Together with my students and friends, I've set out to find the most essayistic (the "essayest") essays published in American literary journals each year. Our method is, perhaps appropriately, unsystematic, scatter-shot, driven by luck and play and personal preference. I and other "experts in the field" simply read the journals we subscribe to or can acccess in our libraries. Students read about twenty highly regarded journals, usually two issues of each. From these, each student or group selects ten "creative nonfiction" pieces, and from those ten, chooses the "essayest."
This is not meant to subvert the excellent work of Robert Atwan and his yearly editors of the Best American Essays series. But I have noticed, and my students and many of my colleagues concur, that the term essay has been largely hijacked and adulterated beyond recognition, firstly by the pedagogues, who call every school writing assignment an "essay," and currently by memoirists, travel writers, new journalists, and other practitioners of "creative nonfiction," whose writing, excellent though it may be, often essays nothing, is not idea-driven, is not meditative or associative or tangential. Just try to google the word essay and see what results you get. This list is one small attempt to rescue the word essay.
There is no money, no prize, no republication attached to selection. There may be no honor. All we are saying is 1) give peace a chance, and 2) these are some really excellent essays, real essays. We sincerely hope that the essayists whose work we chose are pleased that someone has read and appreciated their essays, and that visitors to the site will take our recommendations and seek out the essays to read and enjoy them.
2008's list was selected by my fall 2008 English 337R (History and Theory of the Essay) students. New to this year's list are links to full-text HTML or PDF versions of some essays and/or database indications for others (if you are affiliated with a university, you likely have access to many databases through your library).
You may also be interested in past lists:
If an essay should ruminate and ponder the great complexities inherent even in small things (and it should), then Chris Arthur's "(En)trance" is a quintessential essay. It launches, meta-literarily, from the pillars at Shandon, Arthur's mother's childhood home in Northern Ireland, and never really leaves them, never gets past the gate and into the yard, let alone the house beyond. Throughout, Arthur compares himself to another kind of writer (of fiction/suspense/drama) with humility and self-deprecation, noting how far ahead the "writer of the sort [he's] not" would be at this point in the prose, etc. Ultimately, Arthur is simply an essayist, concerned with quotidian detail and the wonder of memory, warning that "the grownup mind too easily falls for the lure of the superficial, the simple, the no-nonsense, the cut-and-dried, and lazily equates what meets the eye with truth." What's more, he's unlimited by factuality, choosing, for instance, to cast his mind into a "temporal kestral," hovering above the pillars, whisking backwards and forwards in time, imagining the changes as time obliterates one thing after another. In the end, "(En)trance" is unsummarizable (another hallmark of real essays), though it may certainly be said to fulfill Arthur's partial ideal: "Essays occupy the margins, explore liminal spaces, turn back upon themselves, deal with seemingly ordinary things, tolerate meandering and incompletion, estrange the familiar."
This essay is available as a full-text PDF. Just click on the title above.
Selected by Patrick Madden
“Regarding Happiness” seeks to answer the question: “why is good literature so depressing?” Charles Baxter equates happiness with the Garden of Eden mentality and argues that happiness is a state devoid of conflict, which cannot exist in literature because good literature depends on conflict. Baxter pulls together both personal and literary examples to support his claims. This provokingly thought-driven essay is reminiscent of the essay traditionin its ruminations on the philosophical implications of literature and how this philosophy manifests itself in everyday situations.
This essay (along with all of the Southern Review's content) is available through the ProQuest and EBSCO host databases.
Selected by Heather Johnson and Katherine Sanders
Counterpart to 2002's masterful "Yes," "No" takes up the vexing subject of rejection letters, a field in which it is not quite better to give than to receive. Doyle, editor of Portland Magazine as well as essayist extraordinaire, fixes his keen gaze on that odious bit of communication, though he dashes it with plentiful humor and, like any good essayist, he can't stick to his thesis, so that he eventually runs into thoughts on marriage and acceptance letters and the joy of reading essays, including "Pity People Pity People Pity People " by Andre Dubus, one of Doyle's many marvelous yesses.
This essay is available on the Kenyon Review website. Just click on its title above. It's also (along with all of the Kenyon Review's content) available through the ProQuest database.
