4 ms·
What Makes a Waif?
- newintellectual 8y agoI'm missing why this story has anything at all to do with the theme of Hacker News.
- andrewhn 8y agothat was a great read
- JasonFruit 8y agoI read the whole thing, and I still don't get why anyone is interested. Maeve Brennan, her columns, her life — all of it seems trivial in an especially dull way. Maybe the writer of this piece was unable to convey her interest in as artistic a way as they wished to, and should have told the simple facts instead of trying to construct atmosphere.
- pjc50 8y agoThe atmosphere is the thing here, along with the character sketch of a person. It's the age-old process of trying to look inside someone's head to feel as they feel. From the opening few paragraphs I suspect she was one of those people with intense in-person charisma, or as we call it round here, "reality distortion field".
- JasonFruit 8y agoBut there's no atmosphere either, just the appearance that an attempt was made to convey it. I'm left baffled over Brennan's significance.
- thedaemon 8y agoThe term Waif was never defined in the article. It's used 6 times counting the title. After googling, it seems to mean a homeless person or low life.
- rjbwork 8y agoThe third definition in MW: : an extremely thin and usually young woman. Waifish is almost always used with this definition from my experience. I'd even argue the first 2 definitions are archaic at this point.