Paul Graham: My idols

I have in stock a few topics about which you can write and write. One of them is "idols."

Of course, this is not a list of the most respectable people in the world. I think that such a list is unlikely that anyone will be able to make, even with a great desire.

For example, Einstein, he is not on my list, but he certainly deserves a place among the most respected people. Once I asked my friend, who studies physics, if Einstein was really such a genius, and she answered in the affirmative. So why then is it not on the list? That's because there are people here who influenced me, and not those who could influence me if I realized the full value of their work.
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I needed to think about someone and see if that person was my hero. Thoughts were varied. For example, Montaigne, the creator of the essay, dropped out of my list. Why? Then I asked myself what it takes to call a person a hero? It turns out that you just need to imagine what this person would do in my place in a given situation. Agree, this is not an admiration at all.

After I made the list, I saw in it a common thread. Everyone on the list had two characteristic features: they were overly concerned about their works, but were nonetheless extremely honest. By honesty, I do not understand the performance of all that the viewer wants. They were all fundamentally provocateurs for this reason, although they hide it to varying degrees.

Jack lambert

I grew up in Pittsburgh, in the 70s. If you were not there at that time, it is difficult for you to even imagine how the city belonged to the Steelers. All local news was bad, the steel industry was dying. But the Steelers remained the best American football team, and in some ways it reflected the character of our city. They did not perform miracles, but simply did their work.

Other players were more famous: Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Lin Swan. But they were in the attack, and you always pay more attention to these players. It seems to me, as a 12-year-old expert in American football, that the best of them was Jack Lambert. He was completely ruthless, so he was so good. He didn't just want to play well, he wanted a great game. When a player from another team owned the ball in his half of the field, he perceived it as a personal insult.

The suburb of Pittsburgh in the 1970s was a rather boring place. The school was boring. All adults had their work in large companies. Everything we saw in the media was the same and was made somewhere else. The exception was Jack Lambert. I have never seen him like him.

Kenneth Clark

Kenneth Clark is undoubtedly one of the best nonfiction writers. Most of those who write about the history of art know absolutely nothing about this, and this is proved by a lot of small things. But Clark was as excellent in his writings as he could be imagined.

What makes it so special? The quality of the idea. At first, the style of expression may seem mundane, but it is a hoax. Reading "nudity" is comparable only with riding a Ferrari: as soon as you are settled down, you are pressed against the seat from high speed. While you get used to it, you will be thrown to the sides when the car turns. This person produces ideas so quickly that there is no way to grab them. You will finish reading the chapter with eyes wide open and a smile on your face.

Thanks to the “Civilization” cycle of documentary work, Kenneth was popular in his days. And if you want to get acquainted with the history of art - "Civilization" is what I recommend. This work is much better than those that students have to buy, studying the history of art.

Larry Mikhalko

Each child had his own mentor in certain issues. Larry Mikhalko was my mentor. Looking back, I saw a line between the third and fourth classes. After I met Mr. Mikhalko everything became different.

Why is that? First, he was curious. Yes, of course, many of my teachers were quite educated, but not curious. Larry did not fit into the image of a school teacher, and I suspect that he knew about it. Perhaps it was difficult for him, but it was a pleasure for us students. His lessons were traveling to another world. That is why I liked to go to school every day.

Another thing that distinguished him is the love for us. Children never lie. Other teachers were indifferent to the students, and Mr. Mikhalko wanted to be our friend. One of the last days of the 4th grade, he put us a James Taylor record, where he played "You Have a Friend." Just call me and wherever I am, I will lie down. He died when he was 59 years old from lung cancer. The only time I cried was his funeral.

Leonardo

Recently, I realized what I did not understand as a child: the best that we manage to do is we do for ourselves, not for others. You see the paintings in museums and you believe that they were written exclusively for you. Most of these works are meant to show the world, not to satisfy people. These discoveries are sometimes more pleasant than those things created for satisfaction.

Leonardo was multifaceted. One of his most respectable qualities: he did so many great things. Today, people only know him as a great artist and inventor of the aircraft. From this we can assume that Leonardo was a dreamer who threw all the concepts of launch vehicles to the side. In fact, he made a large number of technical discoveries. So, we can say that he was not only a great artist, but also an excellent engineer.

For me, the main role is played by his paintings. In them, he tried to explore the world, and not show the beautiful. And yet, the paintings of Leonardo stand along with the paintings of the world-class artist. No one has ever been so good since then, when no one was looking at him (No one else, before or since).

Robert Morris

Robert Morris has always characterized him right in everything. It seems that for this you need to be all-knowing, but in fact it is surprisingly easy. Do not say anything if you are not sure. If you're not all-knowing, just don't say too much.

More precisely, the trick is to pay attention to what you want to say. Using this trick, Robert, as far as I know, was mistaken only once, when he was a student. When Mac came out, he said that small desktop computers would never be suitable for real hacking.

In this case, it is not called a trick. If he knew that this was a trick, he would definitely make a reservation at the moment of excitement. Robert has this quality in the blood. He is also incredibly honest. He is not just always right, but he still knows that he is right.

You probably thought it would be nice to never make mistakes, and everyone did it. It is too hard to pay as much attention to errors in ideas as to the idea as a whole. But in practice, no one does. I know how hard it is. After meeting with Robert, I tried to use this principle in software; he seems to have used it in hardware.

P.G. Woodhouse

Finally, people realized the importance of the person of the Woodhouse writer. If you want to be accepted as a writer today, you need to be educated. If your creation has gained public recognition and it is funny, then you are thus putting yourself under suspicion. This is what makes the works of Woodhouse so exciting - he wrote what he wanted and understood that for this his contemporaries would treat him with contempt.

