V (283 books)

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On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder (Goodreads Author)

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V said: " Terribly, horribly, clumsily written in not all, but many places. Let me explain.

From page 85: "As a result of some luck, I finally did get a job, at Yale. This had little to do with any merits of mine, or with any logic of hiring in American univers Terribly, horribly, clumsily written in not all, but many places. Let me explain.

From page 85: "As a result of some luck, I finally did get a job, at Yale. This had little to do with any merits of mine, or with any logic of hiring in American universities. It had been in New Haven that my laptop (with my dissertation research) had been stolen, and it was in New Haven that I was able to publish the next book, The Reconstruction of Nations, about Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. Thought it concerned the grand question of the origins of the modern nation, it was populated with unpredictable characters who saw the processes and worked with them. Like my later book Bloodlands, which was a history of Nazi and Soviet mass killing policies, it drew heavily from the time I had spent in the territories it described."

OK. Is this paragraph about his getting a job? Is there going to be some follow up to the teaser topic "logic of hiring in American universities?" (No.) Or is it somehow about "Biography" which is the subheading of the vignette? Or is it about the places he visited for the books he wrote, somehow all connected by New Haven? Does this paragraph at all illuminate his discussion about "unpredictability" which is the title of this chapter? Did you read the paragraph and feel like it was a mishmash, a weirdly random collection of thoughts?

I really doubt that any brain better than mine could find a truly coherent logic to this and similar paragraphs. When reviewers here write about the rambling, stream of consciousness narrative Snyder presents, this is an example of what they're talking about. It is extraordinarily frustrating to read. Paragraph upon paragraph, vignette upon vignette that all lead to...??? If you take notes and pick through the detritus, you might find a coherent, substantive thesis that actually develops into a grand argument. I'm not entirely sure you will because I've just about given up trying to do so as attempting to follow all the moths flying out of his brain closet is positively exhausting.

Even when the thoughts string together and cohere, his writing has an annoyingly disjointed and obtuse quality. Really offhand, tangential thoughts crop up in the middle of some reminiscence, or discussion, startling the reader, like a rabbit darting out from the underbrush. There are writers who are so lyrical and deliberate when they insert seemingly random lines, but they come back to the central idea, artfully. This is not what Snyder does here. It just feels sloppy, lazy, and unedited.

He also makes sweeping statements that have no support. He pastes together a series of sentence about a topic and then makes a very general statement never truly pulling together the pieces. It's as if he sees his logic as self-evident but doesn't realize that it is not at all self-evident. And then, he thinks if he repeats it often enough in different contexts, somehow it will make sense. For some writers this is true, because they know how to write well, they understand their audience, they truly care about making the idea clear and available. But Snyder, here, .... I don't know. I don't understand why he chose to write this book in such an obtuse fashion.

I believe those who wax effusively about this book are either friends of Snyder's, diehard fans based on other books (which I haven't read but have no reason to believe they're this bad) or are courtiers in the land of the No Clothes Emperor. I'm really disheartened by this book because I don't know who this is written for, really. People who need and desperately want to gain a deeper understanding of freedom as an extremely important concept in our world today, right now, will be frustrated at having to wade through the mishmash. It would be nice to read a book on freedom that is philosophical, clear, and, dare I wish, lyrical, weaving new ideas out of history and other thinkers. But instead to suffer through the tangle of Snyder's thoughts here is to entertain disrespect for our limited time and energy. ...more "

Feb 13, 2025 03:56PM · see review

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Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Feb 22, 2021 09:59PM

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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

by Yuval Noah Harari

bookshelves: currently-reading, topic-2-2022

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Nov 17, 2021 12:21PM

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“My typically easy-going aunt is rankled by the murmurings of a Donald-Trump-led trade war. For her, the trade war is personal. "Good riddance!" she says. "I say its' good that we have this trade war." We used to export all the good things to the United States and kept all the defective stuff to sell here! And look at how we've damaged our environment, just for you Americans! Crafty people, manufacturing is a dirty job, didn't want to ruin your own country!”
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