Paul Graham

The Age of the Essay

Remember the essays you had to write in high school? Topic sentence, introductory paragraph, supporting paragraphs, conclusion. The conclusion being, say, that Ahab in Moby Dick was a Christ-like igure. !y. "o #$m going to try to gi%e the other side o the story& what an essay really is, and how you write one. !r at least, how # write one. Mods The most ob%ious di erence between real essays and the things one has to write in school is that real essays are not e'clusi%ely about (nglish literature. Certainly schools should teach students how to write. )ut due to a series o historical accidents the teaching o writing has gotten mi'ed together with the study o literature. And so all o%er the country students are writing not about how a baseball team with a small budget might compete with the *ankees, or the role o color in ashion, or what constitutes a good dessert, but about symbolism in +ickens. ,ith the result that writing is made to seem boring and pointless. ,ho cares about symbolism in +ickens? +ickens himsel would be more interested in an essay about color or baseball. -ow did things get this way? To answer that we ha%e to go back almost a thousand years. Around ..//, (urope at last began to catch its breath a ter centuries o chaos, and once they had the lu'ury o curiosity they redisco%ered what we call 0the classics.0 The e ect was rather as i we were %isited by beings rom another solar system. These earlier ci%ili1ations were so much more sophisticated that or the ne't se%eral centuries the main work o (uropean scholars, in almost e%ery ield, was to assimilate what they knew. +uring this period the study o ancient te'ts ac2uired great prestige. #t seemed the essence o what scholars did. As (uropean scholarship gained momentum it became less and less important3 by .45/ someone who wanted to learn about science could ind better teachers than Aristotle in his own era. 6.7 )ut schools change slower than scholarship. #n the .8th century the study o ancient te'ts was still the backbone o the curriculum. The time was then ripe or the 2uestion& i the study o ancient te'ts is a %alid ield or scholarship, why not modern te'ts? The answer, o course, is that the original raison d$etre o classical scholarship was a kind o intellectual archaeology that does not need to be done in the case o contemporary authors. )ut or ob%ious reasons no one wanted to gi%e that answer.
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The archaeological work being mostly done, it implied that those studying the classics were, i not wasting their time, at least working on problems o minor importance. And so began the study o modern literature. There was a good deal o resistance at irst. The irst courses in (nglish literature seem to ha%e been o ered by the newer colleges, particularly American ones. +artmouth, the 9ni%ersity o :ermont, Amherst, and 9ni%ersity College, ;ondon taught (nglish literature in the .<=/s. )ut -ar%ard didn$t ha%e a pro essor o (nglish literature until .<>?, and !' ord not till .<<5. @!' ord had a chair o Chinese be ore it had one o (nglish.A 6=7 ,hat tipped the scales, at least in the 9", seems to ha%e been the idea that pro essors should do research as well as teach. This idea @along with the Ph+, the department, and indeed the whole concept o the modern uni%ersityA was imported rom Germany in the late .8th century. )eginning at Bohns -opkins in .<>?, the new model spread rapidly. ,riting was one o the casualties. Colleges had long taught (nglish composition. )ut how do you do research on composition? The pro essors who taught math could be re2uired to do original math, the pro essors who taught history could be re2uired to write scholarly articles about history, but what about the pro essors who taught rhetoric or composition? ,hat should they do research on? The closest thing seemed to be (nglish literature. 647 And so in the late .8th century the teaching o writing was inherited by (nglish pro essors. This had two drawbacks& @aA an e'pert on literature need not himsel be a good writer, any more than an art historian has to be a good painter, and @bA the subCect o writing now tends to be literature, since that$s what the pro essor is interested in. -igh schools imitate uni%ersities. The seeds o our miserable high school e'periences were sown in .<8=, when the Dational (ducation Association 0 ormally recommended that literature and composition be uni ied in the high school course.0 6E7 The $riting component o the 4 Rs then morphed into (nglish, with the bi1arre conse2uence that high school students now had to write about (nglish literature-- to write, without e%en reali1ing it, imitations o whate%er (nglish pro essors had been publishing in their Cournals a ew decades be ore. #t$s no wonder i this seems to the student a pointless e'ercise, because we$re now three steps remo%ed rom real work& the students are imitating (nglish pro essors, who are imitating classical scholars, who are merely the inheritors o a tradition growing out o what was, >// years ago, ascinating and urgently needed work. No Defense The other big di erence between a real essay and the things they make you write in school is that a real essay doesn$t take a position and then de end it. That principle, like the idea that we ought to be writing about literature, turns out to be another intellectual hango%er o long orgotten origins.
