long: America no longer has a common culture. And so subsidiary points must be elaborated upon and defended, allusions must be clarified, and premises must be articulated. It’s the difference between conversing with a brother and with a stranger.

Gintas J. writes:

Hear hear! Mr. McLaughin is right. I was over at Moldybug’s site yesterday and was overwhelmed; it’s like the intellectual version of an over-extended rock guitar solo. He is a man whose intellect, while great, is undisciplined and untrained, wild and untamed. Vanishing American is not a bitter nihilist so I’m inclined to be more forgiving, but I do find myself skimming her long posts. I am reminded of Einstein’s quote, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

Mark Richardson at Oz Conservative is your equal in this regard: he says enough, and just enough, and no more.

In that spirit, I haven’t made many comments lately; I’ve started many times, and kept paring things down, rewording them, trying to be more concise and to-the-point, until all almost every time all I had left was just a bitter one-line complaint. That’s when I hit “cancel.”

LA replies:

Gintas’s account of his canceled comments sounds like a psychological or spiritual parable, though I don’t know yet what the meaning of it might be. Maybe it’s like Buddhism, in which a man pares away all his illusory thoughts until there are none left, and then he realizes wisdom.

Mencius Moldbug writes:

I’m afraid I too appreciate the tightness of VFR. It ain’t as easy as it looks.

I of course welcome VFR readers over at UR, but I’d say a couple of things. One, UR is not really a blog—it’s a weekly essay. I write it more by the standards of 19th or even 18th-century pamphlets, which are intolerably gassy to the modern reader. Two, UR is designed to be a tool with which liberals can deprogram themselves. I’m not sure how successful this is, but I do have at least some liberal readers. This means I need to spell out a lot of points that are already very clear to the VFR crowd. It’s a lot easier to speak in perfect epigrams when everyone’s pretty much on the same page.

But, okay. If UR has to be King Crimson, VFR is definitely the Clash. Not that the Clash weren’t a bunch of Communists. But so was Dylan.

Speaking of epigrams, I hope VFR readers are familiar with Deogolwulf. Talk about tight!

Kristor writes:

Let me also enter a word of thanks for the refreshing lack of visual clutter at VFR. Most pages on the web are so crammed with items that it’s a chore to figure out what you feel like noticing. VFR is a lot easier on the eye.

LA replies:

I share Kristor’s preference for an uncluttered look. The absolute opposite of VFR in this regard would be the grossly overloaded website of TownHall.com, which is not only an assault on the eyes but a cultural expression of how the conservative establishment has lost its way, becoming an exercise in crass self-celebration and self-promotion.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 15, 2008 02:12 PM | Send