Help! I've discovered essays
January 19, 2023 3:18 AM Subscribe
Please recommend me some good collections or anthologies of essays (in physical book or kindle format). Classic/seminal works and/or modern takes all welcome. So either: a collection of essays by a single author, or a collection by multiple authors on a single theme (or perhaps just a collection?!)
A friend gifted me Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald for Christmas which I have been really enjoying as bedtime reading. A book of essays is not something I'd have picked myself but I'm hooked. It's like a combination of poetry and short stories in that they're short and pithy (I can just read one or two before bed) and have a bigger meaning beyond the words, like she takes a small everyday observation but expands it out into a universal 'meaning of life' (I'm sure there's a better way to describe that but I'm a newbie!)
I know a little about essay construction and that it can be an art-form, particularly for persuasive arguments, but I think I'm looking for more of the 'observation becomes universal truth' type. Thanks!
A friend gifted me Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald for Christmas which I have been really enjoying as bedtime reading. A book of essays is not something I'd have picked myself but I'm hooked. It's like a combination of poetry and short stories in that they're short and pithy (I can just read one or two before bed) and have a bigger meaning beyond the words, like she takes a small everyday observation but expands it out into a universal 'meaning of life' (I'm sure there's a better way to describe that but I'm a newbie!)
I know a little about essay construction and that it can be an art-form, particularly for persuasive arguments, but I think I'm looking for more of the 'observation becomes universal truth' type. Thanks!
Slouching Towards Bethlehem and The White Album by Joan Didion are both amazing.
posted by gt2 at 3:40 AM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
posted by gt2 at 3:40 AM on January 19, 2023 [6 favorites]
amia srinivasan's collection the right to sex might interest you.
it follows a similar pattern of building from specific observations to broader 'truths' re sex, feminism and desire (sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes implied).
i wouldn't describe them as universal truths - she's taking particular positions on contested issues in feminist thought, and her arguments don't always hold up - but it's thought-provoking to work out when and why you do or don't agree with her, and the writing is clear, careful and subtle.
posted by inire at 3:57 AM on January 19, 2023
it follows a similar pattern of building from specific observations to broader 'truths' re sex, feminism and desire (sometimes explicitly stated, sometimes implied).
i wouldn't describe them as universal truths - she's taking particular positions on contested issues in feminist thought, and her arguments don't always hold up - but it's thought-provoking to work out when and why you do or don't agree with her, and the writing is clear, careful and subtle.
posted by inire at 3:57 AM on January 19, 2023
I really like the Best American series and I'm in the middle of reading the Best American Essays 2022. They're edited by different writers each year, so they form different points of view from year to year.
posted by cocoagirl at 4:08 AM on January 19, 2023 [7 favorites]
posted by cocoagirl at 4:08 AM on January 19, 2023 [7 favorites]
There are many people who dislike Stephen Jay Gould for valid reasons, but I really enjoyed his writing. There are many books compiling his Natural History essays that are more or less equally good.
Joan Didion is also worth trying if you aren't famial with her work. Slouching Towards Bethlehem is probably the most celebrated.
Edit: both dupes. Sorry!
posted by eotvos at 4:12 AM on January 19, 2023
Joan Didion is also worth trying if you aren't famial with her work. Slouching Towards Bethlehem is probably the most celebrated.
Edit: both dupes. Sorry!
posted by eotvos at 4:12 AM on January 19, 2023
Lewis Thomas' The Medusa and the Snail is a classic in the natural sciences.
John McPhee's Annals of the Former World is a fascinating geology page-turner that, while it might not technically have been written as a bunch of separate essays, nevertheless reads like a bunch of essays. It's unbelievably adept description of geology and how geology was/is figured out by specific people, so there's a lot of biography and life musings throughout.
It's worth going back to the source with Montaigne's Essays, which are still very readable hundreds of years later.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:13 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
John McPhee's Annals of the Former World is a fascinating geology page-turner that, while it might not technically have been written as a bunch of separate essays, nevertheless reads like a bunch of essays. It's unbelievably adept description of geology and how geology was/is figured out by specific people, so there's a lot of biography and life musings throughout.
It's worth going back to the source with Montaigne's Essays, which are still very readable hundreds of years later.
