Hi,
I’ve lurked here for a while. My opinion on Scott has changed multiple times but what I still don’t get is why you people don’t like his prose. Yes, it’s not succinct, but it’s also cute and pleasant to read. There are much much much (get it?) more criticizable things he’s done than the way he writes.
The rules for sneers clearly state that earnest questions should be tagged NSFW
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http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/
Well the first problem with his overly verbose prose is he uses it (possibly deliberately) to disguise what he is actually saying. Scott’s credibility would absolutely plummet if he did something like write an introduction which states his thesis clearly and a basic overview of the arguments he uses to support it. He uses this verbose vagueness to hide what he is actually saying, instead of just saying what he thinks he coyly hints at it, unnecessarily inventing new terms and sayings in order to “explain” what he is doing. This vagueness is then used to go “you don’t understand what I really mean” to his critics.
Scott’s writing style is also heavily influenced by one of his least attractive qualities, his terror at being confronted by any real world consequences for his writing. This results in him a lot of the time doing the literary equivalent of grovelling on the floor, whilst simultaneously not actually thinking about why his writing might provoke consequences. “Is it my misogyny, classism and racism? No it must be that the leftists are too emotional and irrational”.
Scott also is serially incapable of looking at the world from anyone else’s perspective. As some one who has actually read Unsong one of the real problems he faces in his writing is that he really struggles to write characters that are not like him. The characters in the book basically all have some variation on the same background “white, middle class, somewhat well educated, male (even for those who aren’t male), unemotional”. I mean there are some supposed exceptions, (that king who declares a war on hell) but they all seem to absorb most of those attributes/values through osmosis, or just being written by Scott even if in theory they shouldn’t have them. The one thing he sometimes adds on to those attributes is a weird caricature of University radicalism. Which isn’t a big improvement. This lack of empathy/imagination extends to the rest of his writing.
He also has a really bad habit of not using evidence properly, if at all. Scoot habitually makes a show of pretending he understands a lot about a particular domain when he really doesn’t. Which has been looked at to death on this subreddit and is one of the defining traits of a rationalist.
Basically he writes long, inaccurate, cowardly screeds which show both a lack of imagination and a lack of empathy. You also get a real sense that he is like that incredibly smug and vaguely racist uncle you see every year at Christmas and that he thinks he is a unique, special and smarter than you. Which is generally not the sense writers try to give off in their writing.
This was not a well written or well structured comment and ironically it’s far too long. But ehh, I’m writing on Scott, my defence is that I just want this to be over.
Word count. Waaay too many words. Every aspiring writer strives to say more with less (except possibly Michener). And if I want “cute” I’ll read cartoons.
I’ve enjoyed his writing at times. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a discursive tour of some random topic that flatters me by making me feel more intelligent than I actually am. I’ve enjoyed it less and less as I figured out that he considers himself the Kolmogorov of racism, though.
Can you show us an excerpt of his writing that you think is “cute” or “pleasant”?
Read the link typell gave.
Succinctly though: The verbosity only serves to hide the inanity of his conclusions and mislead people about the distance between his starting observations/assumptions and his final conclusions.
But don’t take my word for it, examine the linked post.
1 - panders to the prejudices of his sniveling audience. remember blue tribe/red tribe/grey tribe - an essay that appeared to have been written by someone who has no knowledge of what a tribe is, how they arise or what they do
2 - deeply ignorant. like just punishingly ignorant of the most basic facts of history and life. you can tell this by the way he invents elaborate new jargon for what has been a very ordinary everyday concept for ages.
3 - worthless trash. does nothing to improve anything except his tech and white supremacist buddies’ bottom lines.
4 - his fiction is marred by seventh-grade-tier science fiction concepts, sixth-grade-tier dialogue and kindergarten-tier characterization. no wonder fanfic and Worm impresses these dopes.
What?
Read some Jane Austen or some shit IDFK what is wrong with your values system but I’m certain the cure for it is reading some actual books
Because motherfucker absolutely loves to express an idea that should only take a hundred words with, like, a thousand. I get why people like it, that it’s very slowly gradually taking you through his thought process. But a lot of the time it ends up not being thinking through a complex topic but thinking through a not-that-complex topic very very slowly.
Good prose isn’t defined by word count. In fact, the ability to succinctly state what you mean without using layers of invented vocabulary is a hallmark of a good writer.