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#t$s o ten mistakenly belie%ed that medie%al uni%ersities were mostly seminaries. #n act they were more law schools. And at least in our tradition lawyers are ad%ocates, trained to take either side o an argument and make as good a case or it as they can. ,hether cause or e ect, this spirit per%aded early uni%ersities. The study o rhetoric, the art o arguing persuasi%ely, was a third o the undergraduate curriculum. 657 And a ter the lecture the most common orm o discussion was the disputation. This is at least nominally preser%ed in our present-day thesis de ense& most people treat the words thesis and dissertation as interchangeable, but originally, at least, a thesis was a position one took and the dissertation was the argument by which one de ended it. +e ending a position may be a necessary e%il in a legal dispute, but it$s not the best way to get at the truth, as # think lawyers would be the irst to admit. #t$s not Cust that you miss subtleties this way. The real problem is that you can$t change the 2uestion. And yet this principle is built into the %ery structure o the things they teach you to write in high school. The topic sentence is your thesis, chosen in ad%ance, the supporting paragraphs the blows you strike in the con lict, and the conclusion-- uh, what is the conclusion? # was ne%er sure about that in high school. #t seemed as i we were Cust supposed to restate what we said in the irst paragraph, but in di erent enough words that no one could tell. ,hy bother? )ut when you understand the origins o this sort o 0essay,0 you can see where the conclusion comes rom. #t$s the concluding remarks to the Cury. Good writing should be con%incing, certainly, but it should be con%incing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good Cob o arguing. ,hen # gi%e a dra t o an essay to riends, there are two things # want to know& which parts bore them, and which seem uncon%incing. The boring bits can usually be i'ed by cutting. )ut # don$t try to i' the uncon%incing bits by arguing more cle%erly. # need to talk the matter o%er. At the %ery least # must ha%e e'plained something badly. #n that case, in the course o the con%ersation #$ll be orced to come up a with a clearer e'planation, which # can Cust incorporate in the essay. Fore o ten than not # ha%e to change what # was saying as well. )ut the aim is ne%er to be con%incing per se. As the reader gets smarter, con%incing and true become identical, so i # can con%ince smart readers # must be near the truth. The sort o writing that attempts to persuade may be a %alid @or at least ine%itableA orm, but it$s historically inaccurate to call it an essay. An essay is something else. Trying To understand what a real essay is, we ha%e to reach back into history again, though this time not so ar. To Fichel de Fontaigne, who in .5</ published a book o what he called 0essais.0 -e was doing something 2uite di erent rom what lawyers do, and the di erence is embodied in the name. Essayer is the Grench %erb meaning 0to try0 and an essai is an attempt. An essay
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is something you write to try to igure something out. Gigure out what? *ou don$t know yet. And so you can$t begin with a thesis, because you don$t ha%e one, and may ne%er ha%e one. An essay doesn$t begin with a statement, but with a 2uestion. #n a real essay, you don$t take a position and de end it. *ou notice a door that$s aCar, and you open it and walk in to see what$s inside. # all you want to do is igure things out, why do you need to write anything, though? ,hy not Cust sit and think? ,ell, there precisely is Fontaigne$s great disco%ery. ('pressing ideas helps to orm them. #ndeed, helps is ar too weak a word. Fost o what ends up in my essays # only thought o when # sat down to write them. That$s why # write them. #n the things you write in school you are, in theory, merely e'plaining yoursel to the reader. #n a real essay you$re writing or yoursel . *ou$re thinking out loud. )ut not 2uite. Bust as in%iting people o%er orces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read orces you to think well. "o it does matter to ha%e an audience. The things #$%e written Cust or mysel are no good. They tend to peter out. ,hen # run into di iculties, # ind # conclude with a ew %ague 2uestions and then dri t o to get a cup o tea. Fany published essays peter out in the same way. Particularly the sort written by the sta writers o newsmaga1ines. !utside writers tend to supply editorials o the de end-a-position %ariety, which make a beeline toward a rousing @and oreordainedA conclusion. )ut the sta writers eel obliged to write something 0balanced.0 "ince they$re writing or a popular maga1ine, they start with the most radioacti%ely contro%ersial 2uestions, rom which-because they$re writing or a popular maga1ine-- they then proceed to recoil in terror. Abortion, or or against? This group says one thing. That group says another. !ne thing is certain& the 2uestion is a comple' one. @)ut don$t get mad at us. ,e didn$t draw any conclusions.A The River Huestions aren$t enough. An essay has to come up with answers. They don$t always, o course. "ometimes you start with a promising 2uestion and get nowhere. )ut those you don$t publish. Those are like e'periments that get inconclusi%e results. An essay you publish ought to tell the reader something he didn$t already know. )ut what you tell him doesn$t matter, so long as it$s interesting. #$m sometimes accused o meandering. #n de end-a-position writing that would be a law. There you$re not concerned with truth. *ou already know where you$re going, and you want to go straight there, blustering through obstacles, and hand-wa%ing your way across swampy ground. )ut that$s not what you$re trying to do in an essay. An essay is supposed to be a search or truth. #t would be suspicious i it didn$t meander.
