Good writers have two things in common; they prefer to be understood rather than admired; and they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.
Okay – I get the first half of this, and agree with it. But I can’t figure out the meaning of the second half, nor can I find it explained anywhere. It seems to have appeared in a book of short sayings of approximately this length, that he did not elaborate on. And I’m far from a Nietzsche scholar, so I can’t call forth tons of knowledge of his other writing to support whatever he’s saying.
So the confusing part for me is:
…they do not write for knowing and over-acute readers.
That’s the overall confusing sentence.
Two confusing parts of the sentence:
knowing readers
over-acute readers
knowing and over-acute readers
(In that last one: Where “knowing and over-acute” may have to be taken together, , instead of just being two entirely separate groups of people that “good writers” don’t write for.)
For the record, I do know what a reader is. I sometimes know what ‘knowing’ means, but not in this context. And I have no idea what over-acute means in this context or most others. Nor do I know what “knowing and over-acute” taken together would mean.
This is the sort of thing, by the way, that I was rarely able to ask about growing up, due to communication problems. This would lead to me either putting my foot in my mouth. Sometime literally, with the foot in mouth thing– I’m flexible and had a physical-pun sense of humor that could kick in even when I didn’t understand the pun**(1) **in question, or part of it.
Anyway, knowing what any of this means would be really nice. I don’t even know if I agree or disagree (or both or neither) with it, because the second half of the sentence has me too confused. But please don’t answer just to make yourself feel helpful – if you don’t know, you don’t know. And I actually respect “I don’t know” (or silence) more than I respect “I don’t know, but I’m going to give you pages pos random ideas on the topic.
Thanks in advance to anyone who does have a clue what these things mean. Thanks in advance also to people who don’t have a clue and know it, and don’t respond with random wild guesses.
Footnotes
(1) For instance punning about “avoiding the middle-man” for years during a card game where someone had to be in the middle of two other players. To this day, I don’t know what “avoiding the middle-man” actually means. Nor do I know what it means today.
The difference being I now have far more tools at my disposal to recognize when I don’t understand something and everyone else does. I also have more tools to then figure out – whether publicly or with tons and tons of terrified, embarrassment-induced(2) privacy – what the thing actually meant.
Which is why I’m asking, in this post, instead of pretending to understand, or at least pretending not to not understand, which are my usual go-to options from lifelong habit.
But growing up without a constantly reliable means of asking questions and getting them answered accurately in a way I could understand, has resulted in a lot of holes that have never been filled in Huge holes.
(2) If I were a cat, this stuff would have me composure-grooming constantly.
An explanation of composure grooming from The Book of Night with Moon by Diane Duane (italics are already in the book, bold is mine for emphasis):
They made fairly good time, only once having to pause when an under-sidewalk freight elevator started clanging away while Saash was walking directly over its metal doors. She jumped nearly out of her skin at the sudden sound and the lurch of the opening doors, and skittered curbward—straight into a houff on the leash.
There was no danger: the houff was one of those tiny ones, a bundle of silky golden fur and yap and not much else. Saash, however, still panicked by the dreadful clanging of the elevator alarm and the racket of the rising machinery, hauled off and smacked the houff hard in the face, as much from embarrassment as from fright at jostling into it, and galloped off down the street, bristling all over. The houff, having been hit claws-out and hard by something invisible, plunged off down the sidewalk in a panic, half-choking on its collar and shrieking about murder and ghosts, while its bewildered ehhif was towed along behind.
Rhiow was half-choked herself, holding in her merriment. She went after Saash as fast as she could, and didn’t catch up with her until she ran out of steam just before the corner of Fifty-fourth. There Saash sat down close to the corner of the building and began furiously washing her fluffed-up back fur. Rhiow knew better than to say anything, for this was not Saash’s eternal itch: this was he’ihh, composure-grooming, and except under extraordinary circumstances, one didn’t comment on it. Rhiow sat down back to back, keeping watch in the other direction, and waited.
To Saash’s credit, she cut the he’ihh short, then breathed out one annoyed breath and got up.
Suffice to say, if you’ve spent enough time around cats, you’ve seen composure-grooming. Also, houff = dog, and ehhif = human, if you couldn’t get that from context.
Re. The "Knowing and over-acute" bit - I've never read that quote before, and I could be wrong here, but it kind of sounds like he is describing something like - how in his estimation, good writers don't deliberately write in ways that pander to the tastes of people who like feeling smart. And who like having the stuff they read reinforce that self-perceived smartness.
Eg, this is a large part of why I thought "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality" was actually very bad writing. If that makes any sense. That intellectual circle-jerky quality.
