pasobnh.blogg.se

• #THE LITTLE STORE EUDORA WELTY PLUS#

“Where I Lived, and What I Lived For,” Henry David Thoreau “Decolonizing the Mind,” Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag

“What Should a Billionaire Give-and What Should You?,” Peter Singer “Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian Perspective,” Leslie Marmon Silko “Letter to President Pierce, 1855,” Chief Seattle

“The Men We Carry in our Minds,” Scott Russell Sanders “Under the Influence,” Scott Russell Sanders “Oranges and Sweet Sister Boy,” Judy Ruiz “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell “Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney,” Barack Obama “Two Ways to Belong in America,” Bharati Mukherjee “Of Some Verses on Virgil,” Michel de Montaigne “Dream Children: a Reverie,” Charles Lamb “The Courage of Turtles,” Edward Hoagland “On the Pleasure of Hating,” William Hazlitt “Apotheosis of Martin Luther King,” Elizabeth Hardwick “When Doctors Make Mistakes,” Atul Gawande “The Solace of Open Spaces,” Gretel Ehrlich “Life with Daughters: Watching the Miss America Pageant,” Gerald Early

“Music Is My Bag: Confessions of a Lapsed Oboist,” Meghan Daumįrom An American Childhood, Annie Dillard “Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session,” Hillary Rodham Clinton “Is Google Making Us Stupid?,” Nicolas Carr “How To Tame a Wild Tongue,” Gloria Anzaldúa “Consider the Lobster,” David Foster Wallaceįrom Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, Dorothy Allison “Civil Disobedience,” Henry David Thoreau “Black Men and Public Space,” Brent Staples “Declaration of Sentiments and Resolutions,” Elizabeth Cady Stanton “Aria: a Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood,” Richard Rodriguez “The Declaration of Independence,” Thomas Jefferson “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” Stephen Jay Gould And Michel de Montaigne, who essentially coined the term, is only feebly represented. The better news is that five of the nine most anthologized essays are by writers of color, which is significantly better than either of the other lists do in that regard.įrom Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America, Barbara Ehrenreich On the other hand, several essays that I consider top-notch classics didn’t make the cut (like Jo Ann Beard’s “The Fourth State of Matter,” and Gay Talese’s “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” which each appear only once in all the anthologies I surveyed). The essay is perhaps the most ravenous of forms, but these anthologies included letters, speeches (notably, a fair number of presidential addresses), excerpts from longer, reported works of non-fiction, and a number of works that I consider stories (like Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” which most agree is a short story, and some argue is a poem, but is certainly not an essay) or even actual poetry (John D’Agata, I know you’re a rebel and all, but “ For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffrey,” while incredible, is not an essay). Of the three, I was most surprised by the data here. This is the last survey of anthologies in a series-earlier this month, I looked at the most anthologized short stories and the most anthologized poems-and considering all three lists together affords the ability to compare the way the different forms are canonized and read in America. I ignored all themed anthologies, as well as any limited to a specific year or publication.

#THE LITTLE STORE EUDORA WELTY PLUS#

I’ve always thought that was lovely.įor this list, I looked at 14 essay anthologies, plus the three volumes of Lee Gutkind’s The Best Creative Nonfiction and John D’Agata’s three-part survey of the form ( The Next American Essay, The Lost Origins of the Essay, and The Making of the American Essay), for a total of 20 books published between 19. After all, the word essay comes from the French verb essayer, which means “to try.” Essays are merely attempts, at expression, or at proof they claim to be nothing more. But in actuality, essays are nothing like the staid, formulaic, boring things they make you write in high school. After all, here in America at least, our introduction to the essay often comes complete with five paragraphs and “repeat but rephrase” and other soul-killing rules. Depending on who you are, the word “essay” may make you squirm.