Whitwell Elwin's recommendation that Darwin's "Origin of Species" be revamped to focus on pigeons: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2457A.xml … … "Every body is interested in pigeons." Easy to laugh, but the letter has some sensible observations, though misses the big picture. Taste is tough.
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What strikes me is how this flavor of letter seems to have persisted & afflicted just about every (somewhat) popular writer — so clearly sincere, vulnerable yet authoritative, and prescriptive in a way that is both object-level terrible & uncomfortably intimate in what it reveals
What saves it, I think, is that while it is written authoritatively and prescriptively, as you say, it does not impose itself on Darwin. I read it as saying: "you have asked for my opinion, and here it is, in unapologetic truth and sincerity. But I may be wrong."
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What's a bit painful about it (and letters like it) isn't that it's unfairly imposing, but that it's simultaneously so genuine, authoritative, vulnerable, cuttingly correct, and wildly off-base. It's the perfect combo of social, emotional, and cognitive dissonance
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I guess the worst advice is very-nearly-excellent advice: so close to excellent that you have trouble discounting it, but fatally flawed so that following it would be a disaster.
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