The Art of the Personal Essay

by Lopate, Phillip

• ISBN13: 9780385423397
• ISBN10: 038542339X
• Additional ISBN(s): 9780385422987
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-01-15
• Publisher: Vintage
• More Book Details

Summary

For more than four hundred years, the personal essay has been one of the richest and most vibrant of all literary forms. Distinguished from the detached formal essay by its friendly, conversational tone, its loose structure, and its drive toward candor and self-disclosure, the personal essay seizes on the minutiae of daily life-vanities, fashions, foibles, oddballs, seasonal rituals, love and disappointment, the pleasures of solitude, reading, taking a walk -- to offer insight into the human condition and the great social and political issues of the day.The Art of the Personal Essayis the first anthology to celebrate this fertile genre. By presenting more than seventy-five personal essays, including influential forerunners from ancient Greece, Rome, and the Far East, masterpieces from the dawn of the personal essay in the sixteenth century, and a wealth of the finest personal essays from the last four centuries, editor Phillip Lopate, himself an acclaimed essayist, displays the tradition of the personal essay in all its historical grandeur, depth, and diversity.

Author Biography

Philip Lopate is the author of <i>Against Joie de Vivre</i>, <i>Bachelorhood</i>, <i>The Rug Merchant</i>, <i>Being with Children</i>, and <i>Confessions of Summer</i>. A recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, his works have appeared in <i>Best American Essays</i>, <i>The Paris Review</i>, Pushcart Prize annuals, and many other publications. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, and is Adams Professor of English at Hofstra University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Seneca
On Noise	p. 5
Asthma	p. 8
Scipio's Villa	p. 10
Slaves	p. 12
Plutarch
Consolation to His Wife	p. 17
Sei Shonagon
Hateful Things	p. 24
Kenko
Essays in Idleness [Selections]	p. 30
Ou-Yang Hsiu
Pleasure Boat Studio	p. 38
Michel De Montaigne
Of Books	p. 46
Of a Monstrous Child	p. 57
On Some Verses of Virgil	p. 58
Abraham Cowley
Of Greatness	p. 116
Addison and Steele
Nicolini and the Lions (Joseph Addison)	p. 123
An Hour or Two Sacred to Sorrow (Richard Steele)	p. 126
Twenty-four Hours in London (Richard Steele)	p. 129
Love-Letters (Richard Steele)	p. 133
Samuel Johnson
The Boarding House	p. 137
The Solitude of the Country	p. 141
Maria Edgeworth
An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification	p. 146
Charles Lamb
New Year's Eve	p. 160
A Chapter on Ears	p. 165
Dream Children: A Reverie	p. 169
The Superannuated Man	p. 172
William Hazlitt
On Going a Journey	p. 181
On the Pleasure of Hating	p. 189
The Fight	p. 198
Robert Louis Stevenson
The Lantern-Bearers	p. 213
An Apology for Idlers	p. 222
On Marriage	p. 229
Max Beerbohm
Going Out for a Walk	p. 237
Laughter	p. 239
G. K. Chesterton
A Piece of Chalk	p. 249
On Running After One's Hat	p. 252
Virginia Woolf
Street Haunting	p. 256
The Death of the Moth	p. 265
George Orwell
Such, Such Were the Joys	p. 269
Ivan Turgenev
The Execution of Tropmann	p. 306
Lu Hsun
This Too Is Life	p. 326
Death	p. 329
Junichiro Tanizaki
In Praise of Shadows	p. 335
Walter Benjamin
Unpacking My Library	p. 363
Hashish in Marseilles	p. 370
Jorge Luis Borges
Blindness	p. 377
Hubert Butler
Beside the Nore	p. 388
Aunt Harriet	p. 393
E. M. Cioran
Some Blind Alleys: A Letter	p. 404
Roland Barthes
Leaving the Movie Theater	p. 418
Natalia Ginzburg
He and I	p. 423
Carlos Fuentes
How I Started to Write	p. 432
Wole Soyinka
Why Do I Fast?	p. 454
Sara Suleri
Meatless Days	p. 459
Henry David Thoreau
Walking	p. 480
H. L. Mencken
On Being an American	p. 506
Robert Benchley
My Face	p. 511
James Thurber
The Secret Life of James Thurber	p. 514
F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Crack-Up	p. 520
E. B. White
Once More to the Lake	p. 533
The Ring of Time	p. 538
M. F. K. Fisher
Once a Tramp, Always	p. 546
Mary McCarthy
My Confession	p. 555
Seymour Krim
For My Brothers and Sisters in the Failure Business	p. 577
James Baldwin
Notes of a Native Son	p. 587
Alas, Poor Richard	p. 604
Gore Vidal
Some Memories of the Glorious Bird and an Earlier Self	p. 623
Adrienne Rich
Split at the Root	p. 640
Edward Hoagland
The Courage of Turtles	p. 657
The Threshold and the Jolt of Pain	p. 662
Wendell Berry
An Entrance to the Woods	p. 670
Joan Didion
Goodbye to All That	p. 681
In Bed	p. 689
Annie Dillard
Seeing	p. 693
Richard Selzer
The Knife	p. 708
Phillip Lopate
Against Joie de Vivre	p. 716
Scott Russell Sanders
Under the Influence	p. 733
Gayle Pemberton
Do He Have Your Number, Mr. Jeffrey?	p. 746
Richard Rodriguez
Late Victorians	p. 756
Selected Bibliography	p. 771
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.