The Genius of Essays

I did not plan to spend the last month reading collections of essays.  In fact, I didn't even realize I was doing so until I updated my Books Read 2019 list.  I began by reading I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum, who has spent much of her writing life reviewing TV shows. What a great book—wonderful to read her reviews about TV shows I’ve watched, but even when she talks about unfamiliar shows, it’s a great book.  And it's interesting to think about how much television has changed--now it's an art form that many more of us take seriously than we would have decades ago.

I decided to read the book when I heard Nussbaum interviewed on NPR.  Similarly, I got Jia Tolentino's Trick Mirror after hearing her on several NPR shows.  Often when I've heard people on NPR, I'm bored by the book--it's as if I've already heard the major points, and there's not much reason to read the book.  That has not been the case with either of these books.

However, my favorite book of essays in this month of essays is Margaret Renkl's Late Migrations.  I would likely not have discovered this book without this review on NPR's Fresh Air.  The essays have  a poetic quality, moment after moment where I catch my breath and savor the sentence or the image.  Renkl explores a variety of topics, but she's often weaving back to the natural world and to all sorts of family constellations.

I found my favorite essay online--go here and scroll down to read "The Imperfect-Family Beatitudes."  It enchanted me from the beginning:  "Blessed is the weary mother who rises before daybreak for no project or prayer book, for no reason but the solace of a sleeping house and a tepid cup of instant coffee and a fat dog curled on her lap. Hers is the fleeting kingdom of heaven."

I found her depictions of life with her aging parents particularly poignant.  She notes, "The end of caregiving isn't freedom.  The end of caregiving is grief" (p. 189).  This is true of aging parents, but also of other kinds of caretaking:  the child who goes off to college, the bird that cannot be saved, the flowers taken over by weeds.  About those non-native species of plants she says, "The alien does not know it's an alien" (p. 10).

As I'm looking at my Books Read 2019 list, I'm realizing that I'm not doing a great job of reading more poetry.  I started off the year so strongly in that area, but it's fallen off.  Maybe it's time to finally get around to reading Ocean Vuong's Night Sky with Exit Wounds, which has been on my to-read shelf for longer than I like to realize.

I confess that I thought of this book because of the announcement of this year's MacArthur awards.  I looked over this list and tried not to think about my own age and the age of the winners.  Some years I'm inspired by the list, but not this year.

This year I was already in a despondent place about so much of my life.  Looking at the list makes me even more despairing about all the opportunities that I haven't found.  It's been the kind of September where I haven't written much, and I've sent out nothing.

But I am hopeful that the pace of these weeks will abate.  We will get our materials ready for the accreditation visit and then, hopefully, we can go back to a more sane pace.

In the meantime, at least I have been able to read a bit here and there.  And that's where the essay format is perfect for these times, whether it's the longer, deeper essays of Jia Tolentino or the perfect jewels of the shorter essays of Renkl.

Let me hang onto the elements of my life that I love while working my way back to all that I hold dear.