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The Feander @aka FenderesA is a ri%er in Turkey. As you might e'pect, it winds all o%er the place. )ut it doesn$t do this out o ri%olity. The path it has disco%ered is the most economical route to the sea. 6?7 The ri%er$s algorithm is simple. At each step, low down. Gor the essayist this translates to& low interesting. ! all the places to go ne't, choose the most interesting. !ne can$t ha%e 2uite as little oresight as a ri%er. # always know generally what # want to write about. )ut not the speci ic conclusions # want to reach3 rom paragraph to paragraph # let the ideas take their course. This doesn$t always work. "ometimes, like a ri%er, one runs up against a wall. Then # do the same thing the ri%er does& backtrack. At one point in this essay # ound that a ter ollowing a certain thread # ran out o ideas. # had to go back se%en paragraphs and start o%er in another direction. Gundamentally an essay is a train o thought-- but a cleaned-up train o thought, as dialogue is cleaned-up con%ersation. Real thought, like real con%ersation, is ull o alse starts. #t would be e'hausting to read. *ou need to cut and ill to emphasi1e the central thread, like an illustrator inking o%er a pencil drawing. )ut don$t change so much that you lose the spontaneity o the original. (rr on the side o the ri%er. An essay is not a re erence work. #t$s not something you read looking or a speci ic answer, and eel cheated i you don$t ind it. #$d much rather read an essay that went o in an une'pected but interesting direction than one that plodded duti ully along a prescribed course. Surprise "o what$s interesting? Gor me, interesting means surprise. #nter aces, as Geo rey Bames has said, should ollow the principle o least astonishment. A button that looks like it will make a machine stop should make it stop, not speed up. (ssays should do the opposite. (ssays should aim or ma'imum surprise. # was a raid o lying or a long time and could only tra%el %icariously. ,hen riends came back rom araway places, it wasn$t Cust out o politeness that # asked what they saw. # really wanted to know. And # ound the best way to get in ormation out o them was to ask what surprised them. -ow was the place di erent rom what they e'pected? This is an e'tremely use ul 2uestion. *ou can ask it o the most unobser%ant people, and it will e'tract in ormation they didn$t e%en know they were recording. "urprises are things that you not only didn$t know, but that contradict things you thought you knew. And so they$re the most %aluable sort o act you can get. They$re like a ood that$s not merely healthy, but counteracts the unhealthy e ects o things you$%e already eaten.
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-ow do you ind surprises? ,ell, therein lies hal the work o essay writing. @The other hal is e'pressing yoursel well.A The trick is to use yoursel as a pro'y or the reader. *ou should only write about things you$%e thought about a lot. And anything you come across that surprises you, who$%e thought about the topic a lot, will probably surprise most readers. Gor e'ample, in a recent essay # pointed out that because you can only Cudge computer programmers by working with them, no one knows who the best programmers are o%erall. # didn$t reali1e this when # began that essay, and e%en now # ind it kind o weird. That$s what you$re looking or. "o i you want to write essays, you need two ingredients& a ew topics you$%e thought about a lot, and some ability to erret out the une'pected. ,hat should you think about? Fy guess is that it doesn$t matter-- that anything can be interesting i you get deeply enough into it. !ne possible e'ception might be things that ha%e deliberately had all the %ariation sucked out o them, like working in ast ood. #n retrospect, was there anything interesting about working at )askin-Robbins? ,ell, it was interesting how important color was to the customers. Iids a certain age would point into the case and say that they wanted yellow. +id they want Grench :anilla or ;emon? They would Cust look at you blankly. They wanted yellow. And then there was the mystery o why the perennial a%orite Pralines $n$ Cream was so appealing. @# think now it was the salt.A And the di erence in the way athers and mothers bought ice cream or their kids& the athers like bene%olent kings bestowing largesse, the mothers harried, gi%ing in to pressure. "o, yes, there does seem to be some material e%en in ast ood. # didn$t notice those things at the time, though. At si'teen # was about as obser%ant as a lump o rock. # can see more now in the ragments o memory # preser%e o that age than # could see at the time rom ha%ing it all happening li%e, right in ront o me. Observation "o the ability to erret out the une'pected must not merely be an inborn one. #t must be something you can learn. -ow do you learn it? To some e'tent it$s like learning history. ,hen you