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Comment by 6stringmerc | Hacker News Reader

It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing. That might sound harsh but look closely - it took Graham 10+ years of following the wrong mental path before finally finding the right one. It's not about "copying what you like" it's about "finding yourself first" - and, even then, there's no guarantee self-actualization will put food on the table or pay medical bills.

All that in context, this would make a great inscription on a whisky flask:

>A guilty pleasure is at least a pure one.

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>It's not about "copying what you like" it's about "finding yourself first"

That's not what I got from the essay. PG is actually saying that a lot of works out there are blessed by the authoritative elites as good and worthwhile but what you actually like and enjoy is also authoritative as well. Rather than get sidetracked on what others think is important, what you truly like can be a better guide to avoid wasting time.

Therefore, the things you like may not necessarily change over the years (e.g. always liked Harry Potter) but your self-confidence in holding that opinion is now solidified (e.g. I now know that liking JKR "Harry Potter" more than Joyce's "Ulysses" doesn't mean there's something wrong with my brain. If I choose to write my own novel, I won't feel inadequate just because my writing style is closer to JK Rowling rather than James Joyce.)

It amounts to the same thing. "What you like" is part of "who you are" (a.k.a. "yourself"); and "learning to treat as authoritative" those opinions is roughly what's meant by "finding." That is, nobody has to literally find himself; finding yourself is learning to pay attention to what's within, what you actually care about/think/like, in preference to all the concerns/ideas/opinions coming at you from without.

>I now know that liking Harry Potter more than Joyce's "Ulysses" doesn't mean there's something wrong with my brain.

Oh, I do wish people wouldn't bash on Ulysses as much... there's some nonsense in the book to sift through, yes, but there's also some truly wonderful stuff as well. One of my favorite passages:

>"and those handsome Moors all in white and turbans like kings asking you to sit down in their little bit of a shop and Ronda with the old windows of the posadas 2 glancing eyes a lattice hid for her lover to kiss the iron and the wineshops half open at night and the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Algeciras the watchman going about serene with his lamp and O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

The novel's moments of beauty are worth working for, I think.

But you're still entitled to your opinion. :)

I on the other hand find that passage horrid, so YMMV.

PS: I actually don't mind stream of consciousness, but people don't actually think like that passage.

An author, as the spigot through which art flows into the world, is allowed to attempt such a thing, but their editor is supposed to coax them back 'round to something readable--or at least to something that won't wake the typesetter in the middle of the night, screaming.

I mean, I know this conversation is all about railing against the snobbish "you just don't understand fine art" attitude, but I find the stubborn "he really needs to reign it in and not be so crazy" attitude to be unfortunate too. It's good for artists to experiment. A lot of those experiments can be very fun and enjoyable for the readers, if you're willing to give them a chance.

No, the artist is supposed to experiment. Someone on the business side is supposed to rein it in when the experiment turns to rubbish. Sometimes this quashes something great, but mostly it ensures that artistic professionals can be supported by their own work.

But it is particularly unfortunate when such an experiment escapes into the wild, and a clique seizes upon it as a test for tribal identification.

It's okay to dislike "great literature" and enjoy "pablum for the lowest common denominator" or "escapism for immature minds". I don't really find a whole lot of value in critiquing other people's preferences. If you don't like a specific artwork, you should just keep sampling until you find something you do enjoy, no matter who else likes it. You're not going to make yourself happy by forcing yourself to like something just to fit in to a social group; you're far better off being honest with yourself. After all, you never really know if it's an Emperor's New Clothes situation until someone speaks up and says "I hated every word of this book, and I have no idea why anyone would think it's a masterpiece."

It may well be that will be followed up by "I only said I liked it so that you guys would think I was intelligent and cultured", "I read it in bed because it was such a reliable way to make me fall asleep", "I only read like a third of Gravity's Rainbow, and faked the rest of the way through for book club".

Is this for real? The guy didn't grace the world with punctuation?

The final chapter is a lengthy stream-of-consciousness with almost no punctuation. Other parts of the novel are structured more traditionally.

Like with strategies for composing atonal music, almost any conceivable creative trick in writing was memorably tried in the 20th century. Texts that are one long sentence (Krasznahorkai), no punctuation, only punctuation (Koslowski), crazy "eye dialect" (Zazie dans le metro)...

