Great Modern Essays/Articles

[Katy Lied]

All this talk about tripe vs. inspirational articles made me wonder what makes a great essay. I settled on three characteristics, any of which can constitute a great essay: 1) It is a mind changer-- something that is so compelling that it causes me to change (or at least question) a long held belief. 2) It is inspirational or uplifting, and makes me feel or act better-- at least for a few days. and 3) It is a compelling story, so compelling, in fact, that the author just hangs on for the ride, and does not have to be a particularly good writer.

There are lots of sports stories to be found in category #3, and a mediocre beat writer can be inspired to poetic heights when profiling a great story. This is why a lot of sports stories are meh, but then once in a while you get a great sports story.

What is a great essay that you've read? I've restricted my list to "modern" (after 1960) so The Gettysburg Address is out, and so are those muckrakers by Upton Sinclair. Here are my nominees:

Category 1: Mind changer
Malcolm Gladwell, Offensive Play, The New Yorker, Oct 19, 2009
The first really compelling argument against football, with a comparison to Michael Vick's killer pitbulls.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2...?currentPage=1



Category 3: Compelling story
Pete Collins, Pain & Gain, Miami New Times, Dec 23, 1999
Crazy 'roided out story of crazed bodybuilders in freewheeling, drug addled Miami, this article served as the basis for the movie.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1999-12-23/news/pain-gain/

What stories do you return to, time after time?

[old_gregg]

david foster wallace's this is water.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings.

As I'm sure you guys know by now, it is extremely difficult to stay alert and attentive, instead of getting hypnotised by the constant monologue inside your own head (may be happening right now). Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think. It means being conscious and aware enough to choose what you pay attention to and to choose how you construct meaning from experience. Because if you cannot exercise this kind of choice in adult life, you will be totally hosed. Think of the old cliché about "the mind being an excellent servant but a terrible master".

This, like many clichés, so lame and unexciting on the surface, actually expresses a great and terrible truth. It is not the least bit coincidental that adults who commit suicide with firearms almost always shoot themselves in: the head. They shoot the terrible master. And the truth is that most of these suicides are actually dead long before they pull the trigger.

[Clark Addison]

Best 15 page article about children's entertainers you will ever read:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...011801434.html

I know that isn't the setup for a great article, but read it anyway.

[creekster]

You're focused on the substance but I also find that sometimes an essay is written so well that I enjoy it no matter what it is about.