• rumba@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    I didn’t doubt that’s where Prisig was going with it. He just made the character so uninviting, conceited, and self centered that the message itself seemed to get lost. It felt like I was watching a movie where I hated the main character.

    • redhorsejacket@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Yes, I also really struggled with his writing style. It felt like he was layering in additional degrees of obfuscation by creating meta-characters and framing his philosophical points in the form of fictionalized conversations from this road trip he took. Like, bud, you’re already talking about abstracted concepts like Platonic Good. Do we REALLY need more abstraction?

      To which Prisig, author of the most (financially) successful book on philosophy in America, would say, “Evidently, yes.”

      At least Thoreau came by his difficult to parse writing style honestly, being a product of the 19th century and all.