Some words

[nebby_99]

Powers of Empathy-By Wyatt Mason (Harper's Magazine)
“It’s beyond my skills as a writer to capture that day,” begins a sentence that stopped me this weekend and made me break into a very earnest smile. And then there’s the sentence that preceded it:

And then, on September 11, 2001, the world fractured. It’s beyond my skill as a writer to

Comments

[soul_harvester]

Not sure what I'm supposed to take away from this.

[nebby_99]

Yeah, there wasn't a point as such; I just thought it was kinda cool.

I'm not exactly a literary connoisseur, so I enjoy the rare occasion when such an impressive use of language is made accessible to me (as it is by this article). Finding out who wrote it was just... a bit of an interesting juxtaposition (high school English, kill me now) the way it was written in the article.

[soul_harvester]

Explain to me exactly which part of all that you liked, and what it is juxtaposed against.

[nebby_99]

I thought the paragraph being discussed was well written, and I thought the explanations of the ways in which it's effective were well explained.

Rather than just saying "it's from Obama's book" they said it was written by the president-elect, the first half of which is 'president'. It made myself and at least one other person go "The PR-[ESIDENT wrote that??] Oh, right, awesome". I thought that good English and the word President made an interesting and unexpected juxtaposition (thanks to the current President).
(If you don't consider that a juxtaposition, blame the NSW high school English curriculum ^^)