Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with essays and non-fiction

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mondaygreens — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:19:08 -0800

Help! What's the most convincing non-fiction you've ever read? (tl;dr below)

I'm trying to put together a long essay that I'd like to be as readable and plausible as possible. There are references to several books and other media, and while it's not for a large readership it is for a fairly random one, so I'm trying to avoid making it at all academic without having to dumb it down. But, since I can’t easily refer it to anything else I've read, I'm having a hard time figuring out if it's working. In particular I'm not sure how personal I can or should make it, because the subject is fairly broad (but personal, like this distracting aside).

I've read a few notable philosophers, some social theorists and some popular and well-regarded essayists who have a personal style. The problem is that the great stuff is very cerebral (DFW, Foucault), the readable stuff is lazy and unconvincing (Rorty, Thomas Friedman) and then there's people I can't even read without a teacher or reference of some kind, and who already stand for too many things. Socratic dialogue is the most ideal form (grr) I've found so far for what I'm trying to put together, but I don't know where else it's used or even acceptable these days besides comics. (It doesn't really work for prose, does it?)

tl;dr:
To sum up, I really want to read more compelling argumentative things, but instead of looking at popular or famous essays, I’d really rather read stuff that other people have actually been convinced by.

So please share any non-fiction that made strong arguments that changed your mind or thoroughly proved what you already thought.

It doesn’t have to be as broad as the writers I mentioned above – anything with a common subject that doesn’t require special knowledge to understand would be great.

Also welcome is anything that gave you a plausible, compelling perspective on some thing you didn’t know much about (eg: feminism in the Middle East).

writing that's direct, morally complex, and personal at the same time

TayBridge — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 01:00:02 -0800

There's no shortage of excellent "what to read" threads around here, but I'm looking for something a bit more specific. The tricky part is I'm looking for a style and a point of view, rather than a particular genre or subject. Three main criteria:

1. Prose that is clear, sharp, and direct even to the point of becoming astringent; generally avoids becoming florid, precious, or too self-consciously literary.

2. Presents (or suggests) a world that is morally complex. Author and/or narrator is non-dogmatic, with a reluctantance to make easy generalizations, and is bemused by, outright hostile to, or otherwise estranged from conventional morality (however that might be defined in the book).

3. Point of view is unambiguously personal, with no pretense to objectivity or universal experience, but without being self-indulgent.

I don't care about fiction or non-fiction; genre, format, time period, subject, etc., do not matter. (Although, perhaps, I would prefer to avoid books with supernatural themes.)

Depending on how loosely you interpret these criteria, a lot of books might seem to fit, but I'm really hoping to find writing that truly exemplifies these qualities.

A random sampling of books & authors that hit this target for me: Joan Didion, Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado, Mary Gaitskill, J. Christopher Herold's Mistress to an Age, the eXile compendium, Of Human Bondage.

Thank you, genius MeFites!

Can you help me find this essay?

codacorolla — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 20:18:01 -0800

I'm looking for a World War 2 essay that may be titled "Missing the War", which is about the difference in perception between how the Second World War was portrayed in the media and how it was for the soldiers involved. I remember reading it in a best-of essay collection that might've been published in 2006 or 2007. Google searching for that title doesn't bring up anything similar. It's a really great essay, and probably some of the best war writing I've ever read.

I Like To Read Things

turgid dahlia — Thu, 01 May 2008 16:21:50 -0800

What are some of your absolute favourite online essays, articles and other pieces of non-fiction writing? Pursuant to this post and the excellent linked essay, I have found my appetite whetted for some more fine pieces of journalism, reportage, history, criticism, review, everything and anything. I have trawled the online archives of The Atlantic and The New Yorker because I love to have something fresh and interesting to print out and read on my lunch break.

Basically I'm after singular examples of quality online writing (no fiction, thanks, I have more than enough of that), not necessarily for the beauty of the prose or even for the content of the story - I just want one of those (preferably big) articles you can't stop reading, and at the end you want to show it to everybody you know because it's just so amazing, and you wish you had read it sooner.

For reference, one of my favourites is the wonderful B.R. Myer's piece A Reader's Manifesto, from The Atlantic Monthly.

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