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4th out of 53 books
—
48 voters
The Art of the Personal Essay: An Anthology from the Classical Era to the Present
For more than four hundred years, the personalessay has been one of the richest and most vibrantof all literary forms. Distinguished from thedetached formal essay by its friendly, conversationaltone, its loose structure, and its drive towardcandor and self-disclosure, the personal essayseizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities,fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal ritu...more
Paperback, 832 pages
Published
January 15th 1997
by Anchor
(first published 1994)
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So many great essays in this anthology that it would be worthy for that reason alone, but Lopate's organizational principles make this especially useful for the essayist in search of models, or for the reader who is chasing the many forms of a specific type of essay, or for anyone who enjoys reading personal nonfiction. I never fail to feel a buzz of anticipatory joy when I pick this volume up, and writing out this Goodreads note makes me realize that I really should dip back into this soon.
This collection of essays warrants several readings. Phillip Lopate, a distinguished essayist and brother of Leonard Lopate, NPR commentator on New York City's WNYC, presents a sizable and articulate Introduction of what makes an essay 'personal'. He examines the process of crafting the personal essay by dedicating digestible segments under headings such as "The Conversational Element", "Honesty, Confession, and Privacy", and "Questions of Form and Style." This book is as much of a resource as i...more
My favorite essay in this thick, heavy, door-stopping book is a humble writing of G.K. Chesterton entitled "A Piece of Chalk". I absolutely adore drawing with chalk and so of course I felt connected to him right off the bat. It was actually the first time I'd ever read Chesterton before, and I instantly fell in love. There is something in his writing that resonates with something inside me... in other words, it feels good. This anthology also includes other masters, both classic and modern such...more
I picked up this book again to read an essay by Walter Benjamin entitled "Unpacking My Library," which had been recommended to me. Unfortunately, his meditation on the collecting, purchasing, and owning of books is pretty pretentious and inadvertently classist. His only valuable insight in this essay, in my opinion, is about the nature of childhood: "I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. This is the childlike element which in a c...more
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I need to make a separate shelf for this book titled, "kill-me-now," because really, the best way to offer someone a slow and painful death is to make them read this. I was forced to read this for class and write up summaries and analysis' for practically all the essays, in addition to taking a test and writing an essay on these essays for my classes, so I did not have fun reading this. It's boring, it's long, and 99.9% of the essays in this are boring. I guess if you like reading personal ess...more
3 likes · like · see review
It's a BIG book that took me quite while to finish, but worth all the effort. The contemporary American essays were my favourites, mostly because I'm very much into the social criticism/observation genre represented by people like McCarthy, Baldwin, Vidal, Lopate and Rodriguez. Also, some of the essays, especially Montaigne's pieces, suffered in translation. I'm not a native speaker, but still I could tell that the flow of the text wasn't as good as it could have been. Can't wait to compare this...more
Jul 08, 2009
Karen
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Writers
Recommended to Karen by:
A Bennington Prof
Shelves:
read_chunks_of
I always come back to this anthology for Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Lantern Bearers," probably one of my favorite pieces of all time, by one of my favorite authors. The quote below isn't inspirational or aphoristic, but when I think of my favorite quotes, this paragraph rings out. Read aloud, its words and rhythm (say "top-coat buttoned") are beautiful on their own, but as far as the sentiment underpinning it, I could almost take it as a manifesto:
"But the talk, at any rate, was but a condime...more
"But the talk, at any rate, was but a condime...more
As I have been working on some of my own personal essays from my travels in India, this was like my Bible. I'm just going to attach some of my responses on the form and content of selected essays. It can be daunting to try and sift through the entire anthology, so I hope this can help someone:
Consolation to His Wife by Plutarch
Content:
It is kind of refreshing to find a guy who “atypically for his age, saw marriage as the closet of human bonds” (16). It is clear as we read this that he admires h...more
Consolation to His Wife by Plutarch
Content:
It is kind of refreshing to find a guy who “atypically for his age, saw marriage as the closet of human bonds” (16). It is clear as we read this that he admires h...more
3 likes · like · see review
I read four essays from this book every week, and picked one to write about. The final list, with links to individual essay reviews:
Seneca
Shonagon
Montaigne
Steele
Edgeworth
Lamb
Stevenson
Chesterton
Woolf
Tanizaki
Borges
Cioran
Suleri
Thoreau
McCarthy
Baldwin
Didion
Lopate
Seneca
Shonagon
Montaigne
Steele
Edgeworth
Lamb
Stevenson
Chesterton
Woolf
Tanizaki
Borges
Cioran
Suleri
Thoreau
McCarthy
Baldwin
Didion
Lopate
2 likes · like · see review
This is an incredible anthology of personal essays by the masters, from the Classical Era to the Present. It features Seneca, Michel De Montaigne, Charles Lamb, William Hazlitt, G.K. Chesterton, V. Woolf, Thoreau, H.L. Mencken, E.B. White, Adrienne Rich, Wendell Berry, Anne Dillard and many, many more.
It is a must for any personal library collection. I intend to make it part of mine own.
