Appreciating: ”The Age of the Essay”

I loved this reading. Yep I said loved!

Not because of the helpful tips in structuring an essay topic but for the way this article was written and constructed in itself.

Not often do I read an entire reading and soak up all of its literate puns, funnys and impeccable pace. But this one, I did just that.

It was refreshing and amusing. The kind of writing I enjoy producing myself.

After a long piece of writing he comes to this conclusion about the web. How anyone can publish a piece of writing on the web and it gets judged by what it says not who wrote it. He says that popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the short story. He believes that the Web may well make this, the golden age of the essay. A new interesting and exciting way of writing essays, where people can write freely and not stick to the rules they learnt in high school.

I’m starting to really appreciate this method of learning and engagement in Network Media. Having been taught to follow strict processes and formulas for writing academic essays, this blog has me feeling free as a bird!! I’m eager to rebel against all topic sentences and conclusions, to be creative and write whatever and however the hell I want.

These are my favourite paragraphs.
– I find it especially useful to ask why about things that seem wrong. For example, why should there be a connection between humour and misfortune? Why do we find it funny when a character, even one we like, slips on a banana peel? There’s a whole essay’s worth of surprises there for sure.
– Study lots of different things, because some of the most interesting surprises are unexpected connections between different fields. For example, jam, bacon, pickles, and cheese, which are among the most pleasing of foods, were all originally intended as methods of preservation. And so were books and paintings.
– See what you can extract from a frivolous question? If there’s one piece of advice I would give about writing essays, it would be: don’t do as you’re told. Don’t believe what you’re supposed to. Don’t write the essay readers expect; one learns nothing from what one expects. And don’t write the way they taught you to in school.