Saturday, December 18, 2004
Checking the flyleaf, I see that they've been putting out "Best American Essays" since 1986, so I guess I've been reading this collection every year since the Reagan Administration. I used to read the "Best American Stories" collection, too, but back then I rode the subway and had more time. The essays collection has been one of the little treats in my life for 18 years, which means I've been reading them since EGA was born, I guess.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disapear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of diferet stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Writen in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possesed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton
Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, the Artic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminesence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and her essay about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpritations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines matirial I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anectode as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
Most years I have read three or four already-- in "The New Yorker", or "The New York Review of Books" g-d help me, or "The Atlantic", or "Harpers" mostly, but sometimes I pick up something more esoteric, and when I find it in the anthology I'm always pleased-- even in my Collyer Brothers existence, magazine articles that I like disapear, and I'm glad to have them in a form that I can put on a shelf and revisit.
Some years are a tougher read than others-- Susan Sontang's year as guest editor was
rough, I remember. Always it is a collection that is filled with things I'd like to share, essays about stuff that I know everyone I like to talk to would enjoy. Unfortunately, not everyone I like to talk to is quite as omnivorous as I am. I could pass it around, but the way I like to read it is to bomb straight through-- not the way most people read collections like this, I think, even people who read collections like this. Part of it with me is that it is a perfect book for a plane or a train-- I spend a lot of time in between places, and a collection of writing about a lot of diferet stuff is just what I'm looking for this time of year, when the light gets short, and I am in between no place much, and no place at all.
This year's collection, guest edited by Louis Menand, is as good as it's been in a while. It kicks off with a terrific James Agee piece, recently discovered, about casual racism, and wishing to stand up to it better. Writen in 1943, it is as true today as it was then, maybe truer, and is as good an example of the sort of pure, luminescent quality that Agee's writing possesed as I have ever read. Kathryn Chetkovich contributes a piece from "Granta" called "Envy" which discusses the corrosive effect the emotion on her relationship with a lover that knocked me out-- it made me want to teach a course on the Seven Deadly Sins just so I could include it. I'd read Adam Gopnik's piece on the "Matrix" trilogy before, but it is good to have it here, for future reference. Anne Fadiman, who I assume is Clifton
Fadiman's daughter, was last year's editor, and has an essay here about Vilhjalmur
Stefansson, the Artic explorer that is simply terrific. Jonathan Franzen's high school reminesence was in "The New Yorker"-- after being just frustrated with "The Corrections" I was glad to read it. Laura Hillenbrand may only ever write two things, but "Seabiscut" and her essay about her struggle with chronic fatigue syndrome are both so amazing that I'd have to say she is in a class by herself. Rick Moody contributes a piece called "Against Cool" that I wish I'd written. I take issue with some of his interpritations, but it is a nice piece of scholarship all the same. Similarly, Alex Ross' "Rock 101"-- perhaps a bit too infused with the arch quality that editors for "The New Yorker" must strive to help their writers overcome, but still a piece of work that mines matirial I want to work, and shows me how the pros do it.
In fact, let's dwell a bit on the Ross piece. It opens with Ross describing an interview with Duke Ellington from "The New Yorker" in 1944. Duke is asked whether he ever felt an affinity for the music of Bach. "[B]efore answering, he made a show of unwrapping a pork chop that he had stowed in his pocket. 'Bach and myself,' he said, taking a bite from the chop, 'both write with individual performers in mind.'" Ross uses this story to make a larger point, but I've been thinking about this for the last two days, and I think that the pork chop story is made up. I cannot imagine Duke Ellington carrying a pork chop in his pocket, even though the words are pure Duke. The rest of the essay is about attending a conference on pop music, and about the dichotomy between taking pop music seriously and enjoying it at the same time. The piece fits well with Moody's article about cool, but I spotted errors in both, and Ross's use of the pork chop anectode as his lede made me suspicious of a lot of what he had to say.
And so it goes with this collection-- I will come away from the book this year having
learned a little about Yiddish that I didn't know, thanks to the late Leonard Michaels, and a little about taxidermy (a newer thing than I'd thought-- really a Victorian invention), and something about knitting (the only piece I broke my rule about- I suspended reading and gave it to A. for her enjoyment). And I will also have something to gnaw on. I want to know about that pork chop, and I will, I expect, find out sooner or later.
// posted by Bill @ 11:50 AM 
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