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The Next American Essay
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.
And (Prologue) / Guy Davenport --
The search for Marvin Gardens (1975) / John McPhee --
The raven (1976) / Barry Lopez --
Unguided tour (1977) / Susan Sontag --
Girl (1978) / Jamaica Kincaid --
The white album (1979) / Joan Didion --
May morning (1980) / James Wright --
Country cooking from central France: roast boned rolled stuffed shoulder of lamb (Farce double) (1981) / Harry Mathews --
Total eclipse (1982) / Annie Dillard --
The theory and practice of postmodernism: A manifesto (1983) / David Antin --
The dream of India (1984) / Eliot Weinberger --
Erato, love poetry (1985) / Theresa Hak Kyung Cha --
The marionette theater (1986) / Dennis Silk --
Kinds of water (1987) / Anne Carson --
Oil (1988) / Fabio Morabito --
Needs (1989) / George W.S. Trow --
Notes toward a history of scaffolding (1990) / Susan Mitchell --
Delft (1991) / Albert Goldbarth --
" ... and nobody objected" (1992) / Paul Metcalf --
Captivity (October 1992) / Sherman Alexie --
Red shoes (1993) / Susan Griffin --
Black (1994) / Alexander Theroux --
Foucault and pencil (1995) / Lydia Davis --
Life story (1996) / David Shields --
Ticket to the fair (1997) / David Foster Wallace --
Darling's prick (1998) / Wayne Koestenbaum --
The intercession of the saints (1999) / Carole Maso --
Monument (2000) / Mary Ruefle --
A I (2001) / Thalia Field --
Sleep (2002) / Brian Lennon --
The body (2003) / Jenny Boully --
Things to do today (Epilogue) / Joe Wenderoth
And (Prologue) / Guy Davenport --
The search for Marvin Gardens (1975) / John McPhee --
The raven (1976) / Barry Lopez --
Unguided tour (1977) / Susan Sontag --
Girl (1978) / Jamaica Kincaid --
The white album (1979) / Joan Didion --
May morning (1980) / James Wright --
Country cooking from central France: roast boned rolled stuffed shoulder of lamb (Farce double) (1981) / Harry Mathews --
Total eclipse (1982) / Annie Dillard --
The theory and practice of postmodernism: A manifesto (1983) / David Antin --
The dream of India (1984) / Eliot Weinberger --
Erato, love poetry (1985) / Theresa Hak Kyung Cha --
The marionette theater (1986) / Dennis Silk --
Kinds of water (1987) / Anne Carson --
Oil (1988) / Fabio Morabito --
Needs (1989) / George W.S. Trow --
Notes toward a history of scaffolding (1990) / Susan Mitchell --
Delft (1991) / Albert Goldbarth --
" ... and nobody objected" (1992) / Paul Metcalf --
Captivity (October 1992) / Sherman Alexie --
Red shoes (1993) / Susan Griffin --
Black (1994) / Alexander Theroux --
Foucault and pencil (1995) / Lydia Davis --
Life story (1996) / David Shields --
Ticket to the fair (1997) / David Foster Wallace --
Darling's prick (1998) / Wayne Koestenbaum --
The intercession of the saints (1999) / Carole Maso --
Monument (2000) / Mary Ruefle --
A I (2001) / Thalia Field --
Sleep (2002) / Brian Lennon --
The body (2003) / Jenny Boully --
Things to do today (Epilogue) / Joe Wenderoth
475 pages, Paperback
First published February 28, 2002
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1035 people want to read
About the author
John D'Agata
13 books78 followersJohn D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame: Essays, About a Mountain, and The Lifespan of a Fact, as well as the editor of the 3-volume series A New History of the Essay,, which includes the anthologies The Next American Essay, The Making of the American Essay, and The Lost Origins of the Essay. His work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an NEA Literature Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship. He holds a B.A. from Hobart College and two M.F.A.s from the University of Iowa, and recently his essays have appeared in ,i>The Believer, Harper's, Gulf Coast, and Conjunctions. John D’Agata lives in Iowa City with a dog named Boeing, and he teaches creative writing at the University of Iowa where he directs the graduate Nonfiction Writing Program.
Find out more at johndagata.com
Find out more at johndagata.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
October 12, 2008
what a weird little collection of essays. moving from essay to essay, i sometimes got the feeling that d'agata was confused about what he's trying to collect here: essays about essays, quintessential representative examples of the changing nature of postmodernism versus the changing nature of u.s. society, or just a bunch of pieces he liked? my favorites were the essays that were just good reads, without the self-conscious meta aspect or the weight of representing the mindset of all of u.s. society in a given year. however, the structure of the book, which sets up each essay as representing both a year and a stage in postmodern weirdness, makes a certain weighty narrative inescapable, and the climax of that narrative seems to be that all non-fiction, genre-bending, creative writing is leading up to the Ultimate Postmodern Piece of Writing: an essay composed entirely of footnotes. which left me thinking: how is this not gimmicky.
February 23, 2015
I would use this book in an Experimental Creative Nonfiction course for advanced writers. Highlights below.
