\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI feel like I\u2019ve lost the power of speech.
\nI\u2019m not sure if that\u2019s true or not, but that\u2019s what it feels like.
\nI don\u2019t write now. Well, I don\u2019t write posts now. I write messages. And I rewrite\u00a0them.\u00a0I rewrite them three or four times. They\u2019re still unfinished. They\u2019re still wrong. They\u2019re awkward. They\u2019re unreadable. And I don\u2019t have anything to say.
\nI wanted to write something great. I put it down in words. I wrote it out. It was unfinished. It was wrong. I handed it around. Two or three people read it. That\u2019s what they told me. No, that wasn\u2019t what they told me. Still, it wasn\u2019t right.\u00a0So I went back. I read more, but I didn\u2019t read enough. I read more, but the reading took longer. I had so much to read.\u00a0And I didn\u2019t write at all.
\nIt\u2019s one thing to know that there\u2019s something you don\u2019t know. That\u2019s healthy. That\u2019s useful. It\u2019s something else to have nothing to say.\u00a0
\n
\nAndrew Sullivan was one of the first bloggers. That\u2019s what they say about him, at least. I don\u2019t know how long he\u2019s been blogging \u2013 I don\u2019t know and I don\u2019t care to find out \u2013 but when I first read him, he was blogging every day, every waking hour.\u00a0
\nHe broke down. He was writing too much. He was thinking too little. He shut down his blog. He went on a retreat. He stopped writing. He stopped speaking. He started thinking.\u00a0Then he came back.\u00a0And what did he do then? He started writing again. He started blogging again, with New York Magazine. Just not quite so often.\u00a0\u00a0
\nThere are others like him. Tyler Cowen, Mickey Kaus, Steve Sailer. They wrote with a monomania. They had a handful of ideas and a handful of stories. And they repeated them. I don\u2019t know what that does to you. I do know that it\u2019s been ages since Tyler Cowen wrote a book worth reading.
\nCowen reads so much and writes so little. He writes short sketches, sometimes. He has lists. Sometimes he takes the sketches and lists and makes a book, filling out the spaces in-between with facts, nothing but facts. He takes a fact, writes it down, and pastes a footnote at the end. Done. Next.\u00a0It reads like something patched-together. It\u2019s awkward. It doesn\u2019t work.
\nHe doesn\u2019t work hard enough.\u00a0
\n
\nThey\u2019re sharing a Vanity Fair profile of Leon Wieseltier, one-time editor of The New Republic\u2019s review section, long-time sexual predator. Apparently, the man was something of a fraud.
\n\n\n\u201cHe was fluent and learned in almost everything one talked about,\u201d recalls [Marty] Peretz, who compares Wieseltier to the great Jewish philosopher Spinoza. \u201cHe\u2019s pretty unusual in that he\u2019s extremely cerebral and extremely what we used to call \u2018hip.\u2019 \u2026 He has given a gravitas to the literary section.\u201d
\nWieseltier came to this perch of high culture highly recommended by his doting intellectual mentors: critic Lionel Trilling at Columbia, philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin at Oxford (where he went up to Balliol College on a prestigious Columbia College Kellett Fellowship), and historian Yosef Yerushalmi at Harvard (where he won a plum appointment to the Society of Fellows). He was, they all agreed, a brilliant young man of breathtaking promise who would one day bring forth works of enduring importance.
\n\u201cIf he will produce a book, it\u2019ll be a triumph, and I very much hope he does,\u201d says Sir Isaiah, to whom Wieseltier announced himself following a letter of introduction from Trilling. Sir Isaiah isn\u2019t the only one waiting for the magnum opus\u2014which Wieseltier describes as a physiological/historical/philosophical critique of sighing, with a few chapters partially written after four years\u2019 labor.
\nBut among Wieseltier\u2019s friends there is much speculation about the true state of his book. For despite his vertiginous I.Q. and prodigious learning, Wieseltier seems to have worked as hard at the construction and maintenance of his glittering image as he has at the occupation of thinking and writing. As he once told a pal, \u201cYou must always have a cover. You always have to have something you can tell people you\u2019re doing, something really nifty.\u201d Wieseltier\u2019s friend pointedly adds, \u201cWhen in fact what you\u2019re doing is eating peanuts in bed.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s an attack on sighing is what it is,\u201d Wieseltier explains, \u201cbecause to sigh is, sort of, you go up, up, up, and instead of going the whole way you very cozily shrink back. It\u2019s something between complacence and resignation\u2026 . I\u2019m not going to tell you a lot about it, but there\u2019s stuff about breathing\u2026 .\u201d (\u201cOh dear,\u201d Sir Isaiah sighs. \u201cI don\u2019t understand it, and neither do you.\u201d)
\n\u201cThe thing is this: he began working at Oxford and he never finished,\u201d Sir Isaiah laments. \u201cAnd then he went to Harvard, was in the Society of Fellows, and did he get his doctorate? No? I thought not. Academically, he\u2019s not a finisher.\u201d
\nThere\u2019s something to be said for not becoming the sort of person who eats peanuts in bed.
\nAnd after sharing the Vanity Fair piece, someone else shared a bit of Mike Munger\u2019s advice. Munger had\u00a0\u201cseen a lot of very talented people fail because they couldn\u2019t, or didn\u2019t, write.\u201d\u00a0
\n\n\nEveryone\u2019s unwritten work is brilliant. And the more unwritten it is, the more brilliant it is. We have all met those glib, intimidating graduate students or faculty members. They are at their most dangerous holding a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other, in some bar or at an office party. They have all the answers. They can tell you just what they will write about, and how great it will be.
\nYears pass, and they still have the same pat, 200-word answer to \u201cWhat are you working on?\u201d It never changes, because they are not actually working on anything, except that one little act.
\nYou, on the other hand, actually are working on something, and it keeps evolving. You don\u2019t like the section you just finished, and you are not sure what will happen next. When someone asks, \u201cWhat are you working on?,\u201d you stumble, because it is hard to explain. The smug guy with the beer and the cigarette? He\u2019s a poseur and never actually writes anything. So he can practice his pat little answer endlessly, through hundreds of beers and thousands of cigarettes. Don\u2019t be fooled: You are the winner here. When you are actually writing, and working as hard as you should be if you want to succeed, you will feel inadequate, stupid, and tired. If you don\u2019t feel like that, then you aren\u2019t working hard enough.
\nI don\u2019t know how to put one word after another. I can\u2019t make it come together. I can\u2019t even do what Tyler Cowen does \u2013 I can\u2019t put a fact, a footnote, and a period \u2013 I can\u2019t sketch out something worth reading. I can\u2019t write. I\u2019m not writing.
\nI\u2019m not working hard enough.
\nI feel so called out
\nI came out to eat peanuts in bed and I\u2019m honestly feeling so attacked right now.
\n
same