This is an essay by Cian Morey Sep03

This is an essay by Cian Morey...

I don’t write essays. I don’t write crosswords in pencil either. “Desperate times” etc. * ‘Mr Morey,’ I hear you ask, ‘why are you so resistant to the idea of “the essay?”’ ‘Ah,’ I reply, ‘I’m glad you asked that, because I was going to answer it for you anyway whether you liked it or not. My reasoning is quite simple – I don’t know what they are.’ ‘But Mr Morey,’ I hear you inquire, ‘how could you have no knowledge of so common a style as “the essay?”’ ‘Ah,’ I suavely reciprocate, ‘it is not that I have no knowledge; it is that I have too much.’ ‘But Mr Morey!’ I hear you tempestuously expostulate. ‘How can there be such a thing as “too much knowledge?” Surely there is no limit to learning!’ ‘Ah,’ I ratiocinatively riposte, ‘that, my eager but obtuse friend, is where you are gravely mistaken.’ Knowledge, you see, is an excellent thing when it builds on previous knowledge. You learn one thing, and then you learn another, and the second adds something to the first. Step by step, your information becomes more advanced. Knowledge is not an excellent thing, however, when it builds beside previous knowledge. If you learn one thing, and then you learn the same thing again in a different way, you have still learned only one thing. Step by step, your information becomes more confused, but no more advanced at all. Consider the way in which I just wrote the words “ask” and “reply” in increasingly elaborate forms. By the time I arrive at “ratiocinatively riposte”, three things have happened to the reader: They are now 100% certain that I am the most linguistically intelligent man alive. They have now learned how to write two ridiculously...