Time and Distance Overcome

1215 Words5 Pages
Time and Distance Overcome The society we live in today is constant developing and it gets more and more technological advanced, and we all like it. In 1876 Graham Bell invented the first telephone, and it was not met with applause, even though it would have been so if it was today. Sadly when his invention got published it was not accepted and was criticized for being "pointless". Already in the beginning of the essay, actually the first line it says, "Of what use is such an invention?" In the non-fiction essay “Time and Distance Overcome” by the American non-fiction writer Eula Biss from 2008 we meet the deadly honesty and realness about the history of America, with the telephone poles as a “focus point”. Biss is mostly giving us small facts and happenings from her researches but she also gives us every now and then a little taste of her own opinions. She talks about the “famous” but at the time disliked telephone pole, and in her research the discovering of a darker and hidden history of the telephone emerges. Throughout the essay we are given new information for each new paragraph while the paragraphs have a connection. The essay starts off with Biss writing about the history behind the telephone. At the time, the totally new invention and about how the “human voice could be transmitted through a wire”. Then she states how it is still an impossible idea to be connected to everyone, which is expressed in the end of the essay. Her research kicks off as being an innocent and very informative one, a research looking up anything with the word “telephone pole” and ending up writing about two subjects at the same time, the telephone poles and lynching. The boring and uncolored history reading about the invention of the telephone is now over. Eula Biss interact with both the essay as well as the historical genre when writing about the heartbreaking faith of black
Open Document