It’s been a number of years since my last reading but what I remember is it pulling at the thread of the concept of quality. The author stumbles upon this while

It’s been a number of years since my last reading but what I remember is it pulling at the thread of the concept of quality. The author stumbles upon this while teaching an introductory writing course at college. What he discovers is that it’s difficult to reduce the act of writing to a prescribed set of rules to follow in order to produce a quality piece. And yet, somehow his students, without training or much effort, are able to judge which pieces exhibit quality. This idea literally leads the author to madness.