[jonnathanson]

This article is horseshit. I'm a professional writer, and I'll trust Oates and King over whoever this guy is.

"Read widely" isn't some religious dictum. It's more of a religious calling. (Of sorts.) If you love to read, and you love to write, you naturally read all fucking day. Your thirst is unquenchable. Your tastes are varied. So you drink from many different fountains.

You also realize there is no trade off between depth and breadth. It's a false dichotomy. It seems to be manufactured by people who find the act of reading some sort of chore. I do not. I find it the highest pleasure I have ever experienced.

Perhaps there's a difference between being naturally curious and being forced to read broadly. I dunno. I've never had to be forced. I like reading and writing the way many of us like programming. I'm truly sorry if the author does not. Writing's a hell of a shitty way to make a living; I can't imagine what it'd be like if you didn't at least enjoy the sport of it.

[jasode]

>You also realize there is no trade off between depth and breadth. It's a false dichotomy.

It's a tradeoff because of the finite time for reading.

One can reread Shakespeare's 4 tragedies (Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth) again for the 10th time (about 8 hours of reading) -- or -- read E.L. James "50 Shades of Grey" for the 1st time (also about ~8 hours of reading).

Some writers may suggest that you read E.L. James because that way, you can mark the checkbox of "read some BDSM material" and hence satisfy the "read more widely" advice. (The "widely" as the blog author interprets it). The blog and his quote of Seamus Heaney disagrees with that and advises to read what one enjoys. It's also ok if one is re-reading an old favorite again instead of unfamiliar writing that's often low quality.

And yes, choosing what to read is a zero-sum game. Mathematically, how could it not be?

[jonnathanson]

No, I'm not literally suggesting people have infinite time on their hands. Rather, what I'm suggesting is that time compresses when you're reading for pleasure. When you reach a certain "level," shall we say, you read so naturally and so widely and so frequently that it is truly astonishing how much you can read in a day.

Then again, I'll continue to caveat all of this by saying that my subjective experience seems increasingly abnormal every time I read someone's advice on how to read (or write). The idea of deliberately practicing a style or a voice is weird to me. I've always written by ear, and I've never thought about it. I've thought about structure, and character, and perspective, and logic, and all of the other elements that go into writing well. But when it comes to voice and style, well, shit, man. You pick it up as you go along, and you learn to trust it. It strengthens, not weakens, with exposure to breadth.

One last time: I'm going to go out on a limb and say that my experience is probably weird.

[psyklic]

It's the same with computer science, or any other field. The best, most motivated people will naturally have breadth and depth due to their own voracious curiosity, without thinking about the distinction at all.

[csallen]

What kinds of material do you read? Any recommendations? I'm particularly interested in engrossing fiction, and also non-fiction work with "sticky" ideas that have changed the way you see the world.

[alexpetralia]

For any individual, there must be a breadth vs. depth tradeoff.

However, across individuals, there certainly need not be (and I think that is the intuition). Saying someone "reads for breadth" or "reads for depth" doesn't seem as justified if they read 10x as much as anyone else - relative to others, they "read for both."

[FLUX-YOU]

>"read some BDSM material"

Emphasis on quotes. Most of that novel is an abusive relationship, from what I hear.

[jonnathanson]

See, what's interesting to me is that the grandparent comment describes "50 Shades" as ~8 hours of reading. The zero-sum argument assumes that reading time is some fixed value for all people. I don't remember how long it took me to read "50 Shades," but it was significantly less than 8 hours, and couldn't have been more than an hour. (I'm not saying that to brag. It takes me a lot longer to do many other things than many other people. My only point is that the author of the article completely ignores throughput variability in his calculus.)

[jasode]

> I don't remember how long it took me to read "50 Shades," [...], and couldn't have been more than an hour.

Based on ~155,000 words[1], that would be reading ~2500 words-per-minute.

Most everyone else reads around ~200wpm to ~400wpm. Reading at 300wpm is considered "fast" for a college-educated adult.