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:13 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Making up for my dumb didn't-read-the-thread comment with a weirder idea, not essays in a formal sense, but few-page stand-alone memoirs that might be similar: Low Down by A. J. Albany
posted by eotvos at 4:30 AM on January 19, 2023
posted by eotvos at 4:30 AM on January 19, 2023
Seconding John McPhee's whole corpus... and while i'm not a fan of his fiction, I really enjoyed Jonathan Franzen's How to Be Alone, albeit more than a decade ago. With the caveat, of course, that it may not have aged particularly well.
posted by Cold Lurkey at 4:41 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Cold Lurkey at 4:41 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Some good ones:
James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son
Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack and Honey
JA Baker's The Peregrine (this is one book-length essay but it's a magnificent piece of nature writing)
Eliot Weinberger's An Elemental Thing
Eula Biss's Notes from No Man's Land
Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass
Ursula K Le Guin's The Wave in the Mind
posted by jshttnbm at 4:50 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
James Baldwin's Notes of a Native Son
Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack and Honey
JA Baker's The Peregrine (this is one book-length essay but it's a magnificent piece of nature writing)
Eliot Weinberger's An Elemental Thing
Eula Biss's Notes from No Man's Land
Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass
Ursula K Le Guin's The Wave in the Mind
posted by jshttnbm at 4:50 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Feel Free, Zadie Smith. I like her essays almost better than her novels, and I really appreciate her novels too. She has a wide range of interests, a precise language, a keen understanding of cultural and sociological factors and great depth of emotional nuance.
posted by sohalt at 5:17 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by sohalt at 5:17 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
David Foster Wallace's essay collections are great. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Consider the Lobster. Just some excellent writing in there.
Caveat: If you're not aware, DFW's fiction is often considered synonymous with a bunch of bad things and to signify the worst of contemporary-ish bro lit. I haven't read hardly any of it, but note that my recommendation of the essays has nothing to do with liking the fiction. He's also frequently regarded as problematic, and he has been accused of some bad shit, including abuse.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:38 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Caveat: If you're not aware, DFW's fiction is often considered synonymous with a bunch of bad things and to signify the worst of contemporary-ish bro lit. I haven't read hardly any of it, but note that my recommendation of the essays has nothing to do with liking the fiction. He's also frequently regarded as problematic, and he has been accused of some bad shit, including abuse.
posted by cupcakeninja at 5:38 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Nicholson Baker's Mezzanine and Room Temperature.
I would have suggested DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing… but couldn't be bothered with the caveats, so thanks to cupcakeninja for doing it for me :)
nthing Joan Didion.
posted by fabius at 5:40 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I would have suggested DFW's A Supposedly Fun Thing… but couldn't be bothered with the caveats, so thanks to cupcakeninja for doing it for me :)
nthing Joan Didion.
posted by fabius at 5:40 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I suggest you check out Fitzcaraldo Editions' Essay series. You can even buy a subscription.
posted by dobbs at 5:40 AM on January 19, 2023
posted by dobbs at 5:40 AM on January 19, 2023
I’ve long enjoyed The Art of the Personal Essay edited by Philip Lopate. Based on this
posted by gauche at 5:53 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
I think I'm looking for more of the 'observation becomes universal truth' type.I think you would as well.
posted by gauche at 5:53 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
I loved Molly McCully Brown's Places I've Taken My Body.
I agree that David Foster Wallace's essays are wonderful, and I don't like his fiction at all.
Nthing Best American Essays.
posted by FencingGal at 6:05 AM on January 19, 2023
I agree that David Foster Wallace's essays are wonderful, and I don't like his fiction at all.
Nthing Best American Essays.
posted by FencingGal at 6:05 AM on January 19, 2023
You've absolutely got to read Montaigne. If you're OK with archaic language, John Florio's translation is the same one Shakespeare read (we know because paraphrases of some of the essays appear in the later plays).
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
posted by Pallas Athena at 6:37 AM on January 19, 2023 [5 favorites]
E.B. White wrote for The New Yorker, and his essays are excellent.
Russell Baker, not sure what collection to recommend; his memoir, Growing Up, is well worth your time.
nthing John McPhee, Joan Didion
I'll add one of my favorite memoirs/authors A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Robert Sapolsky. His essays are great, too.
posted by theora55 at 6:38 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Russell Baker, not sure what collection to recommend; his memoir, Growing Up, is well worth your time.
nthing John McPhee, Joan Didion
I'll add one of my favorite memoirs/authors A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Robert Sapolsky. His essays are great, too.
posted by theora55 at 6:38 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Time for me to bust into an Ask and recommend Easy Beauty again! One of the best essay collections I've ever read (it is styled as a memoir but it's an essay collection, there's just a perception that essay collections are hard to sell so they like you to call them something else if you can). It's about beauty (duh) and bodies and disability and also art and philosophy, gorgeously written and brilliantly thought out. If you like things at the intersection of prose and lyricism that spin personal observation into universal truth, Chloé Cooper Jones has you covered.