It would be old hat if someone wrote like Joyce today.

The problem with what you "like" is, you have to have developed a distinct taste first before it means anything.

To use a less controversial and difficult field than art, literature or philosophy as an analogy: in food, what you "like" before you have any taste, is sugar. (If one tries to extract PG's tastes from this essay, they look a little like sugar: in literature, funny stories or page turners with lots of action; in pictures, "brilliant colors".)

Authorities are not always corrupt or unimaginative; sometimes, they're educated and there is something to learn from them. Fads exist of course (esp. of the "latest" kind); but authors or artists who have been considered the greatest for a long time, probably are.

>It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing.

Yeah, this is definitely one of the aspects of PG's writing that I enjoy and admire the most. Though there is a danger that that kind of simplicity can become misleading. Regardless, I think that there really is an important lesson to be learned here. I work in an artistic field and have been having something of a philosophical crisis over the past week, but this essay (and a few similar ones from other authors) helped pull me out of it. Life is short and getting inducted into the canon of "great works of art" seems to depend mostly on random factors. I'm trying to work myself towards a view now where the only things that matter are a) whether I like my work, and b) whether there's an audience that likes my work, critics and academics be damned.

Thanks for understanding what I was going for, and I'd like to offer just a slight bit of additional encouragement as another creative artist. Just pursue what you want to make, work on it, grow, and either the world will take notice, or, at worst, simply ignore it (baseline result). You're right that being "in the canon" is really a luck-of-circumstance type of thing. Just ask all those dead black guitarists that Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin ripped off over the years. He's in the canon, very few of them are, but what does that mean? It means do what you do, do it the best you can, and when you die, it's something that will live on after you forever. Not a lot of CEOs or Founders can say the same about their life's work.

>It's kind of funny to see such a profound and important lesson distilled in to such a kitsch cross-stitch type musing.

And it's funny to see such a pompous comment with almost zero substance. "Kitsch cross-stitch"? Please. It's a simple personal blog post, nothing more, nothing less. It's not meant to be some peer reviewed paper, or some kind of refined George Steiner essay. You can find way more kitschy stuff in "high brow" works (and I'm not even a fan of PG myself).

>It's not about "copying what you like" it's about "finding yourself first" - and, even then, there's no guarantee self-actualization will put food on the table or pay medical bills.

Copy what you like is still valid advice, and much more actionable than the trite "find yourself" (which is not even advice, it's an end goal).

It's also not necessary for self-actualization to "put food on the table" -- that's what jobs are for.

"Finding yourself" is not an end goal for me. It's a journey towards using the time I have on this planet to a) have (great) impact b) doing what I'm passionate about

In other words, it is the quest to "find a mission" and not just your live on a day-to-day basis. I think this is what most of us strive for, but don't have the guts to pursue, because it means taking time of your day job, reading books, talking to people etc. And even if you find your mission there is no guarantee that you'll fulfill another necessary condition: earning enough money for you and your family.

I truly believe that if more of us would start a journey to "find themselves", find a mission and drive the human race forward with their skills we'd be better off. However, the opportunity cost for this approach can be quite high, which is probably the reason just a few follow their heart and instead spend 1/3 of their lifetime (8 hrs per day) working for soulless corporates with no (or prentened) mission.

Pompous? Sure, but I'm the one with the English degree who doesn't go telling other people it was a waste of time, effort, or intellect to use the journey constructively. The point of the personal essay was to elevate his experience as some sort of ideal, off-hand, and I think that's incredibly insulting to people who grind day in and day out on what they love and can barely eat. It's one thing to talk about self-actualization when living hand-to-mouth, it's another when sitting on financial security.

"The only difference between crazy and eccentric is the size of the bank account."

Self-actualisation doesn't have much to do with being rich or not (riches might even be an impediment as much as being poor -- "slave to money", "golden handcuffs", etc.).

Besides, PG is not lecturing some third world sneaker factory workers. His audience is startup founders and/or developers, that, as a rule, don't live "hand to mouth".

And the particular advice (whether right or wrong) applies to all income levels. Even if you're a starving artist It can be good to "copy what you genuinely like" as a way to progress (artistically, if not financially).

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