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Card #c735IR // #c735Synthesis

I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel-writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works.

— In our words · Source: Northanger Abbey (Jane Austen)

[Use when]

Use when tempted to punch down at your own form to look serious. Defend the thing you make.

[Why it matters]

Creators trash their own medium to buy seriousness from its enemies, and in doing so join the attack on their own work. Austen names the trade: contempt for your own craft is ungenerous and impolitic, and it never purchases the respect it is after.

More from Northanger Abbey

#c733Although our productions have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no…Use when a whole medium is dismissed as mind-rot by people who have not read it. The panic is older than the… #c734"And what are you reading, Miss——?" "Oh! it is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected…Use when you catch yourself, or anyone, apologizing for what they consume. The apology is the tell. #c736Let us not desert one another; we are an injured body.Use when your field is under attack from outside. Close ranks; the reviewers will not save you.