Customer Reviews

The Best American Essays 2009

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

 

 

Guest editor Mary Oliver has put her indelible stamp upon this year's volume of The Best American Essays. It is so noticeable that it can be seen simply by shelving the book next to previous year's volumes, whose bindings all are roughly twice as thick. As a poet, Mary Oliver obviously prefers short pieces of prose in which the author has carefully chosen each word for maximum impact. Often very short essays are overlooked by this series, but this year's volume contains several of them, and few long works.

The other obvious imprint of Mary Oliver's is a preponderance of essays about either essays in specific or the act of writing in general. Some readers looking for a breadth of human experience in a volume of essays may consider this to be a bit too much authorial navel gazing. One such essay, Chris Arthur's "(En)trance", which takes as its titular subject the pillars on his mother's family farm estate, I found to be somewhat tedious and too self-centered, but after plowing through that one (it happens to be the first selection in the volume), many gems await the reader, including:

-- John Updike's "The Writer in Winter", one of his last published pieces, which accurately describes the trajectory and different challenges facing a writer over the course of his career and fame, written in perfectly erudite Updike style.

-- Brian Doyle's "The Greatest Nature Essay Ever", which truly is; no need to say more.

-- John Berger's "Portrait of a Masked Man", a fawning, highly sympathetic portrait of a Mexican Zapatista revolutionary, which unabashedly uses the power of the written word to shape and sway public opinion.

-- Kathryn Miles's "Dog Is Our Copilot", an informative essay about biology, evolution and Charles Darwin's affinity for his terrier that illustrates the special bond between humans and dogs, and how it has shaped each of the species.

While I would cite these four as being the best, I enjoyed most of the others, and felt that I learned something from each. Besides Chris Arthur's essay, the only other essay which I didn't care for was Richard Rogriguez's "The God of the Desert", which I found to be too abstract and disjointed to make much sense of - there is indeed a strong point he is making about the impact of geography on religion, but he goes about making that point in a very convoluted way.

All in all I do recommend the 2009 volume of The Best American Essays. If you happen to be physically holding the book and weighing it, both literally and figuratively, wondering whether to purchase it, I can assure you that, even though it is thin, you will get your money's worth.

I vacillated between two and three stars for this review, finally deciding on three stars, if only because it does represent an improvement over last year's dismal effort. As other reviewers have noted, the essays don't manage to live up to the introduction by this year's guest editor. I had two specific criticisms;

The first seems to be a fault that is endemic to this particular collection - there is far too much navel-gazing going on in these essays. I didn't find

*the travails of Michael Lewis living in a mansion beyond his means,
*a ten-page account of Garret Lewis's ongoing fight with deer in his backyard,
*10 pages about the personal health and fainting history of someone called James Marcus,
(each of the above delivered in prose that is at best adequate, and with no apparent irony)

anywhere near as fascinating as the authors of the respective pieces apparently did. I doubt that most Amazon readers will have a different reaction - these pieces smacked of solipsistic self-indulgence from start to finish.

My second criticism is probably more a reflection of my personal taste, and may not be shared by other readers. But I felt that Mary Oliver's background as a poet shone through, with the result that many of the pieces had a kind of "writerly" quality that might appeal to other writers, but was a bit precious for a general reader like me. This was particularly true of pieces like Chris Arthur's "(En)trance", Patricia Hampl's "The Dark Art of Description", Brian Doyle's "The Greatest nature Essay Ever", Cynthia Ozick's "Ghost writers", John Updike's "The Writer in Winter", any of which might be of interest to someone attending a writer's workshop, but none of which seemed to me to hold much interest for a general reader.

And, of course, it didn't help my evaluation that one of the longest pieces in the collection is by Richard Rodriguez, a writer whose self-indulgent posturing and whining gets on my last nerve. In a slim collection that doesn't even exceed 200 pages, the 21 pages devoted to his contribution "the God of the Desert" could surely have been put to better use.

Not to end on too sour a note, honorable mention is surely due to;

Sue Allison's "Taking a Reading"
Jill Mc Corkle's "Cuss Time"
David James Duncan's soaring "Cherish this Ecstasy"
and Kathryn Miles's wonderful "Dog is our Copilot"

But these amount to no more than 25 pages of 190, or - if you prefer - 4 essays out of 22. a disappointing batting average.

I think I've just argued myself back down to a two-star review*. Your mileage may vary.

*: Well, actually not, since that apparently corresponds to active dislike on the amazon scale. I didn't actively dislike the book, just didn't particularly like it a whole lot.

I strongly disagree with the previous reviews about this book. The essays by Wendell Berry, Brian Doyle, David Duncan, Kathryn Miles and Barry Lopez are stellar as are many of the others. Oliver privileged, it seems, writing with a strong sense of place, especially the natural world, and those not used to this kind of writing may not like it. I love it. A great collection with a wonderful selection of traditional and innovative essays, one of which (the Duncan essay) turns into a poem at the end. The Doyle essay on writing nature essays should be required reading for anyone interested in writing essays of any type.