I also really enjoyed Rax King's collection Tacky, and I've heard great things about How Far the Light Reaches but I haven't read it yet! Also, uh, are we allowed to self-promote in Ask replies? Because Women and Other Monsters is garbage and I'll never read it again but that's mainly because I had to read it 239058290 times while writing it, some other people who didn't do that seem to think it's okay. (Also it mentions Metafilter.)
posted by babelfish at 6:54 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
I also really enjoyed Rax King's collection Tacky, and I've heard great things about How Far the Light Reaches but I haven't read it yet! Also, uh, are we allowed to self-promote in Ask replies? Because Women and Other Monsters is garbage and I'll never read it again but that's mainly because I had to read it 239058290 times while writing it, some other people who didn't do that seem to think it's okay. (Also it mentions Metafilter.)
posted by babelfish at 6:54 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Great suggestions here. I've been especially enjoying Kathleen Jamie's nonfiction recently. Sightlines and Surfacing are absolutely beautiful collections, and I'm looking forward to Findings.
posted by sk932 at 6:59 AM on January 19, 2023
posted by sk932 at 6:59 AM on January 19, 2023
I enjoyed Magic Hours a lot when I read it. It definitely gave me lots of food for thought but was also very accessible and easy reading.
I also really like Art Objects, but it's pretty dense for bedtime reading. I found I had to read an essay, reflect and then read it again.
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 7:15 AM on January 19, 2023
I also really like Art Objects, but it's pretty dense for bedtime reading. I found I had to read an essay, reflect and then read it again.
posted by Sweetchrysanthemum at 7:15 AM on January 19, 2023
Her sphere was in theory the domestic/cooking, but do check out the essay collections of the late Laurie Colwin. Here's an essay :-) on why to read her.
posted by gudrun at 7:51 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by gudrun at 7:51 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I really wanted to be the one to recommend Lopate's Art of the Personal Essay, so I'll just echo the above. Didion's also great, and I personally love Le Guin's nonfiction.
A few other titles you might check out:
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind, ed. (Gutkind also did three volumes of The Best Creative Nonfiction.)
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, eds.
High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
The Best of Brevity by Zoe Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore, eds.
Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
The Art of Fact by Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda (might be outside of what you're after, but I offer it as a possibility)
Happy reading!
posted by xenization at 7:58 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
A few other titles you might check out:
In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction by Lee Gutkind, ed. (Gutkind also did three volumes of The Best Creative Nonfiction.)
Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, eds.
High Tide in Tucson by Barbara Kingsolver
The Best of Brevity by Zoe Bossiere and Dinty W. Moore, eds.
Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard
The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison
The Art of Fact by Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda (might be outside of what you're after, but I offer it as a possibility)
Happy reading!
posted by xenization at 7:58 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
I enjoyed "Trick Mirror" by Jia Tolentino.
Much of James Baldwin's non-fiction work is essays and it is uniformly excellent.
Wendell Berry is an essayist, farmer, and environmental activist. His writing is very good and if presents ideas in combinations you don't often encounter, and for motives that are also somewhat hard to come by.
Marilynne Robinson, best known for her book "Gilead," has several essay collections which I love but YMMV depending on your interest in one person's ongoing mission of resurrecting the good name of John Calvin. It would be at least worth reading an NYT review to see if you might like her, there is a lot to think about there.
These recommendations all have some amount of "observation becomes universal truth," I think, but they are often also intended to persuade.
posted by kensington314 at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2023
Much of James Baldwin's non-fiction work is essays and it is uniformly excellent.
Wendell Berry is an essayist, farmer, and environmental activist. His writing is very good and if presents ideas in combinations you don't often encounter, and for motives that are also somewhat hard to come by.
Marilynne Robinson, best known for her book "Gilead," has several essay collections which I love but YMMV depending on your interest in one person's ongoing mission of resurrecting the good name of John Calvin. It would be at least worth reading an NYT review to see if you might like her, there is a lot to think about there.
These recommendations all have some amount of "observation becomes universal truth," I think, but they are often also intended to persuade.
posted by kensington314 at 8:05 AM on January 19, 2023
Seconding Laurie Colwin’s collections, Home Cooking and More Home Cooking.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:22 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:22 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Second Trick Mirror, which I have listened to three times. Audiobook is read by author, which I like.
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:38 AM on January 19, 2023
posted by lookoutbelow at 8:38 AM on January 19, 2023
I highly recommend The Art of Eating. It's a collection of five books of food writing by MFK Fisher, and it was such a pleasure to read slowly over a few months.
posted by guybrush_threepwood at 8:39 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by guybrush_threepwood at 8:39 AM on January 19, 2023 [2 favorites]
Definitely second Barbara Kingsolver, Laurie Colwin, and Montaigne. George Orwell was a stunningly good essayist, so was Virginia Woolf, so was Colette.
