Expos

Niraj Patel

Assignment #1

Rough Draft

09/10/14

Authentic Lives

In the essay “Bumping into Mr. Ravioli” Adam Gopnik writes: “Busyness is felt so intently here because we are both crowded and overloaded. We exit the apartment into a still dense nineteenth-century grid of street corners and restaurants full of people, and come home to the late-twentieth-century grid of faxes and e-mails and overwhelming incompleteness” (158). This little quote from the essays tells us a lot about what the main theme in the essay is. From this quote and the whole essay we can infer that New Yorkers make no time for their loved ones or have a decent conversation. All of their conversations are incomplete forms of communication. Gopnik realizes through his daughters imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli that New Yorkers have adapted to this lifestyle that Gopnik must adapt to in order to live in NYC.

So the real question is how can we live real lives in a world constructed out of a “grid of busyness”? These grids of busyness that Gopnik talks about throughout his essay all have to do the nineteenth-century gird of street corners, cafes, trains, etc…, and late-twentieth-century grid of emails, faxes, text message, etc… I believe that in order to live “authentic” lives in a world governed by busyness, we need to learn how to change our way of living. Gopnik suggest that we need to change our lifestyle when he says “Not once in his diary does Pepys cancel lunch or struggle to fit someone in for coffee at four-thirty. Pepys works, makes love, and goes to bed, but he does not bump and he does not have to run” (156). This quote right here is perfect example of how people always made time for their loved ones and were able to build actual relationships. What I believe Gopnik is telling us sublimely in his essay is that we need to be more like Pepys, and Franklin where they lived busy lives but always had time for complete conversations. What I mean by that is New Yorkers now are...