The Case Against Making More Cases

You probably clicked on this expecting to read a Case. If you wanted me to, I could write one.

The Case might open with an ostensibly-gorgeous literary vignette about my topic, the kind of thing you picture when someone says the word “prose”. It could start something like: In an almost-empty Manhattan office building on the hottest day of a hot August, Jessica is writing. Eschewing that, we could also open the Case with a hot take, ideally negative, even more ideally punching down on some group of people I disagree with.

It would be between two and ten thousand words, depending on where the Case would eventually be published. There would be long, meandering passages. Perhaps I’d include scenes from my own interesting personal life with little-to-no actual relevance to the topic.

If you got lucky, the Case would spiral into a thinly-veiled rant (or ramble) that didn’t have much to do with the sweeping thesis that the title implied. The narrower the scope, the better. Comprehensivity is a failure mode for a great Case.

I might end the Case by leaving you (the Reader) with some thought-provoking question, like: Do we really need more Cases? And you, having stuck with me to the end despite everything, might ponder and think, He does have a point. Hell, maybe I don’t have a point. But you and I are in on it together; the point I’m making may not survive in the wild, but it lives on between the two of us and this lonely little page, and I think that’s rather beautiful.