There are some books you can read in half-light, and then there are those you need to sit with a lamp halfway in your lap to read. You know those books—they can almost fit in one hand, but the size eight font words are spilling over their impossibly narrow margins on the inside.
Zadie Smith’s White Teeth is the latter, as is Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series (at least the copies I have in my house). I published a blog about Smith’s book earlier this year, writing about the clever plot and complex characters, and included some favorite quotes.
After I published the blog, I asked my husband what he thought about the quotes.
He said the quotes were okay. Okay?!
When I pressed him about it, he said he didn’t know the characters, so the quotes didn’t mean much to him.
He was right.
Context matters
I had spent hours immersed in that world, listening to the characters talk and watching them grow. I consider the quotes profound because I had been steeped in their context, like a cup of strong tea.
When taken out of the story, however, the quotes fade. It’s like bringing a vase of beautiful poppies to one of those “super blooms” in California. The flowers look elegant, romantic, and expensive on a dining room table and all by themselves. In the wild, among a million other blooms, they are underwhelming.
This is the same reason my husband and I crack up over finding the perfect meme from a favorite show, but others just smile when they see it. Or why inside jokes bring people together or tear friend groups apart. Context is key to landing the punchline.
The Heath brothers explain the curse of knowledge
In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath call this idea the “Curse of Knowledge.” The more knowledgeable someone is about a topic, the more difficult it can be to explain it to others. We explain too much or not enough or don’t get the highlights right because we’re so busy geeking out over how cool it is that we skip right past the fundamentals to understanding what we’re talking about.
The Heath brothers explain this with a story. A group that does duo piano (not dueling pianos, but duo piano) performances is trying to convince the board of a venue that they need to host more duo piano events. They talk on and on before someone on the board raises their hand with a question: “What is duo piano?”
This question causes the group to start their story again, but this time with the basics. They explain that the piano encompasses the entire range of an orchestra. Having two pianists performing simultaneously is like a double orchestra fun party explosion powered by only four hands. Duo piano was also a noble tradition that had been around for several centuries. The board approved hosting more duo piano performances once they understood what it was and why it mattered.
The curse of knowledge is the nemesis of a good story. Knowledge complicates the simple and clouds us from seeing what makes our information profound to outsiders.
The irony of the curse is that it only becomes harder to defeat as we grow older, go deeper into our careers or hobbies, and learn more about life.
The remedy to this curse is not to know less or avoid talking with people who haven’t read the same books, lived a similar life, or are in the same occupation. It’s just to be aware that it is there. So when your listener’s eyes start to glaze over, you know the curse is taking effect, and you can either let the story go or restart at the very beginning.
I’m not deleting my cursed blog. We’ll let that serve as a warning to all those who wander past, confused and left underwhelmed by its quotes.
Writing Aloud 