The late 18th and early 19th century was a bit of a golden age of English essays; Charles Lamb is one of my favourites, a very humane writer.
I haven't been reading many essays recently (I should change that, I like them!)- one collection that has been recommended to me and looks very good is Thick.
In general if there are novelists you like who've also written essays, give them a try. (Eg, for me, Ursula Le Guin.)
posted by Shark Hat at 8:42 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
The late 18th and early 19th century was a bit of a golden age of English essays; Charles Lamb is one of my favourites, a very humane writer.
I haven't been reading many essays recently (I should change that, I like them!)- one collection that has been recommended to me and looks very good is Thick.
In general if there are novelists you like who've also written essays, give them a try. (Eg, for me, Ursula Le Guin.)
posted by Shark Hat at 8:42 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
oooo, so many . . .
Anne Lamott: Bird by Bird; some instructions of writing and life, which is both insightful and a stitch.
Anne Fadiman: Ex Libris is bookish and fine.
Aidan Higgins: Ronda Gorge and Other Precipices. An Irish abroad.
Alistair Cooke Letter from America 1946-2004. BBC correspondent's view of USA
. . . that's just the As
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
Anne Lamott: Bird by Bird; some instructions of writing and life, which is both insightful and a stitch.
Anne Fadiman: Ex Libris is bookish and fine.
Aidan Higgins: Ronda Gorge and Other Precipices. An Irish abroad.
Alistair Cooke Letter from America 1946-2004. BBC correspondent's view of USA
. . . that's just the As
posted by BobTheScientist at 8:52 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
I’m not really an essay-reader usually and I loved loved loved Annie Dillard’s The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New. The first essay in it, "Total Eclipse", is a masterpiece.
posted by SomethinsWrong at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by SomethinsWrong at 9:08 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Rebecca Solnit has yet to be mentioned. I'm currently reading A Field Guide to Getting Lost. Her prose may be a little hurried at times, but I find something worth keeping in every essay.
posted by bricoleur at 9:18 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by bricoleur at 9:18 AM on January 19, 2023 [3 favorites]
George Orwell - A Collection of Essays
Winston Churchill - Essays and Other Works - in 5 volumes, characteristically
posted by yclipse at 11:10 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Winston Churchill - Essays and Other Works - in 5 volumes, characteristically
posted by yclipse at 11:10 AM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Joanna Russ's nonfiction collection To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction. In every essay I find some new lens to use on scifi, on this literature I've been reading my whole life.
posted by brainwane at 1:06 PM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by brainwane at 1:06 PM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
Ross Gay's Inciting Joy is a wonderful collection of personal essays. Reading it felt like getting a series of marvelous letters from a funny, reflective, and talented friend.
"In prose that veers between breezy and soulful, the author reflects on a wide range of topics, including basketball, dancing, skateboarding, couples’ therapy, music, masculinity, and his father’s cancer."--Kirkus
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2023
"In prose that veers between breezy and soulful, the author reflects on a wide range of topics, including basketball, dancing, skateboarding, couples’ therapy, music, masculinity, and his father’s cancer."--Kirkus
posted by MonkeyToes at 2:23 PM on January 19, 2023
Lapham's Quarterly has been putting out themed collections of essays and excerpts from history (usually alongside a contemporary one or three) for years. You can order any back issue - they're really all fascinating and generally lead to me buying a few new (old) books.
A friend whom I trust on these matters is absolutely bonkers over Junius, too.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:00 PM on January 19, 2023
A friend whom I trust on these matters is absolutely bonkers over Junius, too.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 4:00 PM on January 19, 2023
I recommend My Own Devices: Essays From the Road on Music, Science, and Senseless Love by rapper and poet Dessa. It's a book of personal, memoir-ish essays on various things that came up in her (very interesting) life. I was struck by your description of Vesper Flights as "she takes a small everyday observation but expands it out into a universal 'meaning of life'" — I find that Dessa's essays have this quality too.
posted by fire, water, earth, air at 4:06 PM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by fire, water, earth, air at 4:06 PM on January 19, 2023 [1 favorite]
For mathy stuff, have a look at Doug Hofstadter's Metamagical Themas. For thinking about politics & philosophy, consider the collections by Raymond Geuss. And if Montaigne suits you, consider the 18th century essayists Joseph Addison and Richard Steele. To Samuel Johnson's essays proper you could add his Lives of the Poets.
posted by diodotos at 11:13 PM on January 19, 2023
posted by diodotos at 11:13 PM on January 19, 2023
Response by poster: Thanks for the wonderful suggestions everyone! Can't wait to dig in.
posted by atlantica at 1:00 AM on February 20, 2023
posted by atlantica at 1:00 AM on February 20, 2023
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