From "The Raven" by Barry Lopez:
"The instrument will be black but no longer shiny, the back of it sheathed in armor plate and the underside padded like a wolf's foot....You will see that the talons are not as sharp as you might have suspected. They are made to grasp and hold fast, not to puncture. They are more like the jaws of a trap than a fistful of ice picks....He can weather a storm on a barren juniper limb; he can pick up and examine the crow's eye without breaking it" (25).
From Joan Didion's "The White Album":
In the essay, Didion uses her doctor's notes to inform the reader that she was a patient who "'experienced an attack of vertigo, nausea, and a feeling that she was going to pass out. A thorough medical evaluation elicited no positive findings...The Rorschach record is interpreted as describing a personality in process of deterioration with abundant signs of failing defenses and increasing inability of the ego to mediate the world of reality and to cope with normal stress....Emotionally, patient has alienated herself almost entirely from the world of other human beings. Her fantasy life appears to have been virtually completely preempted by primitive, regressive libidinal preoccupations many of which are distorted and bizarre....In a technical sense basic affective controls appear to be intact but it is equally clear that they are insecurely and tenuously maintained for the present by a variety of defense mechanisms including intellectualization, obsessive-compulsive devices, projection, reaction-formation, and somatization, all of which now seem inadequate in their task of controlling or containing an underlying psychotic process and are therefore in process of failure. The content of patient's responses is highly unconventional and frequently bizarre, filled with sexual and anatomical preoccupations, and basic reality contact is obviously and seriously impaired at times. In quality and level sophistication patient's response are characteristic of those of individuals of high average or superior intelligence but she is now functioning intellectually in impaired fashion at barely average level. Patient's thematic productions on the Thematic Apperception Test emphasize her fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic, and depressive view of the world around her. It is as though she feels deeply that all human effort is foredoomed to failure, a conviction which seems to push her further into a dependent, passive withdrawal. In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure" (49-50).
From Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse":
"The Crab Nebula, in the constellation Taurus, looks, through binoculars, like a smoke ring. It is a star in the process of exploring. Light from its explosion first reached the earth in 1054; it was a supernova then, and so bright it shone in the daytime. Now it is not so bright, but it is still exploding. It expands at the rate of seventy million miles a day. It is interesting look through binoculars at something expanding seventy million miles a day. It does not budge. Its apparent size does not increase. Photographs of the Crab Nebula taken fifteen years ago seem identical to photographs of it taken yesterday. Some lichens are similar. Botanist have measure some ordinary lichen twice, at fifty-year intervals, without detaching any growth at all. And yet their cells divide' they live./ The small ring of light was like these things--like a ridiculous lichen up in the sky, like a perfectly still explosion 4,200 light-years away: it was interesting, and lovely, and in witless motion, and it had nothing to do with anything./ It had nothing to do with anything. The sun was too small, and too cold, and too far away, to keep the world alive. The white ring was not enough. It was feeble and worthless. It was as useless as a memory; it was as off kilter and hollow and wretched as a memory./ When you try your hardest to recall someone's face, or the look of a place, you see in your mind's eye some vague and terrible sight such as this. It is dark' it is insubstantial' it is all wrong./ The white ring and the saturated darkness made the earth and sky look as they must look in the memories of the careless dead. What I saw, what I seemed to be standing in, was all the wrecked light that the memories of the dead could shed upon the living world. We had all died in our boots on the hilltops of the Yakima, and were alone in eternity. Empty space stoppered our eyes and mouths' we cared for nothing" (105).
The editor, on Emerson's discovery of the essay as the new literature he had been seeking:
"'Here everything is admissible--philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdotes, jokes, ventriloquism--all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversations, highest and lowest personal topics: all are permitted, and all may be combined into one speech" (252).
The editor, revealing a centuries-long distaste for genre-bending among critics:
"Moby Dick was especially dishonorable. Why? 'The author has not given his effort here the benefit of knowing whether it is history, autobiography, gazetteer, or fantasy,' wrote the New York Globe in 1851" (279).
From Susan Griffin's "Red Shoes":
"Writing of his experience of torture, Jean Amery recalls that 'one never ceases to be amazed that all those things one may...call his soul, or his mind, or his consciousness, or his identity are destroyed when there is cracking and splintering in the shoulder joints.' It is this that is humiliating and, as Amery writes, 'The shame of destruction cannot be erased'" (309).
The editor, on genre:
The "essay's innate intoxication with the mathematics of language--the multiplication of data, evidence, argument--distinguishes the genre as much as it taboos it. Its occasional focus on the list as a formal device, for example, eschews the comforting narratives of fiction, the intimate lyricism of poetry, and the sensational admissions of memoir, allowing its writers to make art out of the gossip and noise and rubble and minutia that often get overlooked in literature, fashioning instead a baudy, relentless, user-unfriendly art that is not comforting, not intimate, not sensational at all, but suspicious, messy, and stubbornly unresolved" (317-8).
From Carole Maso's "The Intercession of Saints":
"The long bones of illness, her tuning forks" (399).
From Thalia Field's "A Therefore 1":
"A moth saw a flame and thought what it saw was its heart and it said, 'What is my heart doing over there, away from me?' And believing that it could not be whole without an organ it had never even used, the moth dove toward it, hoping to reabsorb it in open surgery, but instead there was a sound as empty as a lit match extinguished on water, and in an instant the heart that had stood away from the moth became the central unimagined ecstasy the moth couldn't live without" (415).
