The Unravelers
The Unravelers is a great essay by Stephanie Danler. It’s not so much about knitting, as it is… well, it is about knitting in a way. But there’s more.
Danler’s essay works in a lot of things: confession, her friends and family, a short and rather remarkable history of her great-grandmother Adelaide Barton. And a little Aristotle sprinkled in, to boot.
Men with blue eyes. Men with green eyes. Bartenders with any-colored eyes. Bridge railings. Walks late at night. Perfectly cut lines of cocaine. Married men with blue or green eyes. A full bottle of pills, up or down. Credit cards. Airports, train platforms, bus stations, parking garages. The fourth glass of wine.
In addition to her voice, I liked that much of the essay was built from smaller sections – a few paragraphs of quick sentences. For someone whose attention span always leaned towards poetry, I liked having these pauses – allowing me room to leap from story to story.
Based on the notes at the end, it seems that this essy will be included in a larger anthology. Oh! And look – Bill Roorbach is one of the authors in the Anthology! Small, world!
As a side note: I found this article MetaFilter, and on returning to it… have really enjoyed many of the comments. Also worth checking out.
Related:
Bill Roorbach: Finding Time to Write
Empathy, Theory of Mind, and the Loneliness of Umwelt
The Memory Never Forgets: LeBron James and the Gift/Curse of Eidetic Memory
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