The Slow-Word Manifesto War

Benjamin F. Carlson Jan 1, 2010

Trevor Butterworth wasn't the first to write a "slow word" manifesto (see: the Wall Street Journal's "Manifesto for Slow Communication" last August), but in the midst of a meditative essay for Forbes he made one mistake: calling out Gawker's gossipy "vision of the world." Butterworth's overall point was touting "the idea of consuming less, but better, media." But Gawker writer Hamilton Nolan answered Butterworth's piece with a harsher manifesto of his own:

The primary problem with manifestos is that the designation of any written work as a "manifesto" is an uncannily accurate predictor of unearned authorial pretensions of grandeur.

Nolan thumps Butterworth for failing to promote book-reading, dismisses the idea that his site has "a vision," and asserts that Gawker's style is a descendant of Mark Twain's. See for yourself:

Mark Twain, for example, would have been a great Gawker writer...We're still doing the same shit almost 150 years later. There's yer slow-word movement.

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Sources

Manifestos Are Dumb: A Manifesto, Hamilton Nolan, Gawker

Topics: Literature

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