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1. emmelaich · 1790850175 · focus · HN ↗

   <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;ETJ43" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.is&#x2F;ETJ43
2. afpx · 1790850557 · focus · HN ↗

   What a delight to see Barzun&#x27;s name here. I read From Dawn to Decadence in 2000 when I was young. It was one of the first books of its kind that I read, and it stuck with me all these years because its style was so bizarre to me - unstructured, meandering, erudite, conversational. It connected references of the obscure to the well-known. The wikipedia page notes a review that described his judgments of historical figures as &quot;at best otiose and...[at times] ludicrously banal.&quot; And, that makes me laugh. I wish there were more books written that tweaked literary editors. If the 20th century is described as decadent (&quot;Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces&quot;), I describe the 21st century as a climax to platitudinous, bromidic, jejeune.

   1. Michelangelo11 · 1790852397 · focus · HN ↗

      &gt; What a delight to see Barzun&#x27;s name here.

      OP here, glad to read that. I posted this not expecting much engagement, and I&#x27;m very happy to see the article on the front page.

      &gt; The wikipedia page notes a review that described his judgments of historical figures as &quot;at best otiose and...[at times] ludicrously banal.&quot;

      Wittgenstein&#x27;s ruler.

   2. Jun8 · 1790859513 · focus · HN ↗

      Bravo! Your last sentence perhaps may be called anti-autological: condemning a certain kind of prose by performing the opposite. Brought to mind Pope’s An Essay on Criticism.

      1. afpx · 1791044739 · focus · HN ↗

         Thanks. HN is one of the final places to appreciate such humor.
   3. mjklin · 1790941890 · focus · HN ↗

      Surprisingly, when he arrives at the WWI period in that book Barzun leaves his historian’s voice and talks about being in Paris under bombardment from Big Bertha. Kind of a shock but also very humanizing.
3. Michelangelo11 · 1790857355 · focus · HN ↗

   &gt; The practical world, the business world, has created the &quot;credentials society ,&quot; and beginning in the 40s and 50s it became a mania to qualify for a particular line, to have a certificate or a diploma in this, that, or the other thing, -- in many things that are not really subjects at all -- activities in the so-called real world which should be carried on by intelligent people but not necessarily by people who have taken a course. What is too bad is that people have very little faith in the value of intelligence, of general principles.

   More relevant than ever with AI, IMO, because AI is such a wonderful multiplier for general intelligence (and broad knowledge).

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