[mabub24]

I was recommending Henry James in reference to readers attention spans, who often balk at the idea of reading anything quite as dense as from James' writings. But they're missing out. His famous Chp. 42 from Portrait of a Lady is the single best articulation of personal reflection on a failed marriage I have ever read - ever. [0] Losing out on that simply because it's a big imposing paragraph suggests an unwillingness to challenge oneself, which, I think at least, is only to our loss as our attention spans wane.

Specifically for non-fiction, I would recommend R.G. Collingwood, a philosopher of ordinary language who was writing in the late 1930's. His writing, like many philosophers from that time, balances depth with clarity with stunning skill. His introduction to his book "The Principles of Art"[1] is one of my favorite bits of writing ever because of just how clear it is. The paragraphs are often long, but they are meticulously edited to keep forward momentum, and a sense of dawning awareness of a problem which he is solving, present without dragging the reader down. Most of all they are calm. It never seems rushed, or forced, or over-pruned. It's a rhetorical style of instruction that only works when you incorporate length into your writing.

As an aside, the first sentence in the introduction is one of my favorite openings of all time. "The business of this book is to answer the question: What is art?"

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[0]: http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/portrait_lady/4...

[1]: https://books.google.ca/books?id=SXpMC9416y4C&printsec=front...