Fire and Knowledge

It is not worth the while to live by rich cookery. Most men would feel shame if caught preparing with their own hands precisely such a dinner, whether of animal or vegetable food, as is every day prepared for them by others.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 179

Steven Shapin has an essay about “organic” foods and Whole Foods Market, Inc. He says that

“Organic,” then, isn’t necessarily “local,” and neither “organic” nor “local” is necessarily “sustainable.”

As “organic” foods become more popular, the label will inevitably become meaningless because of that wretched business of advertising. If one wants organic food, the best way is to grow it themselves or purchase it from someone locally where they can see it is sustainable. Purchasing “organic” food from superstores only solves a very small part of a much larger problem.

The word is not just an idea. It is a small universe of ideas.

–Neil Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), p. 75

A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is the earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 155

If we say that these industries only give our youth what they will pay for, the question remains, Why do our youth turn away from civilized speech? The answer, in my opinion, is that the electronic information environment, with television at its center, is fundamentally hostile to conceptual, segmented, linear modes of expression, so that both writing and speech must lose some of their power.

–Neil Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), p. 74

Scot McKnight reminds us what good writing is composed of:

It dawned on me that good writers write in such a way that one can read them aloud and know what they mean. Bad writers have to be studied and re-read and pondered. Good writers write in such a way that you can listen to them aloud and follow them….

Good writers have an ear for what works, what sounds right, what brings both meaning and pleasure at the same time. And good writers have a personal style, and they have some wit (we don’t need boring, scientific books about important topics very often), and they make you smile but not laugh aloud. (That’s the difference between humor and comedy; the former make you smile, the latter make you laugh.)

He holds up Joseph Epstein as a model writer, whom I have not read. I will remedy that. The model writers in my own life–so far–have been C.S. Lewis, Wendell Berry, Henry Thoreau, Neil Postman, and Charles Dickens. My model bad writer is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whom I have sworn never to mention in any positive way.

Epstein led me to think that too much reading of scholarship hurts writing — and for some that is blasphemous, but for me it was a ray of golden light. If I spend all my time reading journal articles and academic monographs and commentaries, the cadence and tone and style of that writing will be what I will produce when I sit down to write.

This is exactly right. Those who read nothing but stale academic writing will write stale academic writing and will only be read by stale academic writers. Mr. McKnight also recommends an anthology of personal essays, which I plan to purchase as well. All that to say, it’s worth reading what Mr. McKnight says.

(See also: “A Guide to Writing Well“)

Television attacks the monopoly of the printed word. In fact, by distributing information, albeit in pictures, to everyone in the culture simultaneously, it threatens all systems that have a hierarchical structure. A hierarchy is a drama played by superiors, inferiors, and equals. Information is the means by which we assign people their role in the drama and, indeed, justify that role.

–Neil Postman, Teaching as a Conserving Activity (1979), p. 68

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. Books, the oldest and the best, stand naturally and rightfully on the shelves of every cottage.

—Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854), p. 85