"In the mind, words are heard bone-dry without the benefit of breath" (420).
"In many ways we are as gothic as the thick illogical spaces between stars, between good ideas, between motel rooms" (421).
The editor, defining the lyric essay:
"The lyric essay inherits from the principal strands of nonfiction the makings of its own hybrid version of the form. It takes the subjectivity of the personal essay and the objectivity of the public essay, and conflates them into a literary form that relies on both art and fact, on imagination and observation, rumination and argumentation, human faith and human perception. What the lyric essay inherits from the public essay is a fact-hungry pursuit of solutions to problems, while from the personal essay what it takes is a wide-eyed dallying in the heat of predicaments. The result of this ironic parentage is that lyric essays seek answers, yet seldom seem to find them. They may arise out of a public essay that never manages to prove its case, or may emerge from the stalk of a personal essay to sprout out and meet 'the other.' ...Facts, in these essays, are not clear-cut things. What is a lyric essay? It's an oxymoron: ...an argument that has no chance of proving anything" (436).
From "The Raven" by Barry Lopez:
"The instrument will be black but no longer shiny, the back of it sheathed in armor plate and the underside padded like a wolf's foot....You will see that the talons are not as sharp as you might have suspected. They are made to grasp and hold fast, not to puncture. They are more like the jaws of a trap than a fistful of ice picks....He can weather a storm on a barren juniper limb; he can pick up and examine the crow's eye without breaking it" (25).
From Joan Didion's "The White Album":
In the essay, Didion uses her doctor's notes to inform the reader that she was a patient who "'experienced an attack of vertigo, nausea, and a feeling that she was going to pass out. A thorough medical evaluation elicited no positive findings...The Rorschach record is interpreted as describing a personality in process of deterioration with abundant signs of failing defenses and increasing inability of the ego to mediate the world of reality and to cope with normal stress....Emotionally, patient has alienated herself almost entirely from the world of other human beings. Her fantasy life appears to have been virtually completely preempted by primitive, regressive libidinal preoccupations many of which are distorted and bizarre....In a technical sense basic affective controls appear to be intact but it is equally clear that they are insecurely and tenuously maintained for the present by a variety of defense mechanisms including intellectualization, obsessive-compulsive devices, projection, reaction-formation, and somatization, all of which now seem inadequate in their task of controlling or containing an underlying psychotic process and are therefore in process of failure. The content of patient's responses is highly unconventional and frequently bizarre, filled with sexual and anatomical preoccupations, and basic reality contact is obviously and seriously impaired at times. In quality and level sophistication patient's response are characteristic of those of individuals of high average or superior intelligence but she is now functioning intellectually in impaired fashion at barely average level. Patient's thematic productions on the Thematic Apperception Test emphasize her fundamentally pessimistic, fatalistic, and depressive view of the world around her. It is as though she feels deeply that all human effort is foredoomed to failure, a conviction which seems to push her further into a dependent, passive withdrawal. In her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange, conflicted, poorly comprehended, and above all, devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure" (49-50).
From Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse":
"The Crab Nebula, in the constellation Taurus, looks, through binoculars, like a smoke ring. It is a star in the process of exploring. Light from its explosion first reached the earth in 1054; it was a supernova then, and so bright it shone in the daytime. Now it is not so bright, but it is still exploding. It expands at the rate of seventy million miles a day. It is interesting look through binoculars at something expanding seventy million miles a day. It does not budge. Its apparent size does not increase. Photographs of the Crab Nebula taken fifteen years ago seem identical to photographs of it taken yesterday. Some lichens are similar. Botanist have measure some ordinary lichen twice, at fifty-year intervals, without detaching any growth at all. And yet their cells divide' they live./ The small ring of light was like these things--like a ridiculous lichen up in the sky, like a perfectly still explosion 4,200 light-years away: it was interesting, and lovely, and in witless motion, and it had nothing to do with anything./ It had nothing to do with anything. The sun was too small, and too cold, and too far away, to keep the world alive. The white ring was not enough. It was feeble and worthless. It was as useless as a memory; it was as off kilter and hollow and wretched as a memory./ When you try your hardest to recall someone's face, or the look of a place, you see in your mind's eye some vague and terrible sight such as this. It is dark' it is insubstantial' it is all wrong./ The white ring and the saturated darkness made the earth and sky look as they must look in the memories of the careless dead. What I saw, what I seemed to be standing in, was all the wrecked light that the memories of the dead could shed upon the living world. We had all died in our boots on the hilltops of the Yakima, and were alone in eternity. Empty space stoppered our eyes and mouths' we cared for nothing" (105).
The editor, on Emerson's discovery of the essay as the new literature he had been seeking:
"'Here everything is admissible--philosophy, ethics, divinity, criticism, poetry, humor, fun, mimicry, anecdotes, jokes, ventriloquism--all the breadth and versatility of the most liberal conversations, highest and lowest personal topics: all are permitted, and all may be combined into one speech" (252).
The editor, revealing a centuries-long distaste for genre-bending among critics:
"Moby Dick was especially dishonorable. Why? 'The author has not given his effort here the benefit of knowing whether it is history, autobiography, gazetteer, or fantasy,' wrote the New York Globe in 1851" (279).