[1] https://novelwordcount.com/2015/04/11/fifty-shades-of-grey-w...

[misnome]

Perhaps the hour mark is hyperbole - I haven’t read these books and have no desire to. But different books have different levels of linguistic complexity, and with simplistic writing I find myself reading at much, much faster rates.

In addition I find that when reading “bad writing” I have a natural tendency to (automatically) skip over long, tortured sentences that seem to be going nowhere. From reputation, “50 Shades” may qualify for that category.

It’s also possible to be both categories at once.

[ThomPete]

Every time my wife and I go skiing we end up with the same discussion.

My wife wants to try as many pistes as possible I like exploring the same in more depth explore some of the details.

She gets to explore many different pistes I get to explore the details of the same.

The tradeoff is really about perspective but it's not really a tradeoff but just consequence of choices (which is a kind of tradeoff).

[pedrosorio]

> You also realize there is no trade off between depth and breadth. It's a false dichotomy.

Given that we're in a forum where computer science and engineering topics are often discussed, I find it odd that anyone would suggest this.

You have a limited resource (time). Whenever you have a limited resource, there are tradeoffs in how you spend it. Unless exhaustive search is feasible, there is indeed a tradeoff between depth and breadth.

[stult]

I don't necessarily disagree with your conclusion but your analysis is an oversimplification. It's possible reading broadly across domains results in deeper individual domain expertise by enabling cross-fertilization between the domains. So the relationship between depth and breadth isn't necessarily inverse or linear.

Take the recent solution to the Kadison-Singer problem. A group of relative outsiders with comparatively little mathematics expertise solved a long standing problem using techniques from their own field, computer science. The depth they achieved in math exceeded that of people who focused solely on the math. And similarly they achieved more in their own field by tackling problems from other fields.

Obviously there's a very tight conceptual relationship between those two fields even if that isn't always the case institutionally. But I think you can easily find examples where knowledge from dramatically different domains contributed to some paradigm shift, breakthrough, or other significant achievement.

[jonnathanson]

Depth and breadth, in this case, are not opposite directions on a straight line. They are vectors that only appear oppositional when viewed under specific time constraints. The more prolific a reader you are, the more efficiently you read, and thus your higher throughput dramatically compresses time.

If we're to speak about very specific increments of time and units of reading material -- say, you get to read N books over 1 week -- then sure, the zero-sum argument holds. But a lifetime is so much time, offering so much opportunity to the experienced reader, that time is almost effectively lifted as a constraint.

The only zero-sum quantities in this case are time and number of books. Depth and breadth of subject matter are better described as characterizing subcategories of #_books.

[Barrin92]

>Depth and breadth, in this case, are not opposite directions on a straight line

humans have limited memory, we are not machines. How many books can you remember, and not just in a vague sense, but lines, tone, structure?

Nabokov made a similar statement as the author claimed that the only good reader is a re-reader. Nobody can genuinely remember more than a few books and be familiar with them, if you read hundreds of books at the end of the year you might as well have read nothing. But every time you reread a great work, you learn something new and free your mind up to discover even more things about it.

The very best musicians will often study their favourite pieces compulsively. They have an intimate relationship with them that others have not.

I am very sympathetic to the message of the author because we seem to be living in an age where people attempt to measure literacy on a scoreboard by counting how much books they've read. Obviously this is as doomed of an attempt as being in a hundred relationships at the same time.

A good friend of mine teaches Russian literature, and when he talks about a book like The Brothers Karamazov he can get so much more out of one book than I get out of reading 50. That is something to me that resembles genuine understanding.

[njarboe]

Learning how to find what you will think are "great books", I think, is more important than the raw number of books. Having people that know you well and are good readers themselves can be a great resource. Also, the ability to abandon a long book after an hour of reading can be difficult for some but quite useful if you find your reading time limited.

