Episode · How I Write · 2025-04-09
Books mentioned on You’ve Never Seen Writing Visualized Like This — Michael Dean
Michael Dean discussed Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell, How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald and others, and A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Consider the Lobster
Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace is a critically acclaimed collection of essays that uses sharp journalistic observation and deep intellectual inquiry to explore disparate topics, ranging from the ethics of eating lobsters at a gourmet festival to the mechanics of language.
Discussed“So you have uh consider the lobster, David Foster Wallace, 2003, and then uh shooting an elephant by George Orwell.”
Where to get it
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Shooting an Elephant
Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell is a classic essay detailing the author's experiences as a police officer in Burma and the moral conflicts inherent in imperial rule.
Discussed“So you have uh consider the lobster, David Foster Wallace, 2003, and then uh shooting an elephant by George Orwell.”
Where to get it
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How to Write a Thesis
How to Write a Thesis by Umberto Eco is a classic guide providing practical instructions and systematic methods for conducting academic research and composing scholarly papers.
Discussed“So Alberto Ekko, he wrote a book called How to Write a Thesis. Uh and he has something called the pick one volcano principle.”
Where to get it
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The Great Gatsby
The Great Gatsby by F.
Discussed“Hunter S. Thompson rewrote every single word of The Great Gatsby so I could feel what it was like to write a great novel.”
Where to get it
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A Pattern Language
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein is a foundational architectural and design treatise that maps universal patterns across towns, buildings, and spaces.
Discussed“So, that's a book by Christopher Alexander in uh 1978. And basically it's him trying to map the universal patterns across all of architecture.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (6) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Another fun fact is uh Howard Ror the character in Ran's novel Fountain Head is based off of Franklin Wright.”
“Jane Austin, love phonetics, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility.”
“Jane Austin, love phonetics, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility.”
“Jane Austin, love phonetics, pride and prejudice, sense and sensibility.”
“There's a funny example where someone used AI to rewrite Paradise Lost, a classic, you know, epic poem, and then they had AI judge the two, and one was slop, and it preferred the slop.”
“There's a funny example where someone used AI to rewrite Paradise Lost, a classic, you know, epic poem, and then they had AI judge the two...”