![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Not so with Scaachi Koul’s collection One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter. What is being said doesn’t really matter, as long as you can say it over three or four thousand longform words. The good essay is indeed a thing of joy to behold, but too many recent collected essays are simply a bouquet of off-cuts and discarded mutterings in which the author is at pains to demonstrate their finely grained-yet casual-powers of noticing. We have seen a great many instances of the Man Essay, in which writers explain things both great and small (‘The Joy of Cornflakes’, ‘Why Donald Trump is Not The Worst Thing That will Happen To Us’, etc.) in a whirl of finely wrought sentences and stylish turns of phrase.īehind much of the latter-day rejoicing in the essay form is the banalisation of knowledge, where the exhibition of knowing is two parts personal story and a healthy sprinkling of epiphany, which is simply the act of giving meaning to all the details you’ve stacked up. The blaze of popularity enjoyed by the essay form is in no small part due to the fact that it allows many authors-mainly men-the space to explain, to expound and to extol. One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter Koul will be appearing at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town this week. In her debut collection of essays, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter, Scaachi Koul delivers expansive and flowing writing, and lemon-sharp humour. ![]()
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