There are lots of rules for writing. In particular, there are rules for writing rants. It’s so easy for even good writers to do it wrong. For example, take this passage from Decaffeinated, by Mark Steyn:
At the time, I thought the ever more protracted java jive was an anomaly — the exception that proved the rule. Now I can see it was a profound insight: America’s first slow-food chain was an idea whose time had come. Who knew you could make people stand in line (long lines at city outlets in rush hour) for a cup of coffee? Don’t tell me it’s a Continental thing. I like my café au lait in Quebec, and it takes a third of the time of all the whooshing and frothing south of the border. Same in a Viennese kaffeehaus. But I was at a “fair trade” Vermont coffee joint the other day, and there was no line at all, and it still took forever. And, as I began to get a little twitchy and pace up and down, I became aware of the handful of mellow patrons scattered about the easy chairs looking up from their tweets as if to scold: “What’s with the restless energy, dude?”
I felt like the guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Everybody else in town had fallen asleep . . . and then stayed asleep. This is a paradox for our times: the somnolent coffee house. I had a strange urge to yell, “Wake up, we’re trillions of dollars in debt! The powder keg’s about to blow!” but I could feel the soporific indie-pop drifting over the counter, so I took my espresso to go, and worked off my torporphobic rage by shooting iPods off the tailgate of a rusting pick-up in the back field for the rest of the day.
Frankly, I think Mark Steyn should consider skipping the espresso. He might be able to feel a bit more somnolent. He may even sink to the depths of hebetude, but that has to be better than sudden urges to yell at complete strangers for being relaxed in a coffee house. (I know America is in a financial crisis, but what did Steyn want his fellow patrons to do? Shout about the crisis? Rush around the room? Whimper?)
The problem with this is not that it’s a rant. The problem is that it’s a rant with little good humor, in either meaning of the term. It is also, not coincidentally, a rant without much self-awareness. Consider the picture Mark Steyn paints for us: He paces a coffee house, impatient for his espresso, and suddenly wants to yell at the people around him for whom coffee has become a thing for leisure, not rush. The joke’s on him, and his only mistake is that he doesn’t notice it.