Customer Reviews

The Best American Essays 1996

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Being of a younger generation, my acquaintances are generally surprised to find me reading a collection of essays. This provides me with a golden opportunity to share the wealth I have found in this book. Not only have the essayists here provoked thought and surprising emotion from me, but this art has pushed me in a new direction. Witnessing all of the unexpected beauty pouring from this book has made me want to write essays. I cannot wait to get my hands on the rest of this series. Fiction has been moved to the back burner. I am forever grateful.

I found this series a couple of years ago, and each issue is a treasure to enjoy. I often find myself reading about things outside my experience, outside what I expect to be interested in - and every time I learn and think and imagine and am given pleasure in the reading. The essay form, in the hands of these writers, is a grand and various opportunity for thought and exploration of grand themes and of the minutiae of human life.

This collection of essays is interesting and many of them are excellent, but the inclusion of Coetzee's piece confounds me. His "essay" describes the trip of a famous Australian writer, Elizabeth Costello, who goes with her son to receive an award and makes a speech about Realism and Kafka. "Oh good," I thought, "an author to explore. Her novel sounds interesting." My mind began to waver when the prose followed her son in a sexual experience at the conference. "Wow," I thought. "Coetzee must do quite an interview to elicit this kind of frank material." At the end of the piece, her son is looking down into the sleeping writer's nose and throat and thinking about where he came from. Clearly, this is not an essay.

This is not entirely Coetzee's fault, though he must have given permission to have this chapter from his novel (titled Elizabeth Costello) included as an essay. It's not an essay. It's fiction. And though there is a lot of heady intellectualizing, it's done by a fictional character, not by the author speaking for himself. It might go better into an anthology of short fiction, for example.

This genre-bending seems like a big mistake to me. It makes me wonder if Hoagland really has a farm, or if he just writes about someone who does. As a teacher and practitioner of creative nonfiction, I am quite certain that the contract between essay writer and reader is that the writer will not make things up. The writer will tell the truth of his or her lived experience. If that contract is broken, all bets are off.

My two cents on this. I realize that 1998 was a while ago, and I'm ready to let by-gones be by-gones and move on. But honestly!

--LA Abraham

I love this series, and I recall sneaking off and reading parts of it when I was supposed to be on the job. Read these books! Good essays are beautiful things, and deserve to have a big audience. Each one (of this series) that I have seen contains a range of interesting pieces, and this one was no different. The majority are personal recollections of some kind, thoughtful and superbly written.

Here are the ones I liked: Anwar Accawi writes about the Palestinian village he grew up in, and how the arrival of the first telephone begins a radical transformation of the town's relations with the outside world. Andre Aciman discussed a little park in New York City and how it connects him to Alexandria and other cities that he lived in. Helen Barolini, an Italian American, tells about her parents' rejection of their Italian heritage, followed by her discovery and embrace of it. There is an essay by Jeremy Bernstein, a true heavyweight intellectual - a man who was a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Studies as well as a poet. His piece looks at genius vs. extreme competence, in the persons of Paul Dirac (a scientist I had never heard of, but apparently brilliant beyond comparison) and Robert Oppenheimer. In his piece "Witness", Andre Dubus recalls running into a woman who happened to be there the night he was struck by a car on a Massachusetts highway and paralyzed. Joseph Epstein reflects on turning sixty, and William Maxwell on being almost ninety. Ian Frazier, a regular New Yorker contributor, takes a quick look at the multicultural borough of Queens, N.Y. Elizabeth Graver finds in two public baths, one in Germany, the other in Turkey, connections between her younger self and older self, and the generations of women in her family. Edward Hoagland takes a quick look at the wildlife around his house in rural Vermont. John McPhee contributes a too brief memoir of his mother. Oliver Sacks weighs in with a piece on his favorite sport, swimming, and tells a marvelous anecdote about swimming around City Island, N.Y., seeing a house he likes, getting out of the water, making a (successful) offer for the house, then swimming back. Louis Simpson writes with surprising coolness about the nervous breakdown he went thru following his traumatic WWII service, and the subsequent bounce back. Diana Trilling, wife of Lionel, describes in loving detail a visit to a White House party at the height of John Kennedy's glamorous presidency.

There is not much more I can add to what the writers themselves say. I just want to continue my readings in the series.

I found this at a used book store bargain bin, it is my second "Best American Series" book and I really enjoyed it. The variety of writing that can fall under the classification of "essay" is so vast that the editor has somewhat of a hard job in choosing. In this case Ozick focuses on retrospections, older people looking back on their lives. I appreciate the thematic organization, but I am certain these are not the "best", rather ones that have a common theme. But then, what is "the best"? J.M. Coetzee examines this question and more in "What is realism?", probably the most mind blowing essay of the bunch - I'm not sure if it's fiction, non-fiction or a lesson on writing but it really opened my eyes to some of the games and tricks of writing.

Other essays I enjoyed include Jeremy Bernstein's "The Merely Very Good" which is both an interesting history lesson about some famous 20th century physicists, and a lesson of what it means to be really smart, but not at the top of your field, second-tier. "A Peaceable Kingdom" by Edward Hoagland is a short beautifully romantic piece about the natural world at a mans summer mountain cottage, although it could just as easily be anyones back-yard (replace the bears with chipmunks). Louis Simpson's "Soldier's Heart" is a somewhat dark and effecting story of a WWII vet who had PTSD and ended up in the hospital getting elctro-shock therapy and the lifetime it took to recover and heal from both experiences. Finally, Diana Trilling's "A Visit To Camelot" is a re-telling of a party she went to at the Whitehouse with the Kennedys, it's magical.

Joyce Carol Oates essay , "They all just went away" tells of her childhood attraction for abandoned houses, and the story of one family whose house was set on fire by the outraged, drunken father. It is a masterful reflection on the fragility of human existence- and also provides an insight into her own rich and troubled imagination.
Edward Hoagland's reflects on his own relation to Biblical religion after his recovery from two years of blindness. He has a deep appreciation of the Biblical text, especially of Job. His essay is moving though he shows an imperfect understanding of normative Judaism especially in regard to its conception of Justice and Mercy.
William Styron tells of a misdiagnosis he suffered from while a Marine, and gives insight into the sexual norms and expectations of another time.
Julie Baumgold takes a look at the Elvis Myth and also at Elvis own tragic end.
One of my favorite essay writers Joseph Epstein writes of the roles naps have played in his life, and that of many other noted masters of midday refreshment. He in the course of this provides an insightful look into the subject of 'sleeping'.
On the basis of these essays alone I would say that this is a first- rate volume.

I'm really glad to meet this place. Now I am defencing these on Thomas Pynchon. So I wish you could send me a new list on Pynchon. Thank you.