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The Shape of the Essay Field

June 2025 An essay has to tell people something they don't already know. But there are three different reasons people might not know something, and they yield three very different kinds of essays.

It was like suddenly seeing the other interpretation of an ambiguous image: you can treat genes rather than organisms as the protagonists, and evolution becomes easier to understand when you do. In fact seeing the shape of the field that writers work in has reminded me that I'm not optimizing for returns in it. White could write an essay about how to boil potatoes that ended up being full of timeless wisdom.

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