12 Comments
User's avatar
Sharron Bassano's avatar

Wow! Yes. And sometimes it takes a little time to really understand the intimacy, the whole meaning, doesn't it? How many times have I read a book saying "Nice story." Read it again a couple more times and said, "Oh. THAT was the message." I remember, for example, reading Hesse's Siddartha at age 17, and upon reading it again at 30, I found a completely different story within those covers. Then, too, when I write I often do not know what I am writing about until I am finished! I think I'm writing about one thing and am surprised that that was not it at all. Maybe others experience this? Words. I love words.

Expand full comment
Charles Schifano's avatar

This is a great point: "I think I'm writing about one thing and am surprised that that was not it at all." There's a lot of different quotes about 'thinking on the page', or about 'not knowing what I think until I write it', but it can't be said enough: putting something onto the page both reveals you what you know and what you don't know. And, for me at least, the discipline of working through an argument in sentences clarifies how I think about that same argument.

Expand full comment
Sharron Bassano's avatar

Exactly so! Thank you

Expand full comment
Tom Pendergast's avatar

Well put Charles. A good story rings a bell deep within us, rings it so clearly that sometimes we can hear it for years afterwards. And not just a novel--your piece the other day about being viewed with horror in the subway rang that bell for me too.

Expand full comment
Charles Schifano's avatar

Thank you for the kind words—I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed it.

Expand full comment
Trilety Wade's avatar

You are my favorite philosopher.

Expand full comment
Charles Schifano's avatar

I am glad to see that you liked this one—and thank you very much for the extremely kind words.

Expand full comment
John P. Weiss's avatar

And this is why I worry about today’s short attention spans and entrenched addiction to social media. A tweet or brief YouTube video might hint at an idea, but a well-written novel exposes all the nuance and dimensions of a good story, hopefully coalescing around a grand insight, lesson, or deeper understanding.

Expand full comment
Charles Schifano's avatar

Although I can definitely relate to the worry, my one solace is that our mutual worry has always been true. Socrates complained, I try to remember, that all the writing in Athens was a degradation of memory. I'm not sure if the trajectory is forever downward, though it does feel that way. I think it is fair to assume that people in the distant future will worry about attention spans, too, and I just hope that they're not pining for today's version of Twitter as, in their minds, a place of lengthy and eloquent thought.

Expand full comment
Sharron Bassano's avatar

Yikes! What a thought...

Expand full comment
Christian Näthler's avatar

Ah man, I felt this on a “guess you gotta have felt it” level

Expand full comment
erg art ink's avatar

Borrowing from the clandestine community. “Hallway Intelligence”

Expand full comment