论文领域的形态 --- The Shape of the Essay Field
June 2025
An essay has to tell people something they don’t already know. But there are three different reasons people might not know something, and they yield three very different kinds of essays.
一篇散文必须告诉读者一些他们尚未知晓的事情。但读者可能不知道某事有三种不同原因，而这三种原因会产生三种截然不同的散文类型。
One reason people won’t know something is if it’s not important to know. That doesn’t mean it will make a bad essay. For example, you might write a good essay about a particular model of car. Readers would learn something from it. It would add to their picture of the world. For a handful of readers it might even spur some kind of epiphany. But unless this is a very unusual car it’s not critical for everyone to know about it. [1]
读者不知道某事的一个原因是那件事并不重要。那并不意味着它会写成一篇糟糕的散文。例如，你可能会写一篇关于某款汽车模型的好文章。读者会从中学到东西。这会丰富他们对世界的认知。对少数读者来说，这甚至可能激发某种顿悟。但除非这是一款非常特殊的汽车，否则并非人人都必须知道它。[1]
If something isn’t important to know, there’s no answer to the question of why people don’t know it. Not knowing random facts is the default. But if you’re going to write about things that are important to know, you have to ask why your readers don’t already know them. Is it because they’re smart but inexperienced, or because they’re obtuse?
如果某事并不重要，那么为什么人们不知道它这个问题就无从回答。不知道一些琐碎事实是默认状态。但如果你要写的是那些重要的事情，你就得问：为什么读者还不知道这些？是因为他们聪明但缺乏经验，还是因为他们迟钝？
So the three reasons readers might not already know what you tell them are (a) that it’s not important, (b) that they’re obtuse, or (c) that they’re inexperienced.
因此，读者之所以可能不知道你所告诉他们的事，有三种原因：（a）那事并不重要，（b）他们迟钝，或（c）他们缺乏经验。
The reason I did this breakdown was to get at the following fact, which might have seemed controversial if I’d led with it, but should be obvious now. If you’re writing for smart people about important things, you’re writing for the young.
我之所以做这种细分，是为了说明下面这个事实：如果我一开始就提出它，可能看起来有争议，但现在应该很明显。如果你为聪明人写重要的事情，你的写作对象就是年轻人。
Or more precisely, that’s where you’ll have the most effect. Whatever you say should also be at least somewhat novel to you, however old you are. It’s not an essay otherwise, because an essay is something you write to figure something out. But whatever you figure out will presumably be more of a surprise to younger readers than it is to you.
更准确地说，那是你能产生最大影响的群体。无论你说什么，对你自己来说也应该至少有些新意，不管你多大年纪。否则就不是随笔了，因为随笔是你为弄清某件事而写的东西。但不管你弄清了什么，对于年轻读者来说很可能比对你而言更令人惊讶。
There’s a continuum of surprise. At one extreme, something you read can change your whole way of thinking. The Selfish Gene did this to me. It was like suddenly seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous image: you can treat genes rather than organisms as the protagonists, and evolution becomes easier to understand when you do. At the other extreme, writing merely puts into words something readers were already thinking — or thought they were.
惊讶有一个连续体。在一个极端，你读到的东西能改变你整个思维方式。《自私的基因》对我就是这样。那感觉就像突然看到了一个模糊图像的另一种解读：你可以把基因而不是有机体当作主角，这样理解进化就更容易。在另一个极端，写作不过是把读者已经在想的东西——或者他们以为自己在想的东西——用语言表达出来。
The impact of an essay is how much it changes readers’ thinking multiplied by the importance of the topic. But it’s hard to do well at both. It’s hard to have big new ideas about important topics. So in practice there’s a tradeoff: you can change readers’ thinking a lot about moderately important things, or change it a little about very important ones. But with younger readers the tradeoff shifts. There’s more room to change their thinking, so there’s a bigger payoff for writing about important things.
一篇散文的影响力等于它改变读者思维的程度乘以论题的重要性。但两者都做得好很难。要在重要议题上提出重大的新见解并不容易。因此在实践中存在权衡：你可以在重要性中等的事情上极大改变读者的思维，或者在非常重要的事情上只稍微改变他们的看法。但面对年轻读者时，这种权衡会发生变化。改变他们思维的空间更大，因此在重要议题上写作的回报也更高。
The tradeoff isn’t a conscious one, at least not for me. It’s more like a kind of gravitational field that writers work in. But every essayist works in it, whether they realize it or not.
这种权衡并非一种有意识的选择，至少对我来说不是。它更像是一种作家所处的引力场。但每位散文家都在其中工作，无论他们是否意识到。
This seems obvious once you state it, but it took me a long time to understand. I knew I wanted to write for smart people about important topics. I noticed empirically that I seemed to be writing for the young. But it took me years to understand that the latter was an automatic consequence of the former. In fact I only really figured it out as I was writing this essay.
一旦说出来这似乎显而易见，但我花了很长时间才理解。我知道我想为聪明人写作，讨论重要议题。我通过经验注意到我似乎在为年轻人写作。但我花了好几年才明白，后者是前者的自然而然的结果。事实上我是在写这篇散文时才真正弄明白的。
Now that I know it, should I change anything? I don’t think so. In fact seeing the shape of the field that writers work in has reminded me that I’m not optimizing for returns in it. I’m not trying to surprise readers of any particular age; I’m trying to surprise myself.
既然我知道了这一点，我要改变什么吗？我想不必。事实上，看到作家所处领域的形状让我想起我并不是在为其中的回报做优化。我并不是想要让任何特定年龄段的读者感到惊讶；我是在试图让自己感到惊讶。
The way I usually decide what to write about is by following curiosity. I notice something new and dig into it. It would probably be a mistake to change that. But seeing the shape of the essay field has set me thinking. What would surprise young readers? Which important things do people tend to learn late? Interesting question. I should think about that.
我通常决定写什么的方法是追随好奇心。我注意到一些新事物然后深入挖掘。改变这一点可能会是个错误。但看到随笔领域的形状让我开始思考。什么会让年轻读者感到惊讶？人们通常会晚学到哪些重要的事情？有意思的问题。我应该考虑一下。
Note
[1] It’s hard to write a really good essay about an unimportant topic, though, because a really good essayist will inevitably draw the topic into deeper waters. E. B. White could write an essay about how to boil potatoes that ended up being full of timeless wisdom. In which case, of course, it wouldn’t really be about how to boil potatoes; that would just have been the starting point.
[1] 然而，要写一篇关于不重要话题的真正优秀的随笔是很难的，因为真正优秀的随笔作者不可避免地会把话题引入更深的水域。E. B. White 可以写一篇关于如何煮土豆的随笔，而最后却充满了永恒的智慧。在那种情况下，当然，它实际上并不是在谈论如何煮土豆；那只是出发点。
Thanks to Jessica Livingston and Michael Nielsen for reading drafts of this.
感谢 Jessica Livingston 和 Michael Nielsen 阅读草稿。