Selected by Patrick Madden
A legitimate "best of" anthology would never select two pieces by the same writer, but we're not the "best," we're the "essayest," and Brian Doyle is one of the essayest essayists we know. So it is with great joy that we accompany his unquiet mind as it remembers a dinner long years ago during which Tom Doyle leaped over a balcony rail and crashed to a table below, sternly warning the slimeball there seated "Never, and I mean never, begin a sentence with an adverb." And then we're off! to memories of Malaysian pirates, whip-happy nuns, lost eyeballs, brown-nosing goodie-two-shoeses, May Queens, battleships, and sundry other topics, all with grace and wit and, finally, stark insight.
This essay is available only online, and we're not sure exactly when it appeared, though it was in 2008; just click on its title above.
Selected by Patrick Madden
Opening with rumination on the functionality of similes, Hadas explores how the simple literary device of comparison can console and clarify reality. She moves from a discussion of Book Three of the Iliad to her husband's unknown neurodegenerative disease to the development of marriage. Through her thought-wondering, the author adeptly weaves her own similes. She discusses their place and purpose in our lives when "there are no right questions, and there are most certainly no answers." Poignant, hopeful, and honest, the essay invites the reader to consider similes in a new light.
This essay (along with all of Southwest Review's content) is available through the ProQuest and EBSCOhost databases.
Selected by Cassie Keller Cole
An essay whose long-winded and strange first paragraph ends "I'll...spend these several hours of my existence contemplating some of the varieites of graveyards, and will try to convey some measure of my enthusiasm for them" has more than got my attention. It's got my vote. And Hemley doesn't disappoint. He catalogs types of graveyards (beginning with the "obvious": Graveyards in Which We Are Not Buried) as well as specific graveyards, graveyards with personal significance, graveyards with historical significance, graveyards with kitchy significance, etc. If the guide seems a bit flippant, he is, but to purposeful effect. Eventually he'll drive the nail home, flip the focus to graver considerations, with such verve that you never saw it coming, inevitable though it was all along. An essay is always a guided tour through a person's associated thoughts. In this case, Robin Hemley is a wonderfully personable host through the manicured superfices covering those final resting places of all who've gone before.
This essay is available as a full-text PDF. Simply click on its title above.
Selected by Patrick Madden
Larsen begins by recounting a short composition he wrote as a young boy then rediscovered in his college years. The composition captures the uncanny ability of children to express with poignant precision complicated concepts: “Hope is a word that you can not draw like you can draw a tree. It is a feeling in your head.” Larsen uses this idea as a lens through which to reflect on the experience of his uncle being in and returning from Vietnam. The poetic yet familiar voice of the essay seems itself a fusion of adult and child, the two informing each other to craft deep and simple insight. The essay’s ending brings us full circle, back to Larsen’s boyhood conception of hope, yet now it resounds with a different kind of poetry—one of experience.
This essay is available through the ProQuest database.
Selected by Brooke Larson and Ruth Ostheller
"On Dusk" is organized in poetic aphorisms. Each sentence is its own paragraph, emphasizing its distinctness. Rhythmic, careful, and yet playful, the essay is driven by long and short sentences balanced in unexpected and refreshing ways. Holistically, the essay ruminates on dusk in a cohesive manner while still showing the subject matter from a variety of perspectives. Following the tradition established by Montaigne, Macker uses a variety of quotations and often subverts a reader's expectations. One of the strengths of this essay is its sense of familiarity with the reader, which Macker creates through clever references to common names as well as a strangely successful utilization of second person. The essay grapples with unanswered questions, provides intriguing imagery, and personifies dusk as a character who speaks. The essay is poignant, intellectual, and poetic, yet escapes becoming too heavy as it progresses.
This essay is available through the Project MUSE database.
Selected by Cassie Keller Cole
In this essay, Maureen McCoy examines the relationship she and her mother had with her somewhat estranged father, drawing upon her experiences as well as the information she has gathered from people who knew him from bars, as she tries to understand the father she loved and who she believes loved her back despite his frequent absence from her life. McCoy grapples with the difficulty of fully understanding another person—even one as close as a father—as she recounts continually learning details of her father's time in bars that both offer insight into her father's life and remind her just how little she really knows.
This essay is available through the ProQuest database.
Selected by Keith Harten
"Hydrophobia" catches a reader's attention with a humorous opening paragraph about basement neighbors and newborns. McGlynn then writes about his obsession with water and worries about crazy or distressed people. Craziness becomes embedded in human emotion and experience, which connect with his ideas of water, madness, and people. More than just a story, "Hydrophobia" seeks connection and meaning, without conclusion, without easy answers, in spite of the author's pained searching for them.
