The Best American Essays 1999

by Hoagland, Edward; Atwan, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780395860540
• ISBN10: 0395860547
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-10-01
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

This year's wonderfully diverse collection, which features such respected writers as Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Ian Frazier, Mary Gordon, and Arthur Miller. These essays range widely across the American landscape -- from a California monastery to a Manhattan apartment -- and along the way introduce us to a fine array of talented new voices. Called by John Updike "the best essayist of my generation," Hoagland has assembled a powerful volume that vividly showcases the art and craft of the contemporary essay. IN SEARCH OF PROUST by Andre Aciman, TORCH SONG by Charles Bowden, COMPRESSION WOOD by Franklin Burroughs, VISITOR by Michael W. Cox, LAST WORDS by Joan Didion, FOR THE TIME BEING by Annie Dillard, THE METEORITES by Brian Doyle, A LOVELY SORT OF LOWER PURPOSE by Ian Frazier, VICTORIA by Dagoberto Gilb, STILL LIFE by Mary Gordon, A WEEK IN THE WORD by Patricia Hampl, THE COUNTRY BELOW by Barbara Hurd, THE LION AND ME by John Lahr, MAKING IT UP by Hilary Masters, ON THE FEDALA ROAD by John McNeel, AMERICAN HEARTWORM by Ben Metcalf, BEFORE AIR CONDITIONING by Arthur Miller, AFTER AMNESIA by Joyce Carol Oates, THE IMPIOUS IMPATIENCE OF JOB by Cynthia Ozick, PLANET OF WEEDS by David Quammen, ON SILENCE by Daisy Eunyoung Rhau, BEAUTY by Scott Russell Sanders, HITLER'S COUCH by Mark Slouka, WHAT'S INSIDE YOU, BROTHER? by Toure, FOLDING THE TIMES by W. S. Trow.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix	(4)
Robert Atwan
Introduction: Writers Afoot	xiii
Edward Hoagland
ANDRE ACIMAN
In Search of Proust from The New Yorker	1	(11)
CHARLES BOWDEN
Torch Song form Harper's Magazine	12	(24)
FRANKLIN BURROUGHS
Compression Wood from The American Scholar	36	(19)
MICHAEL W. COX
Visitor from New Letters	55	(8)
JOAN DIDION
Last Words from The New Yorker	63	(11)
ANNIE DILLARD
For the Time Being from Notre Dame Magazine	74	(16)
BRIAN DOYLE
The Meteorites from The American Scholar	90	(9)
IAN FRAZIER
A Lovely Sort of Lower Purpose from Outside	99	(6)
DAGOBERTO GILB
Victoria from The Washington Post Magazine	105	(6)
MARY GORDON
Still Life from Harper's Magazine	111	(12)
PATRICIA HAMPL
A Week in the Word from Image	123	(11)
BARBARA HURD
The Country Below from The Yale Review	134	(13)
JOHN LAHR
The Lion and Me from The New Yorker	147	(10)
HILARY MASTERS
Making It Up from The Ohio Review	157	(8)
JOHN MCNEEL
On the Fedala Road from The Virginia Quarterly Review	165	(8)
BEN METCALF
American Heartworm from The Baffler	173	(12)
ARTHUR MILLER
Before Air Conditioning from The New Yorker	185	(3)
JOYCE CAROL OATES
After Amnesia from Granta	188	(13)
CYNTHIA OZICK
The Impious Impatience of Job from The American Scholar	201	(11)
DAVID QUAMMEN
Planet of Weeds from Harper's Magazine	212	(22)
DAISY EUNYOUNG RHAU
On Silence from The Kenyon Review	234	(10)
SCOTT RUSELL SANDERS
Beauty from Orion	244	(10)
MARK SLOUKA
Hitler's Couch from Harper's Magazine	254	(11)
TOURE
What's Inside You, Brother? from High Plains Literary Review	265	(9)
GEORGE W. S. TROW
Folding the Times from The New Yorker	274	(13)
Biographical Notes	287	(5)
Notable Essays of 1998	292

Excerpts

Introduction: Writers Afoot Essays are how we speak to one another in print - caroming thoughts not merely in order to convey a certain packet of information, but with a special edge or bounce of personal character in a kind of public letter. You multiply yourself as a writer, gaining height as though jumping on a trampoline, if you can catch the gist of what other people have also been feeling and clarify it for them. Classic essay subjects, like the flux of friendship, "On Greed," "On Religion," "On Vanity," or solitude, lying, self-sacrifice, can be major-league yet not require Bertrand Russell to handle them. A layman who has diligently looked into something, walking in the mosses of regret after the death of a parent, for instance, may acquire an intangible authority, even without being memorably angry or funny or possessing a beguiling equanimity. He cares; therefore, if he has tinkered enough with his words, we do too. An essay is not a scientific document. It can be serendipitous or domestic, satire or testimony, tongue-in-cheek or a wail of grief. Mulched perhaps in its own contradictions, it promises no sure objectivity, just the condiment of opinion on a base of observation, and sometimes such leaps of illogic or superlogic that they may work a bit like magic realism in a novel: namely, to simulate the mind's own processes in a murky and incongruous world. More than being instructive, as a magazine article is, an essay has a slant, a seasoned personality behind it that ought to weather well. Even if we think the author is telling us the earth is flat, we might want to listen to him elaborate upon the fringes of his premise because the bristle of his narrative and what he's seen intrigues us. He has a cutting edge, yet balance too. A given body of information is going to be eclipsed, but what lives in art is spirit, not factuality, and we respond to Montaigne's human touch despite four centuries of technological and social change. Montaigne's Essais predated by a quarter-century Cervantes's Don Quixote, which was probably the first novel. And the form of composition Montaigne gave a name to would not have lasted so long if it were not succinct, diverse, and supple, able to welcome ideas that are ahead of or behind the blurring spokes of their own time. But whereas a novelist is often a trapezist, vaulting from book to book, an essayist is afoot. Not a puppetmaster or ventriloquist, he will sound recognizable in his next appearance in print. There is a value to this, though Don Quixote as a figure outshines any essay. Imperishably appealing, he is an embodiment, not speculation, and we can simply call him to mind, much as we remember Conrad's Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness, and Dickens's Oliver Twist, although the regimes up the Congo River and in London aren't now the same. An essayist's materials are drawn primarily from his or her own life, and he knits a skein of thoughts and impressions, not a made-up tale. An epic drama such as King Lear is thus not his province even to dream about. His work is humbler, and our expectations of him are less elastic than of novelists or poets and their creations. They can flame out in a flash fire, surreal or villainous, if the story is compelling or the language smacks a bit of genius. We accept different behavior from Celine or Genet, Christopher Smart or Ezra Pound, than from Dr. Johnson. Norman Mailer can stab his wife and William Burroughs can shoot his, and somehow we don't blanch. They "needed to," one hears it said. Their imaginations must have got the better of them. But if an essayist had done the same it would have queered his legacy. He is supposed to be the voice of reason. Though modestly chameleon as a monologuist (and however mu