The Washington Post – the source of "The Peekaboo Paradox," my favorite story from the first part of the semester – continues to be nothing short of awe-inspiring. I absolutely LOVED "Pearls Before Breakfast," the sorta-profile, actually-study-of-all-human-beings piece on Joshua Bell's incognito violin performance in Washington. This article was thought-provoking and brilliant at every turn and I have practically no criticisms of it, and the ones I have are petty. Gene Weingarten knocked this one out of the park.
From the lead, I was gripped. It gives a little bit away without revealing the whole picture, but it manages to do so in a way that isn't just annoyingly cryptic, something some articles that try this method are guilty of doing. It kept me intrigued while it revealed pieces of the picture. It even got to the nut graf – paragraph three, by my estimation – before it revealed who the violinist was. And you know what? It didn't matter to me. I was so sold on the article that I was willing to let it take me wherever it wanted to, even considering its rather mammoth length, which, far from bothering me, left me wanting even more.
Structurally, I liked how it was broken into segments based on different people from the video and the ways they reacted to Bell's performance. It kept the sections brief and the reading interesting and varied, and I think the structure was a big contributor to how short the story felt even when it was actually quite long. Not much to say other than that the author used structure to his advantage in a big way.
If I have any complaint, it's that the ending is a little forced and even borderline promotional. There didn't need to be some tie-up to this story about Bell, because the story isn't about Bell. I don't care that he's coming back to the States to accept an award, because this story is more about the way people react to staggering works of genius (sorry, I know Bell wouldn't approve) when they're out of context, not about this particular violinist. Such a minor complaint, though. I absolutely loved this story.
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