From Susan Griffin's "Red Shoes":
"Writing of his experience of torture, Jean Amery recalls that 'one never ceases to be amazed that all those things one may...call his soul, or his mind, or his consciousness, or his identity are destroyed when there is cracking and splintering in the shoulder joints.' It is this that is humiliating and, as Amery writes, 'The shame of destruction cannot be erased'" (309).
The editor, on genre:
The "essay's innate intoxication with the mathematics of language--the multiplication of data, evidence, argument--distinguishes the genre as much as it taboos it. Its occasional focus on the list as a formal device, for example, eschews the comforting narratives of fiction, the intimate lyricism of poetry, and the sensational admissions of memoir, allowing its writers to make art out of the gossip and noise and rubble and minutia that often get overlooked in literature, fashioning instead a baudy, relentless, user-unfriendly art that is not comforting, not intimate, not sensational at all, but suspicious, messy, and stubbornly unresolved" (317-8).
From Carole Maso's "The Intercession of Saints":
"The long bones of illness, her tuning forks" (399).
From Thalia Field's "A Therefore 1":
"A moth saw a flame and thought what it saw was its heart and it said, 'What is my heart doing over there, away from me?' And believing that it could not be whole without an organ it had never even used, the moth dove toward it, hoping to reabsorb it in open surgery, but instead there was a sound as empty as a lit match extinguished on water, and in an instant the heart that had stood away from the moth became the central unimagined ecstasy the moth couldn't live without" (415).
"In the mind, words are heard bone-dry without the benefit of breath" (420).
"In many ways we are as gothic as the thick illogical spaces between stars, between good ideas, between motel rooms" (421).
The editor, defining the lyric essay:
"The lyric essay inherits from the principal strands of nonfiction the makings of its own hybrid version of the form. It takes the subjectivity of the personal essay and the objectivity of the public essay, and conflates them into a literary form that relies on both art and fact, on imagination and observation, rumination and argumentation, human faith and human perception. What the lyric essay inherits from the public essay is a fact-hungry pursuit of solutions to problems, while from the personal essay what it takes is a wide-eyed dallying in the heat of predicaments. The result of this ironic parentage is that lyric essays seek answers, yet seldom seem to find them. They may arise out of a public essay that never manages to prove its case, or may emerge from the stalk of a personal essay to sprout out and meet 'the other.' ...Facts, in these essays, are not clear-cut things. What is a lyric essay? It's an oxymoron: ...an argument that has no chance of proving anything" (436).
November 4, 2017
Favorites: Marvin Gardens, White Album, May Morning, Marionette
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June 21, 2020I was going to list my favorite essays, but there were too many of them. Anne Carson 5ever.
January 26, 2019
Another book for a friend's class (maybe someday I'll get to take one myself), this is a collection of "essays", mostly American, one for each year from 1975 to 2003. I put "essays" in quotation marks because the editor says that they blur the distinction between nonfiction and art -- and many of them seem more like poetry or fiction than essays. The selection is very subjective, and emphasizes "literary" writing. Like any anthology this one is very uneven; one or two selections I found boring, and a few were basically incomprehensible, but there were also some I really enjoyed reading. This is the third collection in the editor's New History of the Essay; I didn't actually find his comments and introductions very enlightening.
June 25, 2017
Second read: the impression is basically the same; I tried his Halls of Fame in between--though a while ago--and found it far too lyrical for my taste, though it helped me understand better what he was trying to do with this collection.
A very nice collection, and D'Agata's connecting overviews are interesting. They sometimes become too lyrical--to use his phrase--or self-involved--to use mine--and tend toward the obscurity of his own collection, Halls of Fame.
All of which would suggest that I am maybe skeptical of the lyrical version of essays. And I am. But this collection convinced me that although there is some dross, there is some good.
I just could not get into Silk's Marionete Theater or Metcalf's "and nobody objected" for instance (also: no fair to break the structure for that one year, 1992. What's up with that?)
But I saw the poignancy in Davis's Foucault and the Pencil, where the focus is not on Foucault at all, but on what we do as writers. And Country Cooking from Central France was a brilliant re-imagining of what an essay could be--not just the downloading of experience, but lyrical and beautiful.
The collection also did something else, showing me essays I had read before in a new light. I gulped down all of Didion's non-fiction in one sitting, and her cool chippiness became wearying. Seeing the White Album in this historical context, though, restored its shine. Also, after reading so much about DFW recently, coming to his "Ticket to the Fair" I could see his stretching (and often it was stretching) for earnestness without (too much) sentimentality.
There were clearly some made up bits in some of these essays, which didn't bother me, I guess, because they were so clearly made up. But I am uncertain I am willing to go as far as D'Agata in removing facts as an important part of the essay. He makes a good case that since the 1970s we've moved past Tom Wolfe and his new journalism, with a melding of subjectivity that is important. But unless the essay is just about one's self--like the Diaries of Anais Nin, I guess--it can't be all subjectivity.
Essays are experiments, they are prose poems and lyrical and musical, but they are also reportage, and it is important to keep those things in mind.
A very nice collection, and D'Agata's connecting overviews are interesting. They sometimes become too lyrical--to use his phrase--or self-involved--to use mine--and tend toward the obscurity of his own collection, Halls of Fame.
