Weekly Filet, click logo to get back to home page

Choosing what to leave out

Choosing what to leave out

Lately, lot of attention has been on how computers write. For a change, some reflections on how humans write. Well, not any human. John McPhee, 92 years old, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a pioneer in narrative non-fiction, on the craft of greening and on taking inspiration from icebergs. Wonderful piece.

Favourite quote: «If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.»


From Weekly Filet #441, in May 2023.

💔 Some older links might be broken — that's the state of the web, sadly. If you find one, ping me.

👆 This is one of 2577 recommended links, manually curated since 2011. If you like things like this, you will love the Weekly Filet newsletter. The five best links of the week, every Friday.