irst read history, it$s Cust a whirl o names and dates. Dothing seems to stick. )ut the more you learn, the more hooks you ha%e or new acts to stick onto-- which means you accumulate knowledge at what$s collo2uially called an e'ponential rate. !nce you remember that Dormans con2uered (ngland in ./??, it will catch your attention when you hear that other Dormans con2uered southern #taly at about the same time. ,hich will make you wonder about Dormandy, and take note when a third book mentions that Dormans were not, like most o what is now called Grance, tribes that lowed in as the Roman empire collapsed, but :ikings @norman J north manA who arri%ed our centuries later in 8... ,hich makes it easier to remember that +ublin was also established by :ikings
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in the <E/s. (tc, etc s2uared. Collecting surprises is a similar process. The more anomalies you$%e seen, the more easily you$ll notice new ones. ,hich means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, li e should become more and more surprising. ,hen # was a kid, # used to think adults had it all igured out. # had it backwards. Iids are the ones who ha%e it all igured out. They$re Cust mistaken. ,hen it comes to surprises, the rich get richer. )ut @as with wealthA there may be habits o mind that will help the process along. #t$s good to ha%e a habit o asking 2uestions, especially 2uestions beginning with ,hy. )ut not in the random way that three year olds ask why. There are an in inite number o 2uestions. -ow do you ind the ruit ul ones? # ind it especially use ul to ask why about things that seem wrong. Gor e'ample, why should there be a connection between humor and mis ortune? ,hy do we ind it unny when a character, e%en one we like, slips on a banana peel? There$s a whole essay$s worth o surprises there or sure. # you want to notice things that seem wrong, you$ll ind a degree o skepticism help ul. # take it as an a'iom that we$re only achie%ing .K o what we could. This helps counteract the rule that gets beaten into our heads as children& that things are the way they are because that is how things ha%e to be. Gor e'ample, e%eryone #$%e talked to while writing this essay elt the same about (nglish classes-- that the whole process seemed pointless. )ut none o us had the balls at the time to hypothesi1e that it was, in act, all a mistake. ,e all thought there was Cust something we weren$t getting. # ha%e a hunch you want to pay attention not Cust to things that seem wrong, but things that seem wrong in a humorous way. #$m always pleased when # see someone laugh as they read a dra t o an essay. )ut why should # be? #$m aiming or good ideas. ,hy should good ideas be unny? The connection may be surprise. "urprises make us laugh, and surprises are what one wants to deli%er. # write down things that surprise me in notebooks. # ne%er actually get around to reading them and using what #$%e written, but # do tend to reproduce the same thoughts later. "o the main %alue o notebooks may be what writing things down lea%es in your head. People trying to be cool will ind themsel%es at a disad%antage when collecting surprises. To be surprised is to be mistaken. And the essence o cool, as any ourteen year old could tell you, is nil admirari. ,hen you$re mistaken, don$t dwell on it3 Cust act like nothing$s wrong and maybe no one will notice. !ne o the keys to coolness is to a%oid situations where ine'perience may make you look oolish. # you want to ind surprises you should do the opposite. "tudy lots o di erent things, because some o the most interesting surprises are une'pected connections between di erent ields. Gor e'ample, Cam, bacon, pickles, and cheese, which are among the most
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pleasing o oods, were all originally intended as methods o preser%ation. And so were books and paintings. ,hate%er you study, include history-- but social and economic history, not political history. -istory seems to me so important that it$s misleading to treat it as a mere ield o study. Another way to describe it is all the data we have so far. Among other things, studying history gi%es one con idence that there are good ideas waiting to be disco%ered right under our noses. "words e%ol%ed during the )ron1e Age out o daggers, which @like their lint predecessorsA had a hilt separate rom the blade. )ecause swords are longer the hilts kept breaking o . )ut it took i%e hundred years be ore someone thought o casting hilt and blade as one piece. Disobedience Abo%e all, make a habit o paying attention to things you$re not supposed to, either because they$re 0inappropriate,0 or not important, or not what you$re supposed to be working on. # you$re curious about something, trust your instincts. Gollow the threads that attract your attention. # there$s something you$re really interested in, you$ll ind they ha%e an uncanny way o leading back