Selected by Heather Johnson and Katherine Sanders
"The House Painters of Southern California" is a reflection about the professional life of a house painter in Southern California, including descriptions of his coworkers and employees, many of whom are illegal immigrants. The piece is beautifully braided, lingering on specific moments—such as the time he and an old lady knelt in a flowerbed to get color samples from flowers—as well as brief character sketches of the painters themselves. The prose is often poetic as Paris describes the colors of the houses and the actual work of painting. The essay touches mildly on the political dilemma that surrounds the illegal immigrants' lives, but even then Paris touches on it even handedly, showing a unique perspective on the issue of immigration and how it affects the lives of the immigrants and residents alike. It is clear from this essay that Paris has a deep love for the art of house painting, and also a fatherly love for the painters he works for.
Selected by Bess Hayes and Scott Morris
"If the true self cannot be found in language, then where does it reside?" asks Kathryn Rhett in "The Last Word." Rhett examines the concept of an author's voice as she ruminates about the experience of reading her deseased sister-in-law's diary. Rhett wonders whether her sister-in-law, as she wrote through her struggle with cancer, was able to reach a level of self-actualization in her writing, but also worries that "the diary is about the now"—which doesn't necessarily encompass the whole, true nature of our selves. Rhett's writing is rather engaging, and her voice strong. Whether or not she believes that this essay showcases the true voice she seeks to convey, it provokes thinking and effectively pits the persona she broadcasts in day-to-day life against her "writer" persona.
This essay is available through the ProQuest database.
Selected by Emily Dabczynski and Michelle Hoppe
After James Frey's controversially fictional memoir, A Million Little Pieces, a great deal of attention was focused on the limits and boundaries of creative nonfiction as a genre. David Shields's "Reality Hunger: A Manifesto," is a reply to the whys and wheres of those boundaries. It explores the concepts of emotional truth, first-person narration, and the seriousness with which modern nonfiction writers take the word "truth." It is not a manifesto of condemnation and exclusion but rather an examination of the young genre and its distinctions, written in an amiable and inviting voice. Says Shields, "I like work that's focused, page by page, line by line, on what the writer really cares about rather than hoping that what the writer cares about will somehow mysteriourly creep through the cracks of the narrative," and "I want the overt meditation that yields (at least an attempt at) understanding," which seem like apt descriptions of the best essays, in which category you'll find "Reality Hunger." This "version" of the manifesto is one of many recently published in journals and anthologies; the whole thing will be published in book form in 2009.
Although the Seneca Review version of "Reality Hunger" is not available online or in databases, you may find other pieces of the puzzle at Willow Springs (PDF) and The Believer (HTML, excerpt).
Selected by Lina Ferreira and Steven Haynie
VanAuken's voice is humorous, engaging, and playful as she explores the history of the cockroach through linguistics and also through personal experience with the creatures overtaking her apartment. The essay is written in conversational fragments that form a narrative of thought. Exhibiting curiosity and honesty, the author blends her research with her growing distaste of the cockroach. The essay meditates on bugs comparable to the cockroach, its mating patterns, its possible positive attributes—seeking compassion for an insect with a bad reputation. Eventually, VanAuken admits that even as a vegetarian who can't stand the idea of another animal "suffer[ing] mortal pain," she had to stop the encroaching cockroaches, but not before thoroughly considering the situation.
This essay is available through the Project MUSE database.
Selected by Cassie Keller Cole
To begin, Zimmer leads the reader on a driving tour of the Pyrenees setting that will return as the concluding scene of his essay. He points out a pair of binoculars propped against a door before shifting to a new place and time. He relates the story behind the binoculars, which is also a story about shame and humility. Though the author narrates a moment of continued regret, his candid, wry voice keeps the essay from falling into self-pity. Zimmer reflects in a way that invites the reader’s own self-recognition. One scene figures a lesson in the involved process of focusing the lenses of binoculars, which require continued attention. Zimmer’s refusal to offer clear conclusions of self-improvement or redemption gives the reader the same sense—resolution is an ongoing process.
This essay is available through the Project MUSE database.
Selected by Brooke Larson and Ruth Ostheller