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Comment by randomsearch | Hacker News Reader

Wow I’m amazed that you don’t have the same interpretation to me here.

Perhaps the first difference between us is I immediately assumed PG is talking about transmitting ideas (argumentation or proposition), ie writing essays and not writing fiction.

What I assume he means about “writing not being pure ideas”, he means there’s an overhead in transmitting ideas via writing. This is analogous to using programming languages to capture ideas, hence anything but simplicity offends because it is analogous to (in)elegance in code.

I think this essay is excellent but it seems I was more attuned to his message, or at least it met my expectations.

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Ironically, as far as I'm concerned, excellent poetry _is_ about as close as writing gets to "pure ideas" (or at the very least pure emotion). Average poetry, maybe not so much.

I think, as usual, there's a lot of nuance here. I think emotion is inextricably linked to almost all forms of communication, and that there's not such a bright line between fiction and non fiction in that regard.

The books that have taught me the most are not necessarily the ones with the most information density or even the most clarity of thought (although both help). The ones that have really conveyed their points effectively to me have all had an element of weaving them into a narrative that I could engage with, examine from different angles, absorb and remember.

But I'm also pretty sympathetic to the idea of cutting fluff at all opportunities and getting to the root of what you want to say - that's the one thing that's improved my writing the most.

> Ironically, as far as I'm concerned, excellent poetry _is_ about as close as writing gets to "pure ideas" (or at the very least pure emotion).

Depends on the time period. I wouldn't exactly say that T. S. Eliot's poetry was about pure idea (or pure emotion). He did revel a lot in the fact that he was very educated and the readers are probably less so. Still a canonical author though.

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