All of which would suggest that I am maybe skeptical of the lyrical version of essays. And I am. But this collection convinced me that although there is some dross, there is some good.
I just could not get into Silk's Marionete Theater or Metcalf's "and nobody objected" for instance (also: no fair to break the structure for that one year, 1992. What's up with that?)
But I saw the poignancy in Davis's Foucault and the Pencil, where the focus is not on Foucault at all, but on what we do as writers. And Country Cooking from Central France was a brilliant re-imagining of what an essay could be--not just the downloading of experience, but lyrical and beautiful.
The collection also did something else, showing me essays I had read before in a new light. I gulped down all of Didion's non-fiction in one sitting, and her cool chippiness became wearying. Seeing the White Album in this historical context, though, restored its shine. Also, after reading so much about DFW recently, coming to his "Ticket to the Fair" I could see his stretching (and often it was stretching) for earnestness without (too much) sentimentality.
There were clearly some made up bits in some of these essays, which didn't bother me, I guess, because they were so clearly made up. But I am uncertain I am willing to go as far as D'Agata in removing facts as an important part of the essay. He makes a good case that since the 1970s we've moved past Tom Wolfe and his new journalism, with a melding of subjectivity that is important. But unless the essay is just about one's self--like the Diaries of Anais Nin, I guess--it can't be all subjectivity.
Essays are experiments, they are prose poems and lyrical and musical, but they are also reportage, and it is important to keep those things in mind.
October 14, 2007
there's some incredible beauty and genius in these pages. "Total Eclipse" by Annie Dillard was so moving (and a tiny bit scary, if I remember correctly)... it made me want to write essays (and showed me how it was possible to use a lyric structure to do so). "The Search for Marvin Gardens" by John McPhee blew my mind expertly -- a social commentary by way of lyric impulse. It's definitely a great text to teach from (Graywolf sells that on the website) but only b/c it's a great book to learn from -- the variety of approaches to writing an essay, and the array of topics covered make that possible.
May 18, 2012
Still in the process of reading all the essays. Unlike most collections, as I dip into this book, there's not been a bum note. There are many writers I know, some I've been introduced to, others I've seen new sides to. And D'Agata's intutive, smart, poetic intros to each essay (he's chosen an essay / year since 1978(?)) add momentum and connections with a skill which is rare in an editor, and shows really that he's a writer who loves words, truly: the sound and shape and meanings, as much as he finds ideas and expansive possibilities crucial to ensuring a piece of writing excels, doesn't just do a job, but elevates our expectations of what writing can be, should be.
May 4, 2016
I am so happy this is a book. Oh my god. This anthology is like literature pornography! And, as in sex, sometimes you have to stop because it becomes too much. The downside of it is that re-starting 40 or so essays is really a slog and the book is very heavy to bring on the train.
But otherwise: a fiesta of form and technique! Multiple essays that were literally unbelievable, as in I just read them with my eyes wide whimpering "How?" to myself.
But otherwise: a fiesta of form and technique! Multiple essays that were literally unbelievable, as in I just read them with my eyes wide whimpering "How?" to myself.
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June 8, 2010I wish John D'Agata was the editor for the yearly Best American Essays.
November 28, 2017
This is a marvelous collection of essays, all kinds of them. D'Agata has arranged them chronologically, after his introduction to the book, beginning in 1975 with John McPhee's The Search for Marvin Gardens. You remember Marvin Gardens, don't you, from Monopoly? I learned a great deal about the game from his essay.
Every year until and including 2003 contains one essay representative of that year. And the book finishes with an Epilogue.
Do I have a favorite? Oh, yes, I'm sure I do. However, they are so different, one from the other, that it's really hard to choose. I found Erato Love Poetry the 1985 selection by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha so intriguing, I ordered Dictee. Kinds of Water by Anne Carson enthralled me. Black by Alexander Theroux now has several passages underlined. And The Body by Jenny Boully. Oh, what can I say about that essay? A whole, complete essay in footnotes. I love footnotes (I consider end notes to be the Unforgivable Sin) and to find a whole essay written in them? Oh, I all but swooned.
Yes, there are several different kinds of essays in this collection. Some serious, some playful, all very well written. If you like essays at all, I strongly urge you to buy and read this book. I loved every word of it.
Every year until and including 2003 contains one essay representative of that year. And the book finishes with an Epilogue.
Do I have a favorite? Oh, yes, I'm sure I do. However, they are so different, one from the other, that it's really hard to choose. I found Erato Love Poetry the 1985 selection by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha so intriguing, I ordered Dictee. Kinds of Water by Anne Carson enthralled me. Black by Alexander Theroux now has several passages underlined. And The Body by Jenny Boully. Oh, what can I say about that essay? A whole, complete essay in footnotes. I love footnotes (I consider end notes to be the Unforgivable Sin) and to find a whole essay written in them? Oh, I all but swooned.
Yes, there are several different kinds of essays in this collection. Some serious, some playful, all very well written. If you like essays at all, I strongly urge you to buy and read this book. I loved every word of it.