It is a must for any personal library collection. I intend to make it part of mine own.
This book is all encompassing, an anthology worth its weight--which is about two pounds.
From the father of the personal essay, Michel de Montaigne to one of the best representatives of contemporary, "New Journalism", Joan Didion The Art of the Personal Essay truly has it all. Whether you're a student of nonfiction or merely an admirer, this book needs to be in your collection.
From the father of the personal essay, Michel de Montaigne to one of the best representatives of contemporary, "New Journalism", Joan Didion The Art of the Personal Essay truly has it all. Whether you're a student of nonfiction or merely an admirer, this book needs to be in your collection.
A wonderful collection, from Seneca to Adrienne Rich. Essays are in chronological order, but the table of contents also provides listings by topic and theme, so that if you are teaching, or in the mood for a certain kind of reading, you can look up 'romance' or 'nature' or 'walking' or 'food' and read a corresponding piece. Delectable!
I read this because it was assigned as a summer assignment for my English class. I'm glad that I did because this book contains some of the best essays and it's organized in a clear format. It's easy to search for models for essays. My favorite essays in this book are the ones by G.K Chesterton however.
A bunch of great essays compiled into one big book...I'm reading this for my English class so I'm putting it on here to inspire me to read the essays we aren't assigned. It covers several different authors, from Seneca and Plutarch to Joan Didion and Virginia Woolf. Love it.
Lopate's introduction alone is worth the price of admission to this house of wonderrs. Anyone at all interested in writing essays must read it. As for the essays themselves, some are more riveting/amusing/touching than others. My favorites: Seneca on Asthma; Virginia Woolf on "Street Haunting" and "Death of a Moth"; George Orwell's hair-raising account of prep school English-style, "Such, Such Were the Days; Richard Selzer's "The Knife" (don't read this if you have surgery scheduled); Didion's "...more
Great introduction and survey of the history of the personal essay. Loads of great essays from Seneca to James Thurber. Includes Wendall Berry, GK Chesterton, and others. Clearly there is a lack of great female essayists...we shall change that!
The Art of the Personal Essay is an amazing collection of nonfiction essays that spans hundreds of years. It offers the cityscape that is the development of Creative Nonfiction. Whilst I was engrossed in each essay, I confess the power of the text becomes lost if one tries to read it as a whole (or assignment). I find myself returning to the essays contained there often; opening the book and simply being drawn into a world in miniature, perhaps Virginia Woolf, or Richard Rodriguez, or some ancie...more
A joyous book celebrating the personal essay. It helped to remind me of the importance of the personal essay--and made me begin a journal again.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys or writes personal essays.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys or writes personal essays.
The Art of the Personal Essay is the definite collection of non-fiction writing. Phillip Lopate has put together an engaging collection. Any writer, or reader, interested in getting a good taste of, shall we say, "traditional" non-fiction, should give this anthology a try. I highly recommend Lopate's introduction on the elements of the personal essay, as well as solid work by Woolf, Didion, Johnson, Borges, Rodriguez, Orwell, White, Thoreau, Dillard, Rich... and even the "fountainheads" such as...more
This is a fantastic and hugely helpful collection of personal essays. I always pull it out for inspiration when I need to write application essays of any kind (which is often!)
Jun 07, 2007
Leah
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
non-fiction readers and writers
Shelves:
non-fiction,
essays
This well-edited collection is a fantastic introduction to the personal essay, a form of which I am incredibly fond. The authors and their work vary widely in style and content and anyone looking to learn to write a solid and moving personal essay (college applicants perhaps?) would do well to read it. Though I wouldn't suggest reading it cover to cover (though I did), I would suggest picking it up and reading not only the familar writers (Woolf, Stevenson), but some of the less familar ones as...more
Your writing career cannot begin unless this book takes up space in your library. This resource continues to inspire at every flip of the page.
I recommend this book to anyone interested in nonfiction. The editor has selected a cosmopolitan list and essays of writers from many time periods.
Finished reading "Art of the Personal Essay" complied by Phillip Lopate for school and I enjoyed learning about the development of the personal essay from Ancient Rome to present day. While at times, the language can get tough and the metaphors a bit cmplicated to understand, any true bibliophile and writer should pick up this book at least once. The essays contained within are gems of literature and its writers are brilliant minds that still have much to teach us, even from beyond the grave.
Excellent option for folks teaching a freshman composition class and need interesting essays for their students to read.
I love this anthology! Had to buy it as a required textbook as a Freshman and go back to it all the time.
This is one of my all-time favorite anthologies of essays...a must-read, many times over
This book, and the wonderful essays in it, made me a better writer.
I found this at McKay's Used Books. A wealth of wisdom for $5.00!
High minded and dry-informational and given this, a keeper-I own it.
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Phillip Lopate is the author of three personal essay collections, two novels, two poetry collections, a memoir of his teaching experiences, and a collection of his movie criticism. He has edited the following anthologies, and his essays, fiction, poetry, film and architectural criticism have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Essays, The Paris Review, Harper's, Vogue, E...more
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