A couple more things to check out:
A NY Times-based blog series on the art and craft of
writing. (“Draft features
essays by grammarians, historians, linguists, journalists, novelists and others
on the art of writing — from the comma to the tweet to the novel — and why a
well-crafted sentence matters more than ever in the digital age.”)
Today’s is by John McWhorter, last post by Stanley Fish, Teaser:
The latest word on the
street about English in America – always bad, it seems – is that the shaggy
construction of texting and e-mail spells the death of formal writing. Yet the
truth about English in America – always sunnier, in fact – is that the looseness
and creativity of these new ways of writing are a sign of a new sophistication
in our society. This becomes clear when we understand that in the proper sense,
e-mail and texting are not writing at all.
Second, Tuesday’s David Brooks’ article about “innovation
and the limits of competition”. I’m
planning on using it with the college essay and with Death of a Salesman. Teaser:
One of his
core points is that we tend to confuse capitalism with competition. We tend to
think that whoever competes best comes out ahead. In the race to be more
competitive, we sometimes confuse what is hard with what is valuable. The
intensity of competition becomes a proxy for value.
In fact, Thiel argues, we often shouldn’t seek to be really good
competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being
slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it’s
often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit
margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too.
Now to be clear: When Thiel is talking about a “monopoly,” he isn’t
talking about the illegal eliminate-your-rivals kind. He’s talking about doing
something so creative that you establish a distinct market, niche and identity.
You’ve established a creative monopoly and everybody has to come to you if they
want that service, at least for a time.
His lecture points to a provocative possibility: that the competitive
spirit capitalism engenders can sometimes inhibit the creativity it requires.
Think about the traits that creative people possess. Creative people
don’t follow the crowds; they seek out the blank spots on the map. Creative
people wander through faraway and forgotten traditions and then integrate
marginal perspectives back to the mainstream. Instead of being fastest around
the tracks everybody knows, creative people move adaptively through
wildernesses nobody knows.
Happy Thursday!
