The Best American Essays 2005

by Orlean, Susan

• ISBN13: 9780618357123
• ISBN10: 0618357122
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-10-05
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Summary

The Best American series has been the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction since 1915. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of periodicals. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the very best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected--and most popular--of its kind. The Best American Essays 2005 includes Roger Angell bull; Andrea Barrett bull; Jonathan Franzen bull; Ian Frazier bull; Edward Hoagland bull; Ted Kooser bull; Jonathan Lethem bull; Danielle Ofri bull; Oliver Sacks bull; Cathleen Schine bull; David Sedaris bull; Robert Stone bull; David Foster Wallace bull; and others Susan Orlean, guest editor, is the author of My Kind of Place, The Orchid Thief, The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup, and Saturday Night. A staff writer for The New Yorker since 1982, she has also written for Outside, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Vogue.

Table of Contents

Foreword	ix
by Robert Atwan
Introduction	xv
by Susan Orlean
ROGER ANGELL.
La Vie en Rose	1	(8)
from The New Yorker
ANDREA BARRETT.
The Sea of Information	9	(12)
from The Kenyon Review
PAUL CRENSHAW.
Storm Country	21	(7)
from Southern Humanities Review
BRIAN DOYLE.
Joyas Voladoras	28	(3)
from The American Scholar
KITTY BURNS FLOREY.
Sister Bernadette's Barking Dog	31	(6)
from Harper's Magazine
JONATHAN FRANZEN.
The Comfort Zone	37	(19)
from The New Yorker
IAN FRAZIER.
If Memory Doesn't Serve	56	(6)
from The Atlantic Monthly
MARK GREIF.
Against Exercise	62	(12)
from n + I
EDWARD HOAGLAND.
Small Silences	74	(26)
from Harper's Magazine
TED KOOSER.
Small Rooms in Time	100	(6)
from River Teeth
JONATHAN LETHEM.
Speak, Hoyt-Schermerhorn	106	(15)
from Harper's Magazine
E.J. LEVY.
Mastering the Art of French Cooking	121	(10)
from Salmagundi
MICHAEL MARTONE.
Contributor's Note	131	(4)
from Flyway
DAVID MASELLO.
My Friend Todovico	135	(4)
from The New York Times
DANIELLE OFRI.
Living Will	139	(12)
from The Missouri Review
SAM PICKERING.
Dog Days	151	(10)
from River Teeth
OLIVER SACKS.
Speed	161	(34)
from The New Yorker
CATHLEEN SCHINE.
Dog Trouble
from The New Yorker
DAVID SEDARIS.
Old Faithful	195	(8)
from The New Yorker
PAULA SPECK.
Six Seconds	203	(5)
from Meridian
BERT O. STATES.
Skill Display in Birding Groups	208	(14)
from The North American Review
ROBERT STONE.
The Prince of Possibility	222	(20)
from The New Yorker
ELLEN ULLMAN.
Dining with Robots	242	(10)
from The American Scholar
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE.
Consider the Lobster	252	(27)
from Gourmet
HOLLY WELKER.
Satin Worship	279	(1)
from PMS
Biographical Notes	279	(6)
Notable Essays of 2004	285

Excerpts

IntroductionNot long ago, I went to New Hampshire to watch some dogsled races, and during a break in the action I wandered into a hobby shop on the main drag of the town. It was a dusty old store, dim and crowded, the shelves loaded with the usual array of hobby gear - Popsicle sticks, model railroad switches, beads and buttons and toxic glue. I have no use for Popsicle sticks once the Popsicles are eaten, and no wish to build miniature railroads or embellish the surfaces of the objects in my home, so it seemed there was nothing in the store for me. But as I was about to leave, a large box behind the cash register caught my eye. It was, according to the label, the amazing Skilcraft Visible Cow, an anatomically accurate model kit featuring "highly detailed parts representing the structures of the skeleton and vital organs." The picture on the label showed a big cow - a Guernsey, perhaps? or maybe a Milking Shorthorn? - made of some sort of clear glossy plastic. The exterior of the Visible Cow was invisible. The visible part of it was its innards - the major bones, the most popular organs, the spine, the ribs, the tongue. It was a marvelous construction, a complete inversion of the usual order of things: everything you usually expect to see of a cow was see-through, and everything you usually cant make out was there, plain as day. The insides of the cow were held together by its transparent shell, which gave order and structure to the jumble of guts and skeleton and plumbing. I purchased the Visible Cow, and putting it together (which, according to the label, will allow me to "Study Anatomy As You Build Your Visible Cow Model") is on my long- term To Do list. In the meantime, I keep the box in my office so I can look at it every day. Which brings me, more directly than it might seem, to the subject of essays. Anytime I read an essay, write an essay, or, as is the case here, sort through and select the very best of a years essays, I find myself wondering what an essay is - what makes up the essential parts and structure of the form. What I like to do (with a nod here to the Skilcraft company) is study the essays anatomy as I build it. Is an essay a written inquiry? A meditation? A memoir? Does it concern the outside world or just probe the writers interior world? Can it be funny? Does it have answers or does it just raise questions? Does it argue a point or is it a cool, impartial view of the world? Does it have a prescribed tone or is it absolutely individual - a conversation between the writer and reader, as idiosyncratic as any conversation might ever be? As near as I can figure, an essay can be most of the above - it can be a query, a reminiscence, a persuasive tract, an exploration; it can look inward or outward; it can crack a lot of jokes. What it need not be is objective. An essay can certainly present facts and advocate a position, but that seems quite different from objectivity, whereby a writer just delivers in

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Excerpted from The Best American Essays
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