I Don't Really Feel Like Reading Jonah Lehrer...

In Jonah Lehrer's New Yorker article, he uses more story like techniques than may be realized the first time reading.

One technique that I noticed was he organizes each of his points much like a story. They are each explained in detail, separately. He focuses on each of the different aspects and reasons specifically and thoroughly making sure to move into the next paragraph with grace and transitions.

Another thing that he did was tell a story within the article. When he described building 20 there was a lot of natural story telling. He had to give the background so the way in which he explained what happened was much like a novel or a short story. He told it like an event that had happened in the past and there was so much to tell so it seemed like I almost forgot about what he was writing about aside from the building 20 story. He set the stage for building 20 by describing what it was like and the atmosphere of the building in great detail. In a technical paper, these descriptions are often lost due to the scientific edge and preciseness of the content.

After rereading this article for the second time, I basically felt the same about it. Of course, it refreshed my memory as to what it was about and the specific studies done in order to prove his "point", however I still found it the same boring article I read during the summer. It's not that he is a bad writer, it's just that in order to write an organized paper, this article made it extremely difficult. It clearly took one position and was a little all over the place at times. The story telling aspects make it much more interesting to me, but over all this article was a snoozer to be honest.