Opinion: Essays

"Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side." Phillip Lopate 

The word "essay" evokes negative connotations for me. In school we were assigned countless essay assignments, which were usually exercises to test one's attentiveness to class discussions and ability to regurgitate the information coherently in written form. The other "essays" we had to write included the personal essay for applications to college, graduate school, etc. where we are encouraged to take all the highlights of resume and make them sound even better. Painful and painful.

But these series of articles discuss the art of essay and how it can be a very powerful form of writing if done correctly. First we must do away with all that we've been taught about essays in grade school:

"..these texts are untentative: they know what they want to argue before they begin, stealthily making their case, anticipating any objections, aiming for air-tightness. These texts are not attempts; they are obstinacies. They are fortresses. Leaving the reader uninvited to this textual engagement, the writer makes it clear he or she would rather drink alone." 1

And instead think of the essay as more of a meditative exercise that does not aim to be definitive, but attempts an open-minded exploration of a topic. New insight is a good goal, but solutions need not be the end point. Self-doubt is an important motivator in essay writings as absolute certainty leaves little room for reflection. Thankfully there is little in life, if anything at all, that is devoid of ambivalence and question.

"Essayism consists in a self-absorbed subject feeling around life, exercising what Theodor Adorno called the “essay’s groping intention,” approaching everything tentatively and with short attention, drawing analogies between the particular and the universal. Banal, everyday phenomena — what we eat, things upon which we stumble, things that Pinterest us — rub elbows implicitly with the Big Questions: What are the implications of the human experience? What is the meaning of life? Why something rather than nothing? Like the Father of the Essay, we let the mind and body flit from thing to thing, clicking around from mental hyperlink to mental hyperlink: if Montaigne were alive today, maybe he too would be diagnosed with A.D.H.D." 1

1) The Essayfication of Everything (Christy Wampole)
2) The Essay, and Exercise in Doubt (Phillip Lopate)