These annual collections of The Best American Essays should be required reading for any Creative Non-Fiction writer. The collection runs the gamut of topics and styles and serves as inspiration for those of us that aspire to join the greats. Two essays “Eat, Memory” and “Notes on Lazarus” stuck out for me. flag/5 What It Means To Be An American Essay Words | 5 Pages. Throughout the life span of the United States, from its infancy after the Revolution to the present, people have asked, “What is an American?” This question goes far beyond asking who is a citizen or who resides in this land. No, it asks what the identity of an American is? A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith. The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves--sometimes critically--to American values/5(48)
The Best American Essays by Hilton Als
Phillip Lopate spoke to Literary American essays about the new anthology he has edited, american essays, The Glorious American Essay. Lopate looks back to the Puritans and forward to writers like Wesley Yang and Jia Tolentino. What is the next face of the essay form? What does the term mean to you in ? How has your understanding of the word evolved? I will admit that when I was younger, I tended to be very unpatriotic and critical of my country, although once I started to travel abroad and witness authoritarian regimes like Spain under Franco, I could never sign on to the fear that a fascist US was just around the corner.
I came to the conclusion that we have our faults, but our virtues as well. Part of the thrill in putting together this anthology was to see it operating simultaneously on two tracks: first, it would record the development of a literary form that I loved, the essay, as it evolved over years in this country.
At the same time, it would be a running account of the history of the United States, in the hands of these essayists who were contending, directly or indirectly, with the pressing problems of their day. The promise of America was always being weighed against its failure to live up to that standard. Dubois and James Weldon American essays eloquently addressing racial injustice. Issues of identity, gender and intersectionality were explored by writers such as Richard Rodriguez, Audre Lorde, Leonard Michaels and N.
Scott Momaday, sometimes with touches of irony and self-scrutiny, which have always been assets of the essay form. How did you? What were your criteria? PL : I thought I knew the field fairly well to begin with, having edited the best-selling Art of the Personal Essay intaught the form for decades, served on book award juries and so on.
But once I started researching and collecting material, I discovered that I had lots of gaps, partly because the mandate I had set for myself was so sweeping. But it also occurred to me that fine essayists must exist in every discipline, not only literature, which sent me on a hunt that took me to cultural criticism Clement Greenberg, american essays, Kenneth Burketheology Paul Tillichfood writing M. Fishergeography John Brinkerhoff Jacksonnature writing John Muir, John Burroughs, Edward Abbeyscience writing Loren Eiseley, Lewis Thomasphilosophy George Santayana.
My one consistent criterion was that the essay be lively, engaging and intelligently written. In short, american essays, I had to like it myself, american essays. Of course I would need to include the best-known practitioners of the American essay—Emerson, Thoreau, Mencken, Baldwin, Sontag, etc. Finally, I wanted to show a wide variety american essays formal approaches, since the essay is by its very nature and nomenclature an experiment, which brought me to Gertrude Stein and Wayne Koestenbaum.
Equally important, I was aided in all these searches by colleagues and friends who kept suggesting other names. For every fertile lead, american essays four resulted in dead ends. Meanwhile, I was having a real learning adventure. LH: Do you have a personal favorite among American essayists?
If so, what appeals to you the most about them? So much American thought grows american essays of Emerson, or is in contention with Emerson, even if that debt is sometimes unacknowledged or unconscious.
What I love about Emerson is his density of thought, and american essays surprising twists and turns that result from it. He has a playful skepticism, a knack for american essays against himself.
Each sentence starts a new rabbit of thought scampering off. LH: You make the interesting decision to open the anthology with an essay written in50 years before the founding of the republic. PL : I wanted to start the anthology with the first fully-formed essayistic voices in this land, which turned out to belong to the Puritans.
Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards were highly cultivated readers, familiar with the traditions of essay-writing, Montaigne and the English, and with the latest science, even as they inveighed against witchcraft. I will admit that it also amused me to open the book with American essays Mather, a prescriptive, strait-is-the-gate character, and end it with Zadie Smith, american essays is not only bi-racial but bi-national, dividing her year between American essays and New York, and whose openness to self-doubt is signaled by her essay collection title, Changing My Mind.
Their attraction to reasoned argument and willingness to entertain possible objections to their points of view inspired a vigorous strand of American essay-writing. So, while we may fix the founding of the United States to a specific year, the actual culture and literature of the country book-ended that date.
Which essay in the last 12 years would be your st selection? PL : Funny you should ask, american essays. As it american essays, I am currently putting the finishing touches on another anthology, this one entirely devoted to the Contemporary i.
I have been immersed in reading younger, up-and-coming writers, established mid-career writers, and some oldsters who are still going strong Janet Malcolm, Vivian Gornick, Barry Lopez, John McPhee, for example.
Such a banquet of names speaks to the intergenerational appeal of the form. It has something to do with american essays current moment, american essays, which has everyone more than a little confused and therefore trusting more than ever those strong individual voices that are willing to cop to their subjective fears, anxieties, doubts and ecstasies.
The Glorious American Essayedited by Phillip Lopate, is available now. Created by Grove Atlantic and Electric Literature. Features Book Marks CrimeReads Longform Daily Fiction About. Via Pantheon. By Phillip Lopate. anthologies essayists essays Pantheon Books Phillip Lopate The Glorious American Essay.
Phillip Lopate Phillip Lopate is the author of To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction and of four essay collections, BachelorhoodAgainst Joie de VivrePortrait of My Bodyand American essays Inside My Head.
He is the editor of the anthologies The Art of the Personal EssayWriting New Yorkand American Movie Critics, american essays.
He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Public Library Center for Scholars and Writers Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts grants, and two New York Foundation for the Arts grants.
He is professor of writing at Columbia University's nonfiction MFA program, american essays, and lives in Brooklyn, New York. Previous Article Recent History: Lessons From Obama, Both Cautionary american essays Hopeful. Next Article Lit Hub Daily: November 17, Close to the Lithub Daily Thank you for subscribing!
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· Other essays in here that are definitely worth reading: * "Faint Music" by James Marcus, about being a fainter in a family full of fainters * "Cuss Time" by Jill McCorkle, To me the standout essay in this collection is "The Mansion: A Subprime Parallel," in which Michael Lewis loses his damn mind and spends $13, per month to rent the grandest house in New /5 · Read Good Essay On View of America and other exceptional papers on every subject and topic college can throw at you. We can custom-write anything as well! We use cookies to enhance our website for you · Paragraph 1: An American is free to speak their mind because of the right to freedom of speech. This freedom makes it easy for American citizens to serve their country. The stand up for what is just and right. Free speech is based on the country’s creed which encompasses peace, freedom, and blogger.comted Reading Time: 7 mins
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