“A Reader's Manifesto” is a July 2001 Atlantic piece by B.R. Myers that I've returned to many times. He complains about the inaccessible pretension of the highbrow literary fiction of his day. The article is mostly a long list of critiques of various quotes/passages from well-reviewed books by famous authors. It's hard to accuse him of cherry-picking since he only targets passages that reviewers singled out as unusually good.

Some of his complaints are dumb but the general idea is useful: authors try to be “literary” by (1) avoiding a tightly-paced plot that could evoke “genre fiction” and (2) trying to shoot for individual standout sentences that reviewers can praise, using a shotgun approach where many of the sentences are banal or just don’t make sense.

Here are some excerpts of his complaints. Bolding is always mine.

The “Writerly” Style

He complains that critics now dismiss too much good [...]

---

Outline:

(00:57) The “Writerly” Style

(03:53) 4 Types of Bad Prose

(04:10) “Evocative” Prose

(08:12) “Muscular” Prose

(11:15) “Edgy” Prose

(19:11) “Spare” Prose

(21:37) Some Prose He Thinks Is Good

---

First published:
September 6th, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NiTuqw6LRFifqzRRH/excerpts-from-a-reader-s-manifesto

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“Excerpts from ‘A Reader’s Manifesto’ ” by Arjun Panickssery

LessWrong (30+ Karma)