to it anyway, Cust as the con%ersation o people who are especially proud o something always tends to lead back to it. Gor e'ample, #$%e always been ascinated by comb-o%ers, especially the e'treme sort that make a man look as i he$s wearing a beret made o his own hair. "urely this is a lowly sort o thing to be interested in-- the sort o super icial 2ui11ing best le t to teenage girls. And yet there is something underneath. The key 2uestion, # reali1ed, is how does the comber-o%er not see how odd he looks? And the answer is that he got to look that way incrementally. ,hat began as combing his hair a little care ully o%er a thin patch has gradually, o%er =/ years, grown into a monstrosity. Gradualness is %ery power ul. And that power can be used or constructi%e purposes too& Cust as you can trick yoursel into looking like a reak, you can trick yoursel into creating something so grand that you would ne%er ha%e dared to plan such a thing. #ndeed, this is Cust how most good so tware gets created. *ou start by writing a stripped-down kernel @how hard can it be?A and gradually it grows into a complete operating system. -ence the ne't leap& could you do the same thing in painting, or in a no%el? "ee what you can e'tract rom a ri%olous 2uestion? # there$s one piece o ad%ice # would gi%e about writing essays, it would be& don$t do as you$re told. +on$t belie%e what you$re supposed to. +on$t write the essay readers e'pect3 one learns nothing rom what one e'pects. And don$t write the way they taught you to in school. The most important sort o disobedience is to write essays at all. Gortunately, this sort o disobedience shows signs o becoming rampant. #t used to be that only a tiny number o o icially appro%ed writers were allowed to write essays. Faga1ines published ew o them, and Cudged them less by what they said than who wrote them3 a maga1ine might publish a
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story by an unknown writer i it was good enough, but i they published an essay on ' it had to be by someone who was at least orty and whose Cob title had ' in it. ,hich is a problem, because there are a lot o things insiders can$t say precisely because they$re insiders. The #nternet is changing that. Anyone can publish an essay on the ,eb, and it gets Cudged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it. ,ho are you to write about '? *ou are whate%er you wrote. Popular maga1ines made the period between the spread o literacy and the arri%al o T: the golden age o the short story. The ,eb may well make this the golden age o the essay. And that$s certainly not something # reali1ed when # started writing this.

Notes 6.7 #$m thinking o !resme @c. .4=4-<=A. )ut it$s hard to pick a date, because there was a sudden drop-o in scholarship Cust as (uropeans inished assimilating classical science. The cause may ha%e been the plague o .4E>3 the trend in scienti ic progress matches the population cur%e. 6=7 Parker, ,illiam R. 0,here +o College (nglish +epartments Come Grom?0 College English =< @.8??-?>A, pp. 448-45.. Reprinted in Gray, +onald B. @edA. The Department of English at Indiana University Bloomington !"!# $%&. #ndiana 9ni%ersity Publications. +aniels, Robert :. The University of 'ermont( The )irst Two *+ndred ,ears. 9ni%ersity o :ermont, .88.. Fueller, Griedrich F. ;etter to the -all Mall .a/ette. .<<?L<>. Reprinted in )acon, Alan @edA. The 0ineteenth#Cent+ry *istory of English 1t+dies. Ashgate, .88<. 647 #$m compressing the story a bit. At irst literature took a back seat to philology, which @aA seemed more serious and @bA was popular in Germany, where many o the leading scholars o that generation had been trained. #n some cases the writing teachers were trans ormed in sit+ into (nglish pro essors. Grancis Bames Child, who had been )oylston Pro essor o Rhetoric at -ar%ard since .<5., became in .<>? the uni%ersity$s irst pro essor o (nglish. 6E7 Parker, op. cit., p. =5. 657 The undergraduate curriculum or trivi+m @whence 0tri%ial0A consisted o ;atin grammar, rhetoric, and logic. Candidates or masters$ degrees went on to study the 2+adrivi+m o arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Together these were the se%en liberal arts.
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The study o rhetoric was inherited directly rom Rome, where it was considered the most important subCect. #t would not be ar rom the truth to say that education in the classical world meant training landowners$ sons to speak well enough to de end their interests in political and legal disputes. 6?7 Tre%or )lackwell points out that this isn$t strictly true, because the outside edges o cur%es erode aster. Thanks to Ien Anderson, Tre%or )lackwell, "arah -arlin, Bessica ;i%ingston, Backie Fc+onough, and Robert Forris or reading dra ts o this.

A%ailable at& http&LLwww.paulgraham.comLessay.html ,ritten on& September 2004

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