If we are, as Adam Kirsch writes, in the midst of a golden age of essays, we might want to ask exactly which essays are proof of this golden age. His first three picks — My Heart is an Idiot, I Was Told There’d Be Cake and Pulphead — are unsurprising choices, but then it gets a bit more interesting when he looks at Sheila Heti’s latest novel. (You could also check out a few of our pieces on these books.)
I Feel Expository
What Really Happened in the 1980s
Recommended: Meagan Day on Joan Didion’s essay “In the Realm of the Fisher King,” which you can find in Didion’s collection After Henry.
The Tournament of Books Declares a Winner!
The Tournament of Books declares a winner! It was down to two in the last round: Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom (called “big, messy, flawed, enraging, and engrossing” by C. Max Magee, one of the final round judges) and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad (which “ached with feeling and tension…”) Find out who won at The Morning News!
“Sunset: bitter orange and almond milk”
Recommended Reading: “Joseph Brodsky in Venice (1981)” by Campbell McGrath, one of the best poets in South Florida.
●
●
4 comments:
Add Your Comment: Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Monday Linkday
I’ve mentioned here before that I’m currently getting my masters in new media journalism in the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. As such, expect to see the occasional post on the topic from here on out. To that end, I want to mention Dan Gillmor’s book We the Media. Gillmor is well-known for his blog which is, broadly speaking, about the blogging phenomenon itself. The book takes on the question of where blogs fit into the panoply of the media. It’s worth a look for anyone who’s wondered if these here blogs are good for anything beyond killing time in their cubicles. Best of all, the entire book is available for free at the publisher’s website.That’s enough new media for now. In other news Michael Chabon’s new Sherlock Holmes tale, The Final Solution: A Story Of Detection, is out tomorrow. We’ll see what the reviews bring, but in the meantime, take a look at this excerpt.Finally, have a look at this: A Colorado man is compiling “The Great Library Card Collection.”
Off Beat
Hollywood is romanticizing the Beat Generation in its recent adaptations of On the Road (trailer here), Big Sur (trailer here), and Kill Your Darlings, and you can blame Millennials. “In casting the authors as eternally and fundamentally adolescent, the recent revival tones down their behavior—both revolutionary and repulsive—as a sort of passing teenage phase,” Jordan Larson argues for The Atlantic.
●
●
Banana Yoshimoto Interview
Banana Yoshimoto, whose novel The Lake was recently shortlisted for the Man Asian Prize, does an interview with Melville House.
●
●
A Golden Age of solipistic navel-gazing, perhaps.
Actually, Kirsch’s piece quite clearly contradicts the notion of a present “golden age” of essays. One must read beyond the intro. Paragraph 3 begins: “But all is not as it seems. … The resurrection of the essay is in large measure a mirage.” And he elaborates his case from there, along the way observing an important distinction: “What we now call an essayist used to be called a humorist.” The piece is well worth reading in its entirety.
Even if one only read the title: “The New Essayist, or the Decline of a Form?” one wouldn’t come to the conclusion that the author thinks we’re in a “golden age” of essays.
Anyway it’s a really good piece. Sedaris’ writing has always inexplicably bugged me, and Kirsh has managed to tell me why.
that’s *Adam* Kirsch, not Mike!