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At Large and at Small: Familiar Essays
by
Anne Fadiman
In At Large and At Small, Anne Fadiman returns to one of her favorite genres, the familiar essay—a beloved and hallowed literary tradition recognized for both its intellectual breadth and its miniaturist focus on everyday experiences. With the combination of humor and erudition that has distinguished her as one of our finest essayists, Fadiman draws us into twelve of her p...more
Hardcover, 220 pages
Published
June 12th 2007
by Farrar Straus Giroux
(first published 2007)
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So, last week I went out for sushi with my parents. I had just read the essay from this collection where Fadiman talks about being a night owl; my mom is a major night owl, so, thinking she'd appreciate it, I recommended the book to her. Turns out she knows Fadiman: they went to Harvard together, lived in Dunster House together, used to fly back on the same planes from Boston to where they lived in L.A. My mom wrinkled her nose as she told me this. She and Anne were not bestest buddies, apparent...more
Over the last several years, I must have given close to a dozen copies of Anne Fadiman's previous essay collection, "Ex Libris", to various friends. It's the kind of book you just have to share with others. It didn't seem possible that another collection could match the perfection of the first, but this one comes pretty close.
Essays in the first collection focused on topics related to books and reading; the author's lifelong passion for reading shone through on every page a...more
Essays in the first collection focused on topics related to books and reading; the author's lifelong passion for reading shone through on every page a...more
I heard Anne Fadiman read from this collection at Brookline Booksmith in August, 2007. She has a charming, thoughtful reading voice which is entirely consistent with her writing. This collection is one of familiar essays, a form she said she learned to love from reading Charles Lamb. One of the essays is about Lamb, and her love for his work has made me interested in reading him as well. I cannot remember the last time I was inspired in that way.
I'm a little unsure how this entirely ...more
I'm a little unsure how this entirely ...more
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A good collection of essays on topics that vary from ice cream to why we should read. A more serious collection than found in her other title, Ex Libris, but still enjoyable.
This is a lovely book (a collection of essays, so easy to read because I just read an essay every other evening to relax). When I finished I couldn't help but think that part of the trouble with teaching secondary students to write the personal essay is not that they haven't had experiences worth writing about. It's really two other things: first, we don't teach them about the additional inquiry that should accompany such writing. This book is a great example of how beneficial such inquiry is to...more
I know I have been giving all my books five stars recently... I'm starting to feel like I should stop doing that, since it looks like I'm never critical about what I read (actually the opposite is true). But, honestly, I have loved everything I've been reading lately (plus, at this point, I don't finish books that I don't enjoy unless, for some reason, I have to). Anyway: Anne Fadiman: she is so smart! Plus funny, learned, and a maker of beautiful, sometimes extraordinarily beautiful, sente...more
I love Anne Fadiman's writing, and to anyone who reads this, you should, too! Just when the world is getting too depressing for words (enough with the wars and politics), along comes this wonderful book of "familiar essays" (you know, as opposed to the unfamiliar ones...), covering topics as varied as Charles Lamb ("The Unfuzzy Lamb"), the author and her brother's childhood museum of scientific and bizarre curiosities ("Collecting Nature"), ice cream (of the same n...more
Oh, Anne Fadiman, how I love you. Yes, you have your George, and I have my Beth, and I'll never get to know you in anything like the way I've gotten to know you from this collection of essays and your first, Ex Libris, but it doesn't matter: I love you, anyway.
I love your never expressed belief in the power of a small, focused essay to cast a meaningful light on the world at large. I love your love of Nabokov and Charles Lamb and arctic explorers and coffee; I love that reading your t...more
I love your never expressed belief in the power of a small, focused essay to cast a meaningful light on the world at large. I love your love of Nabokov and Charles Lamb and arctic explorers and coffee; I love that reading your t...more
Just beautiful. A good essay is like nothing else. I've always loved familiar essays (though I didn't know they were called that until this book), which combine the academic with the personal.
In general, I much prefer this type of writing to traditional memoirs. There is just something about knowing about the history of coffee and Balzac's coffee addiction that makes Fadiman's reminiscences of drinking coffee with college friends that much more interesting.
Perhaps one sm...more
In general, I much prefer this type of writing to traditional memoirs. There is just something about knowing about the history of coffee and Balzac's coffee addiction that makes Fadiman's reminiscences of drinking coffee with college friends that much more interesting.
Perhaps one sm...more
I must admit upfront that I am likely to be biased in my opinion on this tome as Anne Fadiman was a writing professor of mine (and Ksenija's) our senior year of college. She remains one of my most beloved memories of my college education and after reading this book I was reminded why.