July 27, 2020
I've always read, and taught, different essays from this anthology, but this summer I read the whole thing from beginning to end, to absorb the storyline, so to speak--the evolution of the personal essay from 1975 until the early 21st century. It's a magnificent collection that really showcases innovation and boundary-pushing within the genre, thereby helping to illuminate to nature of the genre itself. Old standouts included McPhee's "Search for Marven Gardens" and Lopez's "The Raven," as examples of essays that run with a central metaphor. This time round I was stunned by David Shields's "Life Story," which just so brilliantly uses found language from bumper stickers to paint a portrait of American lives. Anne Carson's "Kinds of Water" was a gorgeous, long meditation about a pilgrimage to Santiago--clearly, an influence on Cees Nooteboom's "Roads to Santiago," one of my favorite travel writing books. Mary Reuffle's "Monument" clean blew me away: such a magnificent example of the lyric essay at its most emotionally intense, dealing with the aftermath of war. And "Things to Do Today" is a wonderful example of a hermit crab essay--an essay in the form of a to-do list, and a very funny and paradoxical one.
February 18, 2025
This was a fascinating collection that really showed me a varied amount of essays, varied in every manner. Form, topic, lyricism, every single one felt wholly individual. In this, the collection excelled, showing how an essay could mean so many different things. Most I enjoyed, some I loved, but all made me think deeply not only about their given topics but the nature of writing itself and how we use language/mediums to convey ideas.
My personal favorites were the essay on French cooking, the eclipse essay and the Illinois state fair deep dive. All of those really took me to the places the authors went to, both physically and mentally. Some lines in every essay, however, jumped out at me and made me feel the author's feelings in my heart.
I also enjoyed the transitions between essays, musing on the nature of the essay or acting as a dictionary of essay formats to introduce the reader into an unfamiliar format or provide context for the setup. I often appreciated them, given my unfamiliarity with the genre.
Overall, I really had a great time reading these. They transported me places and made me think about writing as a whole. Truly one of a kind!
My personal favorites were the essay on French cooking, the eclipse essay and the Illinois state fair deep dive. All of those really took me to the places the authors went to, both physically and mentally. Some lines in every essay, however, jumped out at me and made me feel the author's feelings in my heart.
I also enjoyed the transitions between essays, musing on the nature of the essay or acting as a dictionary of essay formats to introduce the reader into an unfamiliar format or provide context for the setup. I often appreciated them, given my unfamiliarity with the genre.
Overall, I really had a great time reading these. They transported me places and made me think about writing as a whole. Truly one of a kind!
August 25, 2024
The final book of Summer break, a few I had read previously (Kincaid’s “Girl”) and a few I knew from their literary importance (Didion’s “the white album”). I really liked the introductory prefaces to each essay, D’Agata working out a definition of essay/to essay. But with the exception of the David Foster Wallace classic on Illinois state fair, the more contemporary essays reminded me just how much I like the idea of postmodern, but not finding pleasure in reading the experiments.
June 30, 2017
This book made me want to be a writer.
November 7, 2018
Paperback.
DFW: ticket to the fair, Mary Ruefle: Monument, Sherman Alexie: Captivity, Harry Mathews, Jamaica Kincaid: Girl
DFW: ticket to the fair, Mary Ruefle: Monument, Sherman Alexie: Captivity, Harry Mathews, Jamaica Kincaid: Girl
February 16, 2019
I appreciated D’Agata’s framing of these essays with a timeline and a short, indirect entry into the piece, but the collection as a whole didn’t really do it for me.
November 29, 2022
30% tedious—obnoxious, even—and 70% struck-dead-in-your-tracks incredible. But that's life (if you're lucky). I recommend it!
Read
August 6, 2025Some very good and some not so! I wanted a variety and that is what I got.
December 8, 2020
Content-wise, I would have probably given this mashup 3 stars. I will admit that there were several pieces I had to skip. The point in those pieces seemed to be lost on me, or I didn't care for what the author was doing.
As a collection though, I do think D'Agata compiled a wonderful book that questions genre, facts, and form. There were several authors that I did thoroughly enjoy, and who inspired me to challenge my own thoughts about essay-writing.
If you're an essayist, I'd say the collection is worth picking up. Read what you like, skip what you don't. I think most essay enthusiasts will read everything.
As a collection though, I do think D'Agata compiled a wonderful book that questions genre, facts, and form. There were several authors that I did thoroughly enjoy, and who inspired me to challenge my own thoughts about essay-writing.
If you're an essayist, I'd say the collection is worth picking up. Read what you like, skip what you don't. I think most essay enthusiasts will read everything.
April 5, 2012
There are some wonderful essays in this collection. Joan Didion, Jamaica Kincaid, and David Foster Wallace were all selections I looked forward to, and I wasn't the least surprised at their lyrical mastery, depth of emotion, and flawless delivery.
A surprising number of the selections were (because I can think of no good way to describe this in English) pessimo [said with great disgust and Italian accent]. As a genre, the essay in particular seems to lend itself to pretension, and The Next American Essay highlights that tendency.
Some thoughts:
1. An essay is not brilliant because it's "done" in a way that's never been done before. Writing an essay entirely of footnotes probably seemed very edgy among the New York artist set, but in practice it's painful to read and rather forgettable.
2. Just because an essay is written about an experience in Europe and contains one italicized foreign word per page (whoops!) does not make it worth reading.
