“Toward a Unified Theory of the Doughnut,” Elizabeth McCracken is a nonfiction personal essay where McCracken tells the passage of time with different forms of doughnuts in each setting. It is written in the present tense with a few “flashback” types of scenes and her voice is very present throughout the essay. One of my favorite lines is,
I prefer my doughnuts the old way, packed in tunnel formation in a rectangular container, wax paper clinging to the frosting. Dirty, in a way; by dirty I mean low-down and sexy.
It just really sets up what her personality is and it’s just a really funny line to me as well. I find it really interesting how at the end, McCracken says that she doesn’t eat doughnuts anymore. This is because of how much she had mentioned them and how much she had taken note of them throughout her life; for her to not eat them anymore seems a bit surprising.
Overall I found the story a bit hard to read but attention-grabbing as well.