"Writing is a communication"
About this Quote
Sturgeon’s four-word line lands like a slap at the altar of “pure art.” Writing, he insists, isn’t a private séance with your own brilliance; it’s an act with a recipient, a transaction, a chosen channel. The bluntness matters. By refusing adornment, Sturgeon performs the very principle he’s preaching: clarity over mystique, purpose over performance.
The intent is corrective. In a mid-century literary culture that could romanticize the author as lone genius and treat opacity as sophistication, Sturgeon yanks the craft back to its basic social function. He came up in the pulp and science-fiction world, where stories lived or died by whether they reached people, moved copies, and made sense at speed. That background makes the line less like a truism and more like professional ethics: you owe the reader comprehension, momentum, and emotional signal.
The subtext is almost combative: if your sentences aren’t connecting, you’re not “challenging” the audience; you’re failing the assignment. Communication implies choices about audience, tone, rhythm, and even mercy. It also implies responsibility. Communication can manipulate, seduce, instruct, and mislead, but it can’t pretend to be consequence-free. Sturgeon is quietly reminding writers that language is a tool used on other minds.
Contextually, the quote fits a writer known for smuggling human tenderness into speculative premises. For him, the future was never the point; the message was. Writing, in that sense, isn’t self-expression. It’s contact.
The intent is corrective. In a mid-century literary culture that could romanticize the author as lone genius and treat opacity as sophistication, Sturgeon yanks the craft back to its basic social function. He came up in the pulp and science-fiction world, where stories lived or died by whether they reached people, moved copies, and made sense at speed. That background makes the line less like a truism and more like professional ethics: you owe the reader comprehension, momentum, and emotional signal.
The subtext is almost combative: if your sentences aren’t connecting, you’re not “challenging” the audience; you’re failing the assignment. Communication implies choices about audience, tone, rhythm, and even mercy. It also implies responsibility. Communication can manipulate, seduce, instruct, and mislead, but it can’t pretend to be consequence-free. Sturgeon is quietly reminding writers that language is a tool used on other minds.
Contextually, the quote fits a writer known for smuggling human tenderness into speculative premises. For him, the future was never the point; the message was. Writing, in that sense, isn’t self-expression. It’s contact.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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