Status Updates From Eight Modern Essayists

I have the 4th edition and it includes essays by Edward Hoagland who is spectacularly racist. Ugh. I can see why they dropped him in the later editions.

James Baldwin’s writing is poignant and loaded with insight. His anger is deep. Notes of a Native Son is an absolute classic. Highly recommended.

Couldn't really connect with EB White's essays. Or appreciate his style. The former possibly because of his love for the independent countryside life in the American outdoors, a notion that is still very alien to me.

Lewis Thomas wrote medicine and biology essays in the New England Journal. His prophecies for the future have modest returns. His analysis of history is shallow. But his style is accessible and charming

Orwell expresses strong opinions in his essays. He has the rough inconsistency of someone who was blind to inequities and injustice but is now realizing its ugliness, and so this process of changing a worldview is not smooth and perfectly coherent.

He does make me laugh a lot with his droll British style.

The essays by Virginia Woolf are immensely introspective. Deconstruction and reconstruction at every corner but with the inevitable accompanying incompleteness.

Started June 6

As our common complexities increase, any tale of individual simplicity (and yours is the best written and cockiest) acquires a new fascination; as our goods accumulate, but not our well-being, your report of an existence without material adornment takes on a certain awkward credibility.
My purpose in going to Walden Pond, like yours,to transact some private business with the fewest obstacles
E B White
Walden
1939

As our common complexities increase, any tale of individual simplicity (and yours is the best written and cockiest) acquires a new fascination; as our goods accumulate, but not our well-being, your report of an existence without material adornment takes on a certain awkward credibility.
My purpose in going to Walden Pond, like yours,to transact some private business with the fewest obstacle
E.B. White
Walden
1939