[folksinger]

The point of the article was in encouraging writers to hone in on an individual voice as opposed to being influenced by thousands of competing tones.

Perhaps an analogy to songwriting will make things more clear: how well received are the works of someone who writes rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-bluegrass songs?

It's not that a successful country music songwriter can't listen to and enjoy hip-hop but you'll find they tend mainly to listen to and be influenced by country music.

[ellius]

I think maybe the only way to be a good artist though is to explore the things that resonate with you. If rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-bluegrass speaks to your soul, and creating that music fulfills you, then who’s to say exploring those genres is a mistake? There are other measures of success than recognition.

Austin Kleon puts this especially well in “Steal Like An Artist.” He says that you can cut off some of your passions, and try to focus on one thing, but eventually you will “feel the pain of the phantom limb.”

[folksinger]

Neither of us want me to write an essay about Wittgenstein's notion of "meaning through social interactions" and how this applies to artistic value, but I'll summarize it thus: art needs an audience.

Now, given the vast population of the world, I'm sure there are a few people out there who are into bluegrass-rap fusion, but your friends, family and neighbors are probably not going to get much out of it.

So who do you want to make art for? Who do you want making art for you? Random strangers peicing together art from fragments of digital audio they stumble across while surfing on an endless stream of information?

[ellius]

I think ultimately we’re going to go back and forth about an unanswerable question: what fulfills people? You can’t answer it for anyone else. One artist will need the audience as a foil; another will be perfectly happy to toil away in obscurity. To my mind the best advice is “try a lot of things and see what feels right to you; don’t be dogmatic about your approach until you have a very high level of confidence based on experience.” Beyond that I’m just not sure this is a question with a meaningful answer.

[folksinger]

This is the solipsistic perspective of someone floating in the ocean, looking in only one direction and sure they are alone, sure they are surrounded by nothing but an endless expanse, completely unaware that they are just a few hundred feet from the shoreline that lies behind them.

The answer is not different, it is the same for EVERYONE! Turn around and swim back to land!

[ellius]

Recognizing that people are unique does not immediately equate to solipsism. That would be like me saying that recognizing any kind of commonality immediately implies collectivism.

[icebraining]

Just as a reference, Gangstagrass already has 18 scheduled live shows for the next five months :)

[Cpoll]

I can't see why a bluegrass songwriter wouldn't benefit from learning more about rap, funk, metal; bringing a stronger context to their understanding of their own genre (which is sometimes an arbitrary delineation) and perhaps some techniques.

> It's not that a successful country music songwriter can't listen to and enjoy hip-hop but you'll find they tend mainly to listen to and be influenced by country music.

Without any examples for or to the contrary, I'm not convinced this is true.

> The point of the article was in encouraging writers to hone in on an individual voice as opposed to being influenced by thousands of competing tones.

I think both extremes are harmful. But my experience comes from dabbling in Jazz music of all sorts; 'Jazz fusion' is such a broad moniker that it extends from funk to rock to swing to rap.

[folksinger]

> Without any examples for or to the contrary, I'm not convinced this is true.

There are two volumes of Songwriters on Songwriting and I guess I could introduce you to all my songwriting buddies if you're so inclined.

[jonnathanson]

While I don't disagree with the author on his points, I find them premised on faulty logic. His thesis assumes that depth and breadth are zero-sum pursuits. I suppose they are if time and energy are limiting factors, but to those who read and write for the love of the game, those limits are lifted.

When it comes time to settle down on a voice and hone your craft, sure, I would never recommend you switch up your style for the hell of it. But if you want to read widely, and if doing so refines your style, great. Go for it. It probably will.

Again, the way the author characterizes this 'problem' is jarringly foreign and antithetical to my own experience. Perhaps I lack the objectivity to see it the way the author does.

[yesenadam]

> rap-funk-metal-folk-electro-bluegrass songs

That sounds awesome!! Country and metal do nothing for me, but that genre sounds potentially amazing.