What are your favorite contemporary essay collections?

July 17, 2018 2:00 PM

I have loved recent books by John Jeremiah Sullivan, Cheston Knapp, and Meghan Daum. Who am I missing?

Looking for some dope literary nonfiction to round out my summer reading—and to use as inspiration for a little book project of my own.

If you loved these:

"Pulphead" by John Jeremiah Sullivan
"Up, Up, Down, Down" by Cheston Knapp
"Braindead Megaphone" by George Saunders
"The Unspeakable" by Meghan Daum
"Halls of Fame" by John D'Agata

Who would you read next?

Looking for contemporary-ish (last ten years or so) writers who have a wry, brainy take on all matters of the think-y life, from the highbrow to the low. Slight bias towards loveliness of prose, I guess, with a larger-than-average appetite for MFA-style flourishes. Meaning: I care more about the sentences themselves than the actual subject matter. Trying to steer clear of strict memoir, but clever ruminations on personal life are fair game (think Jo Ann Beard's "Boys of My Youth").

Any suggestions?

posted by sureshot to Writing & Language (13 answers total)

Somewhat outside your 10-year window, but you might dig Jonathan Ames's essay collections: What's Not to Love?: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer (2000), My Less Than Secret Life (2002), I Love You More Than You Know (2006), The Double Life Is Twice As Good: Essays and Fiction (2009).
posted by General Malaise at 2:23 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Tim Kreider: We Learn Nothing
posted by Obscure Reference at 2:56 PM on July 17, 2018

I, too, loved Pulphead. If you want beautiful prose, I would add Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams to your list.
posted by dearwassily at 3:19 PM on July 17, 2018

Seconding The Empathy Exams. Also Lindy West's Shrill.
posted by gennessee at 3:25 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

Zadie Smith’s Feel Free has several gems. I haven’t fully finished it, but have already re-read some to savor the prose.
posted by childofTethys at 3:44 PM on July 17, 2018 [1 favorite]

The very greatest is Janet Malcolm, and her most recent book, Forty-One False Starts (2013) is miraculously good. Some of the essays in there are more than 10 years old, to be sure. Nobody I mean nobody writes better sentences in the magazine-feature format.
posted by escabeche at 7:07 PM on July 17, 2018 [2 favorites]

You want Roxanne Gay's Bad Feminist, for sure.
posted by Temeraria at 10:04 PM on July 17, 2018

I'm seconding the recommendation for We Learn Nothing. Tim Kreider is an excellent writer. For a sample of his writing, see his NY Times essay, "Reprieve".
posted by JD Sockinger at 4:43 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Michelle Orange's This Is Running for Your Life will probably be up your alley. Anything by John McPhee (his most recent, Draft #4, is about writing and is wonderfully written).

Surely someone has already recommended Rebecca Solnit to you. She is great, and is right along with John Jeremiah Sullivan on my list of writers whose essays on any subject I will immediately read.
posted by torridly at 6:44 AM on July 18, 2018

I really like Geoff Dyer, especially the essays collected in Otherwise Known as the Human Condition, and also Jonathan Lethem's The Ecstasy of Influence. I'd also second Rebecca Solnit - her book-length non-fiction is also great if you're interested in longer work.
posted by Awkward Philip at 7:52 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lindy West's "Shrill"
Samantha Irby's "Meaty" and "We are Never Meeting in Real Life"

Both women are hilaaaarious. :)
posted by Dressed to Kill at 8:33 AM on July 18, 2018

Not essays, but lectures: Mary Ruefle's Madness, Rack, and Honey.
posted by Morpeth at 10:16 AM on July 18, 2018

And I mean if you haven't already read Daum's first book, My Misspent Youth, it's not as well-known but just as good as The Unspeakable. "Music is My Bag" might be the best essay about nerddom ever written.
posted by escabeche at 6:12 PM on July 18, 2018