hello again, im sorry to pester you, but i have exams in a week or so and i was wondering if you had any essays up your sleeve that are written particularly well, as I think it is just my writing style that I fall down on. Thank you so much for any help.
well-written essays. okay.
i don’t know how to quantify or qualify what makes these stand out to me. some are cool and arch and elegant, and some are rough and jagged and white-hot with fury, some are scientific, some are intimate. for some it’s to do with the voice and others it’s the rhythm or the structure or the lexicon or the ways of looking. i’ve included links to all of them—if you’re searching for stylistic inspiration i’d suggest rifling through until you find one that hooks you.
susan sontag, “notes on camp” and “illness as metaphor”
richard hofstadter, “the paranoid style in american politics”
marina warner, “chamber of secrets: the sorcery of angela carter”
bell hooks, “is paris burning?“ and ”killing rage“ and ”understanding patriarchy”
d.l. rosenhan, “being sane in insane places“ (tw: mental illness)
anne carson, “decreation”
david grann, “the mark of a masterpiece”
garrett hardin, “the tragedy of the commons”
tim b’brien, “how to tell a true war story”
david simon, “in baltimore, no one left to press the police”
laura mulvey, “visual pleasure and narrative cinema”
virginia woolf, “on being ill” and “a room of one’s own” and “the death of the moth”
rachel carson, “the marginal world”
anthony lane, “the master”
philip gourevitch, “after the genocide” (tw: brutality, murder)
janet malcolm, “iphigenia in forest hills”
james baldwin, “notes of a native son”
oscar wilde, “the truth of masks” and ”the soul of man under socialism”
donald barthelme, “not-knowing”
david foster wallace, “consider the lobster“ and ”shipping out”
annie dillard, “the death of a moth”
hélène cixous, “the laugh of the medusa”
george orwell, “politics and the english language”
naomi klein, “baghdad: year zero”
aldous huxley, “the doors of perception”
elaine scarry, “on beauty and being just”
neal stephenson, “mother earth mother board”
george packer, “the megacity”
salman rushdie, “the disappeared”
chris jones, “the honor system”
david eagleman, “the brain on trial”
mark bowden, “the dark art of interrogation“ (tw: torture)
peter stark, “freezing to death” (tw: death, body horror)
jessica mitford, “behind the formaldehyde curtain“ (tw: death)
philip larkin, “the pleasure principle”
roland barthes, mythologies
maria bustillos, “not fade away”
alice walker, “looking for zora”
joan didion, “after life” (tw: death) and “some dreamers of the golden dream”
james gleick, “seeing faster”
mike jay, “the reality show” (tw: mental illness)
hunter s. thompson, “he was a crook”
michael chabon, “the omega glory”
zadie smith, “joy“ and ”speaking in tongues”
elif bautman, “the murder of leo tolstoy”