Anyone can claim to be a writer. It does not take more than having a keyboard in front of you and lots of time.
> Sometimes the journey is as important as the destination, more.
You don't have to make the reader pain through your long and fastidious journey.
> Not all writing needs to follow an introduction, body, conclusion format, with topic sentences.
Indeed, but still writing is supposed to be more than just fluff that says nothing paragraph after paragraph. That's just filler content.
Writing also _can_ be more than just fluff, but it doesn't need to be. It may not be your style, but long form, not-concise content has it's place. See: The New Yorker, etc.
I don't disagree with the feedback that it's rambling; for some, that destroys the value, while for others that's the point.
It's also an interesting representation of a topic he touches on; that social media has turned everything in to bite-sized nuggets of insight with no meat around them, that nobody – not even literary reviewers – have the patience to sit down and fully digest anything longer than a simple blog post length summary.
Given that his book is plugged in the first line, I figure this article is intended simply to advertise more copies of his book. While it does have interesting nuggets of knowledge, such as the initially unimpressive teenager having the most engaging questions, it is competing with many more compelling reads.