Matt Yglesias defends the liberal arts from a hackish utilitarianism:


If you can compose an email that's 10 percent clearer in 90 percent of the time as the other guy, you're going to get ahead in a wide range of fields. Outside of office work, a big part of the difference between a hard-working individual who's pretty good at his job and a person who's able to leverage his skills and hardwork into an entrepreneurial or managerial role is precisely the ability to research things and write up plans. Everyone knows that a kid growing up in rural India is obtaining valuable skills if he gets better at English, but this is equally true for a kid growing up in Indiana.

Allow me to use this instance to turn back to the only subject that matters--the Civil War. 

All kidding aside, people are often shocked Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs because they communicate with such incredible clarity. Today you can still find people who argue that the real genius behind Grant's writing was Mark Twain. 

Part of this is the notion that Grant wasn't good at anything except mass slaughter and drunken binges, and thus couldn't be a good writer. But I also don't think people realize that writing is often just about the work clear communication. Grant was fighting at a time when writing clear orders was extremely important to military success, and he excelled at it. His memoir have the same kind of hard brevity you'd find useful coming from a commander. 

On secession for instance:




These are some of the clearest sentences I've ever read. They obviously are a part of American "literature." But "literature" shouldn't be walled off. It is always a good idea to be able communicate clearly--no matter the field. 

As a side-note I'd add that people, for some reason, consider writing to be "mystical." I'm not sure why. It's always felt like a trade to me--almost physically laborious. 
