The Next American Essay [Paperback]

John D'Agata (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2003

In this singular collection, John D'Agata takes a literary tour of lyric essays written by the masters of the craft. Beginning with 1975 and John McPhee's ingenious piece, "The Search for Marvin Gardens," D'Agata selects an example of creative nonfiction for each subsequent year. These essays are unrestrained, elusive, explosive, mysterious—a personal lingual playground. They encompass and illuminate culture, myth, history, romance, and sex. Each essay is a world of its own, a world so distinctive it resists definition.

Contributors include:

Sherman Alexie
David Antin
Jenny Boully
Anne Carson
Guy Davenport
Lydia Davis
Joan Didion
Annie Dillard
Thalia Field
Albert Goldbarth
Susan Griffin
Theresa Hak Kung Cha
Jamaica Kincaid
Wayne Koestenbaum
Barry Lopez
John McPhee
Carole Maso
Harry Mathews
Susan Mitchell
Fabio Morabito
Mary Ruefle
David Shields
Dennis Silk
Susan Sontag
Alexander Theroux
George W. S. Trow
David Foster Wallace
Eliot Weinberger
Joe Wenderoth
James Wright

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

D'Agata (Halls of Fame) avows love of the diversity of the essay form, and it is palpable on every page of this unique, esoteric, beautiful book. He tells the reader that he first became enamored of essays when his mother read him the news of the day while he was still in her womb. It is this kind of fantastic, myth-making perspective that runs through each entry of this anthology, whose contributors include such master essayists as John McPhee, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Annie Dillard. Hopping from one genre to another-biography, poetry, philosophy, travel writing, memoir-D'Agata makes the point that the essay is not just one form of writing but can be every form of writing. Although it may occasionally seem that D'Agata has chosen a selection to illustrate how erudite he is-such as Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Erato Love Poetry," a set of bewildering fragments and (literally) blank white space-many other choices convey the wondrously infinite possibilities of the essay form. Standouts include "Unguided Tour," Sontag's cranky philosophical dialogue with her inner self; "Life Story," David Shields's string of aphorisms composed entirely of bumper sticker slogans; "Ticket to the Fair," David Foster Wallace's colorful, compassionate tour of the Illinois State Fair; and "The Body," Jenny Boully's postmodern pastiche of autobiographical (or not) footnotes. D'Agata's idea of an essay-or lyric essay, as he comes to call these writings- conflates both art and fact, blurring the line between objectivity and subjectivity. The lyric essay, he says, has a "kind of logic that wants to sing." Readers, listen up, then: here is a book that makes some beautiful music.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

As he demonstrated in Halls of Fame (2001), D'Agata is an impressively poetic essayist, and now he pays tribute to his chosen form in a unique and astutely selected chronological collection of seminal lyric essays. Choosing one essay to represent each year up to the present, D'Agata begins in 1975 not only because it's the year of his birth but also because that's when John McPhee, grand master of what became known as creative nonfiction, published "The Search for Marvin Gardens," a shimmering hybrid of personal observations and lovingly recited facts about the board game Monopoly. A similarly complex mix of the objective and the subjective by Barry Lopez follows, as does a wily rumination by Susan Sontag, and an indelible piece by Joan Didion, empress of the plexus of the intimate and the political. Splendid, form-transcending performances by the likes of Anne Carson, Paul Metcalf, Sherman Alexie, Susan Griffin, and Carole Maso alternate with D'Agata's own sparkling musings on each year and each phase in the essay's evolution. This is a genuinely exhilarating work of literary history. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 475 pages
• Publisher: Graywolf Press (February 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555973752
• ISBN-13: 978-1555973759
• Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 1.4 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #72,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

John D'Agata is the author of "Halls of Fame," "About a Mountain," and editor of "The Next American Essay" and "The Lost Origins of the Essay." He teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he lives.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars RGM January 25, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Next American Essay will really make you think about the genre-
What is the essay? How do we define it and why? What are our expectations and do they matter?
If you are looking for a traditional anthology this book is not for you, but if you are interested in exploring the possibilities of the essay, this book is a find! Next American Essay offers the reader a lot, but most of it is not on the surface. This is not an anthology that is easy to skim through, but it's definitely worth a serious read.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays Plus Essays April 25, 2003

By Consuelo M. Concepcion

Format:Paperback

The anthology is made up of about 30 essays by biggies like McPhee and Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace. Essays that everyone's read before. So it's not an anthology you turn to because you want to figure out what's new out there. Really it's anthology you turn to for the sake of the sensibility behind it, John D'Agata's own voice that somehow manages to creep into the anthology and carry the entire 500 pages through on a whimiscal story about why he loves essays. It's got to be the most charming anthology I've ever read. At times bold (many of the essays aren't traditinally thought of as essays), at times funny, sentimental, outright smart, the anthology is trying to show what the essay has in its potential. It's a huge success. But what makes it especially thrilling are the 30 extra essay we get from D'Agata himself, introductions that stand on their own like jewels embedded in the history of a genre.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Foolish reviewers... October 3, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

...make me laugh. This is the best anthology of essays that anyone's even tried to produce in the past two decades. On top of that it's one of the most inovative anthologies of any genre category that I know of. What's missing is something of David Foster Wallace's more wilder side. Needs something from Ben Marcus, Harry Matthews, Joanne Beard, Susan Howe, and Lynn Hejinian.