I
had to come up with a new category for this: an essay by someone I came across
that I thought was noteworthy. Since
this is the first of the category, I ought to define what an essay is. Its etymology derives from the French “assay,”
a word with multiple meanings. But of the ones relevant to this topic, consider
“to examine or analyze” and perhaps more importantly, “to attempt.” It is interesting that the French cognate is
a verb while the English is a noun, though its use as a verb is in the
dictionary, but I can’t say I have ever come across it personally. When I do think of an essay, I do think of
the original French use of an attempt.
It is an attempt to communicate.
I think of it as a reaching out to a reader, an attempt to bridge the
gap between writer and whoever wishes to read.
But an attempt to communicate what? It’s no coincidence that when we think of
essay we think of a school writing assignment.
The primary English definition of the noun is “a short literary
composition on a particular theme or subject, usually in prose and generally
analytic, speculative, or interpretative.”
Most of people’s contact with the essay is in
high school English composition class.
We are taught to formulate a thesis, provide supporting argument, and finally
a coalescing conclusion. Wikipedia
provides a fuller definition:
Essays are generally
scholarly pieces of writing written from an author's personal point of view,
but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of an article, a pamphlet
and a short story.
Essays can consist of a
number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos,
learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections
of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in
verse have been dubbed essays (e.g. Alexander Pope's An Essay on Criticism and
An Essay on Man). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like
John Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and Thomas Malthus's An
Essay on the Principle of Population are counterexamples. In some countries
(e.g., the United States and Canada), essays have become a major part of formal
education. Secondary students are taught structured essay formats to improve
their writing skills, and admission essays are often used by universities in
selecting applicants and, in the humanities and social sciences, as a way of
assessing the performance of students during final exams.
Through
the use of literary criticism and learned arguments (i.e., term papers) is
where most students perfect their skills of writing. By the latter part of my graduate school, I started
incorporating creative elements into my literary essays. The essay has an incredible flexibility to
it, as long as one keeps focused on the thesis argument, and in my latter
essays in Grad School I let go of scholarly inhibition and heightened my papers
with all sorts of rhetorical twists. One
of my favorite writers, the one whose work I ultimately wrote my Master’s
Thesis, D. H. Lawrence, was a brilliant essayist, and at my best writing I felt
I was channeling his creative flares.
Now
if the scholarly essay is what we normally encounter in school, what we enjoy
to read when out of school is a subset of the essay, known as the personal
essay. In the personal essay we
encounter life, as experienced by the author by means of drawing the reader
into the experience, much in the way of fiction author, but with the criteria
that this experience actually happened. In
the introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present (a must
have book for lovers of literature, by the way), editor Phillip Lopate attempts
to reach a definition:
The hallmark of the
personal essay is its intimacy. The
writer seems to be speaking directly into your ear, confiding everything from
gossip to wisdom. Through sharing
thoughts, memories, desires, complaints, and whimsies, the personal essayist
sets up a relationship with the reader, a dialogue—a friendship, if you will,
based on identification, understanding, testiness, and companionship.
(p. xxiii, Anchor Books/Doubleday, New York, 1994)
Now
that I have introduced you to what a personal essay is, here is a wonderful
example I just came across that makes for a touching read: “An Ode to Sophie,the World’s Greatest Tabster,” by Lee Cheeks from The Imaginative Conservative.
I’ll just provide the central paragraph:
Guided by the
inspiration of Grandpa Cheek and Russell Amos Kirk, even though closed to the
prospect of having a feline in our house, some openness emerged after making a
professional transition to Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, an exemplary
liberal arts college. My wife, Kathy, convinced me that we needed a cat. I was
adamantly opposed to the prospect initially, but my life experiences allowed me
to consider the possibility. In August of 2000, I walked gently into a pet store
on Keith Street in Cleveland, Tennessee, and a beautiful tab cat kitten with
white paws ran up to me without provocation; her paws glistened in the bright
lights of the store, suggesting she had chosen me as her new factotum. Little
did I know that this kitten would change my life. In a day or so we brought
Sophie to our Georgia Bell Circle home. Sophie was an adorable kitten, not in
the typical sense that all kittens are adorable; she seemed to be able to
discern your attitude and you intentions, and responded in due course. At the
beginning of her first night with us, we placed her in the kitchen, and between
the kitchen and the dining room we placed an inflatable bed (vertically) so as
to block exit from the kitchen. Sophie cried and obviously wanted to spend the
evening with us, but she eventually settled down and we went to sleep. Much to
our surprise and excitement, in middle of the night, she was able to make her
way into our bedroom, overcoming the “great wall” we had placed in her way! We
quickly discerned that Sophie was unstoppable and unflappable, even in the
midst of difficult situations. As she overcame her inflatable bed as barricade,
she would overcome many challenges during her twelve years on this earth.
All
pet lovers will instantly connect, and though I’m a dog person, I have to say
this made me want to go out and bring home a cat. The essay strikes me as a classical example
of the personal essay form: an introduction that provides the context and initial
conflict, a personal narrative that draws the reader into the experience, a
climatic conclusion, and an epilogue that frames the experience into some sort
of insight. Like all personal essays
done well, it was a joy to read.
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