This is a collection of magazine articles. Nature writing is included but nothing from the medical or psychological journals or about finance or economics.
I sympathize with the feeling that some of these pieces of writing are so good that they should not be doomed to be ephemeral. How well do these jewels shine when taken out of their settings and jumbled in with the rest of the best?
One problem with enshrining them in a book is the lack of the feedback that we would get from letter-writers in a magazine. This is especially important in controversial contemporary issues where there may be another side to the story. John Berger's story about the Zapatistas in Mexico was in this category. I'm sure that in a magazine or newspaper there would have been plenty of eager correspondents wanting to put in five cents worth. I found myself wanting to point out that James Marcus misses one of the most interesting psychological points about fainting and phobias. Horror at blood and guts results in slowing of the pulse, whereas for the animal phobic the sight of a snake or a spider causes the pulse to quicken.
Some pieces would have fitted better in the context of book. Gregory Orr's account of freedom riding would have gone well into a book about the African-American revolution of the sixties, where other accounts and background would have put it into focus.
Trying to read this cover to cover is like eating all the items in a buffet full of good food. We cannot immortalize every piece of good writing. Some is destined to be transient and its authors as forgotten as an Amazon reviewer,

As with almost any anthology, there will be essays in this book people will like, and essays they won't, and everyone's reaction will be different.

Of everything in the collection, I think my favorite piece was Brian Doyle's "The Greatest Nature Essay Ever," a short two pages that captures perfectly what a truly great nature essay would involve, without ever once veering into actual examples or details. Really, really well done.

Also among the highlights for me: Chris Arthur's "(En)trance," about how the entrance to his mother's childhood home fascinates him, and also about the difference between writing fiction and writing essays; Michael Lewis' "The Mansion: A subprime parable," about living beyond your means even temporarily to prove a point; Jill McCorkle's "Cuss Time," which is about our shrinking language; and Gregory Orr's "Return to Hayneville," about his experiences as a young civil rights movement volunteer.
There were only a few essays that didn't work for me at all, but quite a few that started strong and sort of felt like they lost focus near the end.

While I could wish for more diversity of topics in this collection (how many essays can I read about being a writer?), I do feel richer in my thoughts for having read it. Mary Oliver offers twenty-two short, dense essays, some so compact and linguistically incisive that they read more like prose poems than conventional essays. These make good reading for nonfiction fans, students, and other truth hunters.

The shortest essays in this collection weigh in at less than two pages, while the longest runs to twenty-one. The writing feels well-crafted, and even the longest essays have nothing that feels like wordy overrun. When Chris Arthur, in "(En)trance," muses on the disappearance of childhood landmarks, or Barry Lopez, in "Madre de Dios," recounts his experiences with the Blessed Mother, both say a great deal, but it still feels concise.

Oliver seems to favor essays on themes of recollection, like Jerald Walker's "The Mechanics of Being," and of aspiration, like Wendell Berry's "Faustian Economics." These themes will surprise no one who reads Oliver's poetry. Nor will anyone be surprised at how many of these essayists moonlight as poets. Oliver doesn't just want to read writers with something to say: she also demands they say it well.

An excessive number of essays discuss writing. We can forgive that in an elder statesman, like John Updike in "The Writer in Winter." But the weight starts to feel self-indulgent. While Patricia Hampl's "The Dark Art of Description" and Cynthia Ozick's "The Ghost Writer" are good individually, they accumulate, and the essays start to feel exhibitionistic.

But committed readers will find more than enough in this anthology to keep them thinking, hoping, and dreaming. I enjoyed reading this collection, and next semester, I will feel confident putting it in front of my students. For all its minor shortcomings, this collection is a strong addition to the "Best American Essays" tradition, and darn good reading too.

Must reads:

The Mansion: A Subprime Parable - Michael Lewis. Humorous

And Such small Deer - Its mosaic format lends it liberty to bundle different time myths and book characters.

Our Vanishing Night- horseshoe bats being replaced by light-feeding pipistrelle bats after installing street lights - a more conspicuous effect of light pollution

If you like writing:

The Dark Art of Description - Patricia Hempl

The Writer in Winter - While Updike talks about old writers, after reading some wonderful stories by middle aged writers (The Best American Short stories 2009), them mixing their experience and imagination opposed to very young writers (Best new American voices 2010) with only imagination going for them, the hot age to pick is summer.

I just saw the Notable 100 essays. Wish theres time to pick some good ones from them.

This collection does not come up to what we might expect from the title "Best Essays". The essays themselves are slight in impact and are also, most usually, wordy. It was as if the essay form itself was about to collapse. Then I wondered, does the essay even have a classic form, or for that matter, any form?
Overall, these pieces do not inject color or richness into our mental landscape. They do not surprise and do not penetrate to show brilliance or beauty in return for the brief few minutes we spend with them. At most they are friendly, intelligent bits. I was glad I read: Barry Lopez, "Madre del Dios" which had surprise and impact in small measure. And there was John Updike's "The Writer in Winter", published the year before he died, which was both gentle and thought provoking. Perhaps someday the title of this series might be changed to "Assorted" and the time span widened by two or three years to catch a wider sample from which to choose.

This year's essay collection did not live up to the excellent introduction written by editor Mary Oliver. Had these essays been as passionate and appealing as she suggested they would be, I would not have been so disappointed. They came nowhere near acting as "a most fervent, provocative, and valuable friend." The essays as a group did not stir me and I cannot recommend this book.

I've always loved the Best American series, especially the volume of essays. I haven't picked up the past few editions, so maybe this is a weak entry, or maybe my tastes have changed. In any case, this edition is absolutely awful.

It's a shame, because the introduction by Mary Oliver really piqued my interest. Her short history of essay writing is interesting. She mentions that--in times past--the essay was not held to such rigorous standards of factual accuracy. Therefore, an essayist could rely on fact, fiction, memory, and imagination to write a an essay. Now we take an essayist like David Sedaris--who I don't particularly like--and pick him apart for not writing stories that are 100% fact.

In case, don't but this book.