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.
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
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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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