A Controversial Rare-Book Dealer Tries to Rewrite His Own Ending

"Keenly attuned to his guests’ networks and net worths" is a cute turn of phrase.

Watch out for this story, it'll suck you in.

Exactly the sort of darling that that my college tutor would have said needed to be killed. “Yes, I know you’re very proud of it…”

I have just lost an hour of my workday. A good longform profile of a single controversial character will do that to me.

Why would they say that it needs to be killed? To what end?

The phrase "kill your darlings" circulates in fiction writing schools. The reasoning is that a "darling" turn of phrase which the author really likes is likely something that they are irrationally obsessed over and that distorts the editing process around itself, to the detriment of overall quality.

Like a lot of writing advice this is really subjective.

I'm not who you're replying to, but I agree with them. For my taste, it's a little too clever. It distracts from the subject of the text and instead draws attention to the form of the text itself and its author.

Worse than that, it's clunky-sounding and trips me up verbally.

That's subjective, of course, but I would have preferred if the author had left out this turn of phrase.

I think it boils down to "nobody likes a showoff", really.

I feel like this comes up with me in programming too! Like if I write some really beautiful function as part of solving a problem, I will be a lot sadder if it doesn't make it in, sometimes to my detriment. Similar energy to "cattle not pets".

Probably the most important lesson my C mentor ever told me: "Never be afraid to delete code, no matter how nice you think it is." It still hasn't fully landed with me, and I can relate to what you wrote. But I am trying to.

A couple well-placed em-dashes and at least it doesn’t read like the author is trying to rap.

Again, subjective. Some people like it and it can be a valid literary art form in itself. It's only in purely utilitarian text like technical writing where it doesn't belong.

As well as "Build one to throw away. You will anyway."

Eh, how often do you get to drop a new zeugma? I'll allow it.

I see what you mean (it doesn't quite work for me either), but it works for some people, so eh. I guess the sibling is right, it's subjective.