Anne Fadiman is a painfully intelligent and well-read woman, but she has the ability to share her own stories in an honestly intellectual voice that is not forced in its almost Mensa-ness, but at the same time...more
Anne Fadiman is a painfully intelligent and well-read woman, but she has the ability to share her own stories in an honestly intellectual voice that is not forced in its almost Mensa-ness, but at the same time...more
Anne Fadiman is a wonderful writer. Anybody who's read Ex Libris knows this.
For those who don't know Ex Libris, it's a collection of essays about reading and the love of words. In At Large and At Small, Fadiman goes a bit further afield in her interests, but keeps that wonderful warm, thoughtful tone that makes her such a pleasure to take to bed with you. Uh... so to speak.
I think my favorite essays were "Ice Cream" and "Coffee", whose topics need n...more
For those who don't know Ex Libris, it's a collection of essays about reading and the love of words. In At Large and At Small, Fadiman goes a bit further afield in her interests, but keeps that wonderful warm, thoughtful tone that makes her such a pleasure to take to bed with you. Uh... so to speak.
I think my favorite essays were "Ice Cream" and "Coffee", whose topics need n...more
A very quick read of several short essays. Fadiman begins her collection with a Preface defending the "Familiar Essay." The Familiar Essayist writes "about himself, he also wrote about a subject, something with which he was familiar and about which he was so enthusiastic, that he words were suffused with a lover's intimacy."
I have to admit familiar essays have always been my favorite kind of essay. I think I am a member of the exact audience this book was aimed at...more
I have to admit familiar essays have always been my favorite kind of essay. I think I am a member of the exact audience this book was aimed at...more
Some of these essays are good enough to be studied as models in essay writing. This collection is definately a worthy follow-up of her first collection of essays, Ex Libris.
There are plenty of things that make her essays so wonderful:
Her passion for her interests (and some of them are charmingly idiosyncratic), coupled with her skills as a writer, go a long way in making them readable, even if you don't share in those interests particularly.
She combines a n...more
There are plenty of things that make her essays so wonderful:
Her passion for her interests (and some of them are charmingly idiosyncratic), coupled with her skills as a writer, go a long way in making them readable, even if you don't share in those interests particularly.
She combines a n...more
Anne Fadiman's essays are enjoyable, but I think this collection on assorted topics did not sustain my attention as completely as Ex-Libris, with its more narrow and bookish focus, did. Her familiar essays have enough of her personality to know I share some of her sensibilities (say on technology), but not all (on late nights). That said I appreciated her thoughts about coffee, moving, Charles Lamb, Samuel Coleridge, ice cream, and the flag, even if many of the details of her essays are alread...more
I think Anne Fadiman is a very talented author. I especially enjoyed her collection of essays on books and reading, "Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader", and her non-fiction novel "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" about the clash between Hmong and American culture and medicine was phenomenally well-researched and well-written. While "At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays" didn't disappoint, it didn't leave me as excited as her other works. The theme...more
I was not familiar with the familiar essay until I read this book. Anne Fadiman provides a concise definition of the familiar essay in comparison to personal and critical essays in her introduction. Personal essays are "more heart than brain." Critical essays are "more brain than heart." Familiar essays are "equal measures of both." (pg. xi)
Fadiman provides such a fine collection of familiar essays that I feel inspired to attempt to write one, but fear ...more
Fadiman provides such a fine collection of familiar essays that I feel inspired to attempt to write one, but fear ...more
In this book of familiar essays on topics ranging from coffee to ice cream to collecting nature, Anne Fadiman dives into each topic, beautifully blending her own personal relationship with it with a world of history, facts, and interesting tidbits. It is so well written--wonderfully informative and rich. I ended up with a great list of vocabulary while reading it--dreckle, whiffling, crepuscular, omphalos--and a sense that I want to pick up my pencil and start writing and read, read, read more. ...more
I struggled with whether to give this 4 or 5 stars because it's not my favorite Anne Fadiman book (_Ex Libris_ was so funny and endearing and _The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down_ was so fascinating and relevant to my interests), but it's still extremely well written, interesting, educational and funny. I may have said it before, but essays are one of my favorite genres (tied for first with British children's novels). I just get a lot out of the mix of anecdote + nonfiction + opinion(s) I...more
A dozen exceptionally well-written essays on disparate subjects such as coffee, mail and a biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In "A Piece of Cotton," an essay about the American flag, Fadiman writes, "In the weeks after September 11, I saw for the first time that the flag...has multiple meanings....The red, white, and blue turban worn by the Sikh umbrella vendor a friend walked past in Dupont Circle, not far from the White House, meant Looking like someone and thinki...more
In "A Piece of Cotton," an essay about the American flag, Fadiman writes, "In the weeks after September 11, I saw for the first time that the flag...has multiple meanings....The red, white, and blue turban worn by the Sikh umbrella vendor a friend walked past in Dupont Circle, not far from the White House, meant Looking like someone and thinki...more
The familiar essays in here range from boring to shockingly captivating. Most of the boring ones can be ruled out in the titles. The two essays on food (ice cream and coffee) seemed like a way for the author to pass her own boredom, and none of the research contained within could summon anything greater than a yawn from me.
