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November 18, 2005
Science has spoiled Philip Wylie’s supper
Philip Wylie has introduced nice and laugh-out-loud essay Science has spoiled my supper. His essay has an informal, very personal tone; his attitude towards his material is obvious. The tone helps him to enlist the reader against the enemy, a coalition of economics and science. He addresses his reader directly by using the pronoun “you” and “we”, for instance:
“…We called them American cheese, or even rat cheese…”;
“… Perhaps you don’t like cheese – so the fact that decent cheese is hardly ever served in America any more, or used in cooking, doesn’t matter to you…”;
“… We are getting some varieties, in fact, that have less flavor than the water off the last weeks’ leeks…”;
“… When things had flavor, we knew that we were eating all the while – and it satisfied us…”;
“How can you feel you’ve eaten if you haven’t tasted, and fully enjoyed tasting?…”
Moreover, the author retorts to the rhetorical question to enlist the reader as well:
“What matter if such peas taste like boiled paper wads?”;
“Yet, the people don’t eat onions because they taste like onions, what in the name of Luther Burbank do they eat them for?”;
“Why… don’t people who want to reduce merely give up eating and get the nourishment they must have in measured doses shot into their arms at hospitals?”;
“How can you feel you’ve eaten if you haven’t tasted, and fully enjoyed tasting?”;
“But who eats with his eyes?”
Wylie also employs imperative sentences, such as
“Take cheese, for instance”;
Posted by Igor at November 18, 2005 08:01 PM