Pro Bronson on Writing

By Kathryn 

I always assumed writing amounted to a slow, torturous, breakdown of a writer’s native syntax and vocabulary, followed by a blind and fearful reconstruction … But, given Po Bronson’s very different definition, I’m forced to either accept that there’s many kinds of ‘writing,’ or that whatever Po Bronson is doing isn’t ‘writing.’

From Bronson’s “About Me” page (emphases, my own):

My Basic Philosophy
(as it comes to writing)

I studied cultural economics and studio art in college. Cultural economics is the study of the interplay between capitalism and local culture, their influence on each other – Japanese keiretsu, Yugoslavian worker-controlled firms, Israeli kibbutzes, Basque cooperatives. I was expected to write an honors thesis, a hefty piece of research, 50+ pages minimum. Most people found this to be a ruinous chore; completing the task was rare. I wrote mine, then had another idea, and wrote a second, then a third, and a fourth. Four honors theses! Stanford had never seen anything like it. That was the first time it occurred to me, “maybe it’s not economics that I like – maybe it’s writing.”