What shocked me was how much I found some of the other essays enjoyable. The ones surest to be the driest, or so I thought, were the ones about historical writers,...more
What shocked me was how much I found some of the other essays enjoyable. The ones surest to be the driest, or so I thought, were the ones about historical writers,...more
I thoroughly enjoyed these essays. I really love the essay form and particularly these type that incorporate the personal life of the essayist with real world information. I was afraid to read this book because Ex Libris, her previous book of essays, is one of my favorite books, and I also thought her non-fiction book The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down was excellent. As a vegan I was worried that her essays on butterfly capture and ice cream would disturb me. Turns out it was "no prob...more
I just finished At Large And At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman. Familiar essays were made popular by British gentlemen as they expounded on widely divergent areas of interest but have largely fallen out of favor in recent years. Since I have tended to favor essays by authors writing on a "theme" I was a bit unsure of how much I would like this book. The first essay did not give me much hope. The author talked about her early childhood obsession with butterfly collecting. In spi...more
I am giving this four out of five stars because 4/5 of the essays deserve 5 stars, if that makes sense. I highly recommend this selection of incredibly intelligent, interesting, and honest essays on a variety of eccentric topics. The first essay, in particular, which describes Ms. Fadiman's childhood obsession with collecting things from nature, including butterflies, is just stunning (lots of interesting references to Nabakov and lepidoptery). I also loved the essays on Charles Lambs' essays (m...more
Again, the author says it best.
'Essays, for me,' she says in her clear, almost dogmatic, Ameri can tone, 'provide for the writer a chance to move into the sort of leisurely, slightly hedonistic mode that, in the 21st century, has become a luxury. With an essay you are, decidedly, not rushing.' She sees essays as 'pools of opportunity to stop, and sit, and slow down, and think'.
Thank ou Anne Fadiman for slowing down amd immersing yourself in ice cream, coffeeand the...more
"At Large and at Small" is a collection of "familiar essays" on various subjects and interests of Fadiman's, all of which shed light on her persona. From her love of ice-cream, Charles Lamb, to the American flag and coffee, Fadiman's lively prose makes each subject come alive, and you come away a little more knowledgeable after each essay. Fadiman's writing is engaging, and by the end of the book, I truly felt as if I had traveled around the world through her own journeys of ...more
A good essayist is hard to find. While I preferred Fadiman's earlier collection, Ex Libris, I certainly enjoyed this one as well. The essays in this book, ranging from musings on coffee to mini-biographies of writers who have inspired Fadiman, are little jewels, some more precious than others (Fadiman is at times a little too enamored of her Wonderful Life and Family). This is a book I'll likely pick up again in a year or two--Fadiman's style is well worth emulating.
The essay "A Piece of Cotton" about the American Flag is wonder enough, but I like a good essay and enjoyed others too, particularly the one on essayist, Charles Lamb. Had to pass on "Collecting Nature," --too much killing involved. Fadiman, former editor of "The American Scholar," is also author of "Ex Libris" (essays on books and reading) and the fine "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down," which details the clash of American medical cultur...more
Anne Fadiman is a wonder. The "familiar essay" is an art form that feels especially compelling in her expert hands. Even when the subject of her essay was one about which I knew embarrassingly little (e.g., Charles Lamb) or about which I previously cared very little (e.g., insect and butterfly collecting), she drew me in quickly and held my attention captive with her wondrous prose, good humor, and keen insights. Reading this collection is time well spent.
This is another fun book with a very diverse and impressive vocabulary. I got it for my boyfriend after he got Ex Libris for me then requested this one. I'd just finished the latter then squirreled away his copy, and read it through before he could get to the third chapter. I got a little mired in the incessant lists this time, but it was a fun way to learn about the research that went into it. The last essay was very powerful.
I'll happily read anything Fadmian writes just because she's a master of her craft, but I was a bit disappointed in the topics of her essays here compared to Ex Libris. I'm not a night owl, not an ice cream lover, not a bug collector--and so I didn't find much to which I related here. And the one piece to which I did relate, her account of discovering coffee in college, struck me as a bit precious--doesn't everyone discover coffee in college?
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Anne Fadiman, the daughter of Annalee Whitmore Jacoby Fadiman, a screenwriter and foreign correspondent, and Clifton Fadiman, an essayist and critic, was born in New York City in 1953. She graduated in 1975 from Harvard College, where she began her writing career as the undergraduate columnist at Harvard Magazine. For many years, she was a writer and columnist for Life, and later an Editor-at-Lar...more
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