The Book of Delights: Essays

by Ross Gay

didn’t take me long to learn that the discipline or practice of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the development of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you study delight, the more delight there is to study.

(A delight that we can heal our loved ones, even the dead ones.)

and it happened in part because of the really nice time my body was having making this lavender Le Pen make the loop-de-looping we call language.

What if we joined our sorrows, I’m saying. I’m saying: What if that is joy?

of self-forgiveness. Do you ever think of yourself, late to your meeting or peed your pants some or sent the private e-mail to the group or burned the soup or ordered your cortado with your fly down or snot on your face or opened your umbrella in the bakery, as the cutest little thing?

our nature, is to communicate the beautiful and the fragrant however we can. To make of the world a bouquet. Or a