What Should an Essay Be
It is true that many of the modern essayists find it easier to get published when they ramble across the screen, or page, without saying anything. The pieces that get published tend to be a self absorbed gazing at their shoes, or their navels, and contemplating the ways life has warn them down, without giving their readers anything to think about. Publishers tend to avoid those pieces that ask questions, or that make us think about the ways we see the world.
In this age when information is tossed at us nearly at the speed of light, or at least as fast as our computers can bring it in, is taking the time to think about, to ask questions of the stream of factoids that come our way, a thing of the past? Are we being conditioned to just sit in front of the screen and more-or-less take in the whole, without giving a thought to any of it. Perhaps we have too much information to even begin to be able to pass judgment on it, asking questions of it, even if there are no answers for them. For a plethora of conflicting information leaves us feeling as though it cannot be evaluated. Does this mean that in order to be able to question the particulars of our lives, we need to turn off the information machines so that we can begin to concentrate on what we already have?
Trolling for information becomes an addiction, especially for the writer. It is so easy to pick up facts, book-marking websites that look as though they might have something on them that the writer could use, instead of writing down ideas.
I am as guilty of this as the next writer. Merely verifying information feels like such a useful activity, when I am doing it. But, I will never have time to read and assimilate all the stuff I collect. I cart books home from the library, and make notes of the books I should read, and finally leave the questions about what they might mean for others to address, if I consider them at all. Yes, it was easier to form opinions about the world when we did not have so much information to process. We have graduated from making broad, sweeping generalizations such as: All men are created equal, to saying, well yes, but... and the buts go on. We fill page after page with words that say little, and bore our readers.
In this age when information is tossed at us nearly at the speed of light, or at least as fast as our computers can bring it in, is taking the time to think about, to ask questions of the stream of factoids that come our way, a thing of the past? Are we being conditioned to just sit in front of the screen and more-or-less take in the whole, without giving a thought to any of it. Perhaps we have too much information to even begin to be able to pass judgment on it, asking questions of it, even if there are no answers for them. For a plethora of conflicting information leaves us feeling as though it cannot be evaluated. Does this mean that in order to be able to question the particulars of our lives, we need to turn off the information machines so that we can begin to concentrate on what we already have?
Trolling for information becomes an addiction, especially for the writer. It is so easy to pick up facts, book-marking websites that look as though they might have something on them that the writer could use, instead of writing down ideas.
I am as guilty of this as the next writer. Merely verifying information feels like such a useful activity, when I am doing it. But, I will never have time to read and assimilate all the stuff I collect. I cart books home from the library, and make notes of the books I should read, and finally leave the questions about what they might mean for others to address, if I consider them at all. Yes, it was easier to form opinions about the world when we did not have so much information to process. We have graduated from making broad, sweeping generalizations such as: All men are created equal, to saying, well yes, but... and the buts go on. We fill page after page with words that say little, and bore our readers.