3. Name-dropping French philosophers isn't edgy intertextuality--it's just annoying. We've all read Foucault, Barthes, and Derrida too, and we don't need a "lyrical essay" to show us the tensions of postmodernism.
My vitriol may be heightened by the wretched contrast these bad apples created when smashed up against the elegance and beauty of, say, Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse." But more than that, the bad apples created a general skepticism towards all unknown authors ["never heard of him, here we go again..."] that I may have missed some diamonds in the rough because I had already spent so much time digging through dung that I couldn't be bothered to exert more than a modicum of patience.
One near miss was Albert Goldbarth's "Delft," which starts slowly (and with the smallest of beginnings) but builds, looking deeply into the world of poetry, love, death, science, and art. If I hadn't been on a plane with little else to do, I very likely may have "cheated" and skipped to the next essay. I'm very glad I didn't, but it makes me wonder what I missed.
In the end, my impatience is my own problem and my own fault. But D'Agata should have performed his gatekeeper duties with a little more sagacity. 60% of the essays are gold, but beware the swathes of mind-numbing pretension you'll need to traverse.
A surprising number of the selections were (because I can think of no good way to describe this in English) pessimo [said with great disgust and Italian accent]. As a genre, the essay in particular seems to lend itself to pretension, and The Next American Essay highlights that tendency.
Some thoughts:
1. An essay is not brilliant because it's "done" in a way that's never been done before. Writing an essay entirely of footnotes probably seemed very edgy among the New York artist set, but in practice it's painful to read and rather forgettable.
2. Just because an essay is written about an experience in Europe and contains one italicized foreign word per page (whoops!) does not make it worth reading.
3. Name-dropping French philosophers isn't edgy intertextuality--it's just annoying. We've all read Foucault, Barthes, and Derrida too, and we don't need a "lyrical essay" to show us the tensions of postmodernism.
My vitriol may be heightened by the wretched contrast these bad apples created when smashed up against the elegance and beauty of, say, Annie Dillard's "Total Eclipse." But more than that, the bad apples created a general skepticism towards all unknown authors ["never heard of him, here we go again..."] that I may have missed some diamonds in the rough because I had already spent so much time digging through dung that I couldn't be bothered to exert more than a modicum of patience.
One near miss was Albert Goldbarth's "Delft," which starts slowly (and with the smallest of beginnings) but builds, looking deeply into the world of poetry, love, death, science, and art. If I hadn't been on a plane with little else to do, I very likely may have "cheated" and skipped to the next essay. I'm very glad I didn't, but it makes me wonder what I missed.
In the end, my impatience is my own problem and my own fault. But D'Agata should have performed his gatekeeper duties with a little more sagacity. 60% of the essays are gold, but beware the swathes of mind-numbing pretension you'll need to traverse.
June 23, 2013
This lively collection got me to touch base again with some of my heroes (Joan Didion) some acquaintances I've never really understood and still don't (Susan Sontag) and some new—though deceased—buddies I should have met long ago since we have so many friends in common (David Foster Wallace, George W.S. Trow).
I like short stories, novels, plays, poems and—as most of you know—song lyrics. But no form is quite as comfortable or satisfying to me as the essay. After a really good one, I feel transformed. Like I just had a great conversation. Like my side of the conversation had some really insightful, courageous questions because their glistening answers were delicious and nourishing even about otherwise mundane focal points: fleas, the color black, scaffolding, sleep, the word "need," and a list of "Things To Do Today".
Generally with a collection of essays, I hop around. Selecting by mood or length or title and crossing them off as I go. This time I read "Ticket to the Fair" (Foster Wallace) first, then backed up and read the rest of the collection straight through. My two new favorites came back to back in the sequence: Annie Dillard's breathtaking, expansive observation "Total Eclipse" (now I must witness one myself) was followed by David Antin's "The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto"—a formalistic experiment (no punctuation outside of contractions, no uppercase letters) and an enjoyable story about buying a new mattress with his wife.
Many of the selections challenge the idea of what an essay is. What's fiction? What isn't? "Body" by Jenny Boully is nothing but footnotes with the story they reference completely absent and "Life Story" by David Shields is a string of phrases from bumper stickers strung together with periods and paragraph indents.
In assembling this collection, John D'Agata has essentially made a "mix tape" of well-crafted thoughts, one per year from 1975-2003. I enjoyed listening. It makes me want to compile a mix of my own.
I like short stories, novels, plays, poems and—as most of you know—song lyrics. But no form is quite as comfortable or satisfying to me as the essay. After a really good one, I feel transformed. Like I just had a great conversation. Like my side of the conversation had some really insightful, courageous questions because their glistening answers were delicious and nourishing even about otherwise mundane focal points: fleas, the color black, scaffolding, sleep, the word "need," and a list of "Things To Do Today".
Generally with a collection of essays, I hop around. Selecting by mood or length or title and crossing them off as I go. This time I read "Ticket to the Fair" (Foster Wallace) first, then backed up and read the rest of the collection straight through. My two new favorites came back to back in the sequence: Annie Dillard's breathtaking, expansive observation "Total Eclipse" (now I must witness one myself) was followed by David Antin's "The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto"—a formalistic experiment (no punctuation outside of contractions, no uppercase letters) and an enjoyable story about buying a new mattress with his wife.