Evelyn Vog recognized him as the best, but at that time people called it too chivalrous and at the same time a wrong gesture. At that time, any casual autobiographical novel of a recent college graduate could count on a more respectful attitude from a literary institution.

Woodhouse may have started with simple atoms, but the way he combined them into molecules was almost impeccable. His rhythm in particular. It makes me shy to write about it. I can only think of two other writers who approached him in style: Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford. These three used English as if it belonged to them.

But Woodhouse had nothing. He did not hesitate. Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford were worried about what other people thought of them: he wanted to seem aristocratic; she was afraid she was not smart enough. But Woodhouse didn't care what they thought of him. He wrote exactly what he wanted.

Alexander Calder

Calder is on this list because it makes me happy. Can his work compete with the work of Leonardo? Most likely no. As probably can not compete anything that refers to the 20th century. But all that is good in Modernism is with Calder, and he does it with his ease.

What is good about Modernism is its novelty, its freshness. The art of the 19th century began to choke.
Paintings popular at that time were mostly the artistic equivalent of mansions — large, fancy, and fake. Modernism meant that we would have to start all over again, creating things with the same serious motives as children do. The artists who took the best advantage of it were the ones who retained in themselves childlike confidence like Klee and Calder.

The Kli was impressive because it could work in many different styles. But of these two, I love Calder more, because his work seems more joyful. Ultimately, the meaning of art is to attract the viewer. It is difficult to predict what exactly he will like; often what seems interesting at first, in a month you will be bored. Calder's sculptures never bother. They just sit there quietly, radiating optimism like a battery that will never discharge. As far as I can tell from books and photos, happiness in Calder’s work is a reflection of his own happiness.

Jane Austen

Everyone admires Jane Austen. Add my name to this list. It seems to me that she is the best writer of all time. I wonder how things are. When I read most of the novels, I pay as much attention to the author’s choices as to the story itself. But in her novels I cannot see the mechanism at work. Although I wonder how she does, what she does, I can't understand it, because she writes so well that her stories don't seem to be invented. I feel as if I am reading a description of what actually happened. When I was younger, I read a lot of novels. I can’t read most of them because there’s not enough information in them. Novels seem so scarce compared to history and biography. But reading Austin is like reading scientific literature. She writes so well that you don't even notice her.

John mccarthy

John McCarthy invented Lisp, a field (or at least a term) of artificial intelligence, and was one of the first members of the best computer science departments at MIT and Stanford. No one would argue with the fact that he is one of the greats, but for me he is special because of Lisp.

It is difficult for us to understand now what conceptual leap occurred at that time. Paradoxically, one of the reasons why it is so hard to evaluate his achievement is that it was so successful. Virtually every programming language invented in the last 20 years includes ideas from Lisp, and every year the average programming language becomes more and more like Lisp.

In 1958, these ideas were not at all obvious. In 1958, programming was thought in two keys. Some people thought of him as a mathematician and argued everything about the Turing machine. Others perceived a programming language as a way to do something and developed languages that were too strongly influenced by the technique of the time. Only McCarthy overcame the difference of opinion. He developed a language that was mathematics. But I developed a not quite right word, or rather I discovered it.

Spitfire

When I wrote this list, I caught myself thinking about people like Douglas Bader and Reginald Joseph Mitchell and Jeffrey Quill, and I realized that although they all did a lot of things in their lives, there was one factor besides others that connected them: Spitfire.
This should be a list of heroes. How can there be a car in it? Because this car was not just a car. She was a prism of heroes. Extraordinary devotion came into her, and extraordinary courage came out of her.

It is customary to call the Second World War the struggle between good and evil, but between the construction of battles, it was so. Original Spitfire retribution, ME 109, tough practical aircraft. It was a killer car. Spitfire was the embodiment of optimism. And not only in these beautiful lines: it was the pinnacle of what could, in principle, be made. But we were right when we decided that above this. Only in the air beauty has an edge.

Steve Jobs

People who lived at the time Kennedy was killed usually remember exactly where they were when they heard about it. I remember exactly where I was when a friend asked me if I heard that Steve Jobs had cancer. I like the earth left from under my feet. After a couple of seconds, she told me that it was a rare, resectable form of cancer and that he would be fine. But those seconds seemed to last forever.

I wasn't sure if Jobs should be included in the list. Most people at Apple seem to be scared of him, and this is a bad sign. But he causes admiration. There is no word to describe who Steve Jobs is. He did not create Apple products himself. Historically, the closest analogy to what he did was patronage in art during the great Renaissance. As the company's CEO, this makes it unique. Most managers pass on their preferences to subordinates. The paradox of development is that to a greater or lesser extent, the choice is determined randomly. But Steve Jobs had his own taste - so good taste that he showed the whole world that taste means much more than they think.

Isaac Newton

Newton has a strange role in my pantheon of heroes: he is the one for whom I reproach myself. He worked on significant things, at least part of his life. It's so easy to get distracted when you work on trifles. The questions you answer are familiar to everyone. You get instant rewards - in fact, you get more rewards in due time if you work on issues of paramount importance. But I hate to realize that this is the way to well-deserved obscurity. To do really great things, you need to look for questions that people did not even consider as questions. Probably at that time there were other people who did this, like Newton, but Newton is my model of such a way of thinking. I'm just starting to understand how it must have felt for him. You have only one life. Why not do something big? The phrase "paradigm shift" is now hackneyed, but Kuhn understood something. And behind this lies a larger wall of laziness and stupidity, now separated from us, which will soon seem to us very thin. If we work like Newton.

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston, and Jackie McDonough for reading the drafts of this article.

Partial translation was done translatedby.com/you/some-heroes/into-ru/trans/?page=2