Góð grein um ritgerðir (og comb-overs)

Mig langar að vísa í enn eina stórgóðu greinina eftir meistara Paul Graham. Hún er að vísu frá því 2004, en ég var að lesa hana í fyrsta skipti núna. Hún fjallar um ritgerðir, eða “essays” og þær ranghugmyndir sem eru barðar inní okkur í skólum varðandi þetta fyrirbæri.

Smá smakk:

I’ve always been fascinated by comb-overs, especially the extreme sort that make a man look as if he’s wearing a beret made of his own hair. Surely this is a lowly sort of thing to be interested in– the sort of superficial quizzing best left to teenage girls. And yet there is something underneath. The key question, I realized, is how does the comber-over not see how odd he looks? And the answer is that he got to look that way incrementally. What began as combing his hair a little carefully over a thin patch has gradually, over 20 years, grown into a monstrosity. Gradualness is very powerful.

The Age of the Essay