Many of the selections challenge the idea of what an essay is. What's fiction? What isn't? "Body" by Jenny Boully is nothing but footnotes with the story they reference completely absent and "Life Story" by David Shields is a string of phrases from bumper stickers strung together with periods and paragraph indents.
In assembling this collection, John D'Agata has essentially made a "mix tape" of well-crafted thoughts, one per year from 1975-2003. I enjoyed listening. It makes me want to compile a mix of my own.
February 7, 2008
John D'Agata's collection, The Next American essay should be a good companion piece to Phillip Lopate's anthology,
The Art of the Personal Essay
.Where Lopate's collection focuses on a clear, almost historical, overview of the best essays in literature, D'Agata instead selects more experimental or often over-looked writing. You'll have the masters of the essay, Didion or McPhee, but you'll also have Maso, and Wallace in the mix. Great book, but I was quite surprised that D'Agata left out many distinguished essayist of color–and I wonder, are there just not any experimental ethnic writers?
July 28, 2013
Certainly an intriguing volume, the essays in this collection often fall at the extremes of my taste (i.e. I find them either extraordinary (like DFW's "Ticket to the Fair") or insufferable (like, loathe as I am to blaspheme Sontag (whom I often find effervescent and scintillating), Sontag's "Unguided Tour"). D'Agata's headnotes are often brilliant, and are worth the price of the book in themselves.
Ultimately, this collection passes my "Would I teach this volume?" test, but just barely. It could be a useful tool in an advanced nonfiction workshop, but I would be wary to show it to beginning students who might not yet understand that sometimes—and only sometimes—"experimental" means "failed."
Ultimately, this collection passes my "Would I teach this volume?" test, but just barely. It could be a useful tool in an advanced nonfiction workshop, but I would be wary to show it to beginning students who might not yet understand that sometimes—and only sometimes—"experimental" means "failed."
November 18, 2014
This is one of the texts for the Creative Non-Fiction class I took in fall 2014. From time to time, the editor intentionally pulls in pieces that aren't considered essays by the authors, and while that led to interesting discussions, it makes the volume a bit different from what it claims to be.
Still, there are a lot of good standard essays and lesser known essays in here. And now I will put in my favorite little bits.
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid
The White Album by Joan Didion
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
Classic first line!
Total Eclipse by Annie Dillard started me in on a great Dillard binge.
Oil by Fabio Morabito
"Oil is water with a burden to carry."
Captivity by Sherman Alexie
Still, there are a lot of good standard essays and lesser known essays in here. And now I will put in my favorite little bits.
Girl by Jamaica Kincaid
The White Album by Joan Didion
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
Classic first line!
Total Eclipse by Annie Dillard started me in on a great Dillard binge.
Oil by Fabio Morabito
"Oil is water with a burden to carry."
Captivity by Sherman Alexie
October 30, 2007
I used this book to teach a non-fiction class at Temple University. My lord there are some good things here, but also there are some really bulbous things that ain't so fast. It gets trying to look at exasperated student faces as they ask why they had to read some of these essays, and after a while, midway through the semester, I abandoned the syllabus and the book in favor of shorter, more engaging, less artfully wonky bits I found online. DFW, Didion, Sontag went over OK, not great. But try teaching Anne Carson or even obtuser stuff to impatient kiddies, MWF at 8:40 am. . .
January 17, 2016
If this is a book that encompasses the heart of nonfiction, then I must say I am not a fan. Perhaps it is only the essay I did not like, but this book of experiments was far too experimental for my taste.
There were some I understood, few I enjoyed, and a couple I loved, including the following:
David Antin's "The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto"
Eliot Weinberger's "The Dream of India"
Paul Metcalf's "...and nobody objected"
Alexander Theroux's "Black"
David Shields's "Life Story"
There were some I understood, few I enjoyed, and a couple I loved, including the following:
David Antin's "The Theory and Practice of Postmodernism: A Manifesto"
Eliot Weinberger's "The Dream of India"
Paul Metcalf's "...and nobody objected"
Alexander Theroux's "Black"
David Shields's "Life Story"
May 20, 2010
I like the idea of this collection, & I don't fall in the D'Agata hate-camp that thinks his idea of nonfiction is far too broad. Still, I found too many of these essays to be experimental in self-indulgent or stupid ways; it's one thing to make a point about what an essay can be, but I'd prefer more quality examples of it.
What's worth reading: the Foster Wallace, Didion, McPhee, and Goldbarth. Frankly, though, I would have read the first three anyway.
What's worth reading: the Foster Wallace, Didion, McPhee, and Goldbarth. Frankly, though, I would have read the first three anyway.
September 10, 2016
This book was quite interesting not only for its content but for the styles of essay which it included. It is clearly pedagogical in its intent to show the diversity of what can be called an essay. In that pursuit it really expands the reader’s understanding of what an essay is and all the ways in which it violates the rules of the assignments that are routinely given under that title throughout formal schooling.
February 23, 2013
D'Agata selects some of the freshest essays around, essays that truly explore questions (as D'Agata points out, "essaying" in the most fundamental way) and subjects in unique ways. These essays surprise and reinvent what the essay can be and will be. I use this text to introduce students to what nonfiction can be and it always surprises and promotes wonderful discussions about the nature of the essay.
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