Quotidiana

If you are interested in contemporary essays that teach well in the nonfiction classroom, you've come to the right place, but if you really want to know about classic essays (Bacon, Montaigne, Fanny Burney), let me heartily recommend:

QUOTIDIANA, The online compendium of public-domain essays.

A great site, a great idea. Kudos to Patrick Madden for providing such a useful resource.

"Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine," by Bill Roorbach

Poet and NEA Chairman Dana Gioia wrote an essay titled "A Spy in the House of Commerce," in which he argued for the aesthetic virtues that accrue to a person who plies his writing craft from inside the working world. But that was easy enough for Gioia to say: as the Vice President of a multinational corporation, his working world was not quite so arduous as the one described by Bill Roorbach in "Shitdiggers, Mudflats, and the Worm Men of Maine," where honest men spend their days bent at the back, plucking blood worms from the mud for ten cents a worm, six cents for sand worms. Roorbach labors alongside them, doing his best to earn their trust even as he struggles to learn their trade. Roorbach's companionable voice beckons the reader to linger for awhile in the warmth of the narrative, and he always chooses the right turn of phrase. Consider, for example, the first sentence of "Shitdiggers": "'Hard work,' says Dickey Butts, and we haven't even started yet." (in Into Woods, University of Notre Dame Press, 2002.)

"Sex and the Sickbed," Jennifer Glaser

Henry James advised writers to plant the "stout stake of emotion" for the subsequent action to swirl against. For the memoirist, this surely requires an act of bravery. In "Sex and the Sickbed," Jennifer Glaser's subject is the persistence of sexual desire in the face of her first lover's leukemia, and the continuance of that desire after his death. When she writes of her grieving ". . . so I praised Neil's body and all it had meant to me," she is offering up, all at once, the taboo and the familiar: the inextricable link between sex and death, as witnessed by a twenty-five-year-old widow. The scenes that follow Neil's death -- awkward dates, awkward conversations with friends, a family party -- are the mundane things of life, but they are invested with meaning because of their anchoring in that stout stake of emotion planted good and early. The reader walks away haunted -- "Sex and the Sickbed" is not an essay one soon forgets -- and that is because the memoirist had courage enough to paint her darkest hour in all its ugliness and beauty. (in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006, edited by Matt Kellogg and Jillian Quint, Random House, 2006.)

"What's Inside You, Brother?," Toure

Most personal essays are written in the first person, but in "What's Inside You, Brother?" Toure invents a first person narrator to describe a third- (and, for nearly half the essay, a second-) person Toure as he tries on a new persona, making himself over as a boxer not unlike Sonny Liston, well-acquainted with "the body English of the back alley, the backroom, the back corner of the prison's back cell." And even as he remakes his body into something lean and strong and fast, he is grappling with notions harder to pin down: blackness and whiteness, poverty and privilege, who I am and who they say I am. Point of view becomes, in this essay, a matter of form being not separable from meaning, its unconventionality organic and necessary. (in Never Drank the Kool-Aid, Picador, 2006.)

"The Search for Marvin Gardens," John McPhee

This is an essay that needs nothing but the writer to act as guide, taking readers from point to point via a staggering structure that moves back and forth from richly written research to the dramatic present: two men playing a best of seven match of Monopoly. "The Search for Marvin Gardens" appeals to students by way of topic because most have heard or have played Charles B. Darrow's infamous board game. McPhee allows his research, his seemingly simple reportage to tell the story itself. There is no need for voice over, no need to over tell the themes of this piece. They arise and hover from section to section. A student said after reading the piece, "Man, I feel like I was a Monopoly token, moving from Avenue to Avenue." Exactly.

This essay can be found in The Next American Essay, edited by John D'Agata.

“The Road’s Motion,” Reg Saner

One of the best in terms of road essays. This essay (and essays of this sort) tend to provoke interesting discussion about the difference between a road essay and a travel essay, especially as Saner lines up in the first two sentences how they are different. (It's interesting to pair this essay with Tim Cahill's "This Teeming Ark" (Best American Travel Writing, 2000) to facilitate this kind of discussion.) Saner's prose is stunning, the language skillfully sharp, and there's much to be learned there. (American Literary Review, Vol 5, No 2).

“Listening to the Landscape,” Tim Robinson

This piece, written by Irish essayist and cartographer Tim Robinson, is a rich essay that works the relationship between land, language, history, and humans through the use of Irish placenames. His handling of history and location is a good point of discussion for students who are working with place essays as well as travel essays--and how to incorporate stories and anecdotes into a larger essay-world. (In Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara, Lilliput Press, 1996.)

“Agricultural Mysticism: Twenty Fragments on Desire,” Debra Marquart

Marquart’s essay, which skillfully combines migraines with agriculture with the sexual coming-of-age of a young girl, contains more than cues for a student about how to construct a multi-layered essay. This piece is divided into twenty sections--numerous for an essay, but this can teach students not to pay attention to certain boundaries as well as teaching the benefits of numbered sections. The presence of the narrator, sometimes “I,” sometimes “the girl that I was,” provokes discussion about how present the author needs to be and the distance created by time and memory. (Mid-American Review, 2003 (v. XXIV, no. 2))

"Bones," Paul Gruchow

In terms of language, there is no one better to learn from than Paul Gruchow. The language of “Bones” is stunningly gentle and gorgeous, with minute attention paid to each syllable, which contrasts strenuously with the cruelty of the content. For beginning essayists, this piece works well to teach that there is more to an essay than anecdote. His moments of epiphany are wonderful and much can be learned from them on a craft level. (In Best American Essays, 1989/Grass Roots: The Universe of Home (Gruchow), Milkweed Editions, 1995).

"Our Perfect Summer,” David Sedaris

Written by a man known first as a comedian, it is a serious essay whose humor serves to deepen rather than dissipate. (Some of Sedaris’s essays sacrifice truth for humor, but not this one – and this is another good point of discussion.) The piece is marked by economy in every way, as this wise and practiced essayist understands and knows how to use diction, image, metaphor, and other sometimes overlooked technical devices. While the essay is technically rich, Sedaris writes so well that we never spot the writer writing this engaging story about emotional vulnerability. (In the June 16 & 23, 2003 issue of The New Yorker.)

“Autopsy Report," Lia Purpura

Purpura writes lyric essays about subjects from giving birth to witnessing an autopsy, and I recommend any of her pieces to show how the kind of leaps that take place in poetry can and should be imitated – nay, stolen! – in creative nonfiction. In this piece, the writer uses parallel structure to accommodate diverse and complicated sentiments. Time and place are especially well handled. (In her essay collection, On Looking, published by Sarabande.)

“Son of Mr. Green Jeans,” Dinty W. Moore

Using the alphabet as a structuring device, Moore satisfyingly examines the relationship between fathers and sons. The exploration is lots of fun for readers, as Moore continually surprises us with his choices of alphabetically listed section names (Carp, Divorce, Emperor Penguins, Father Knows Best) and the way he uses information as varied as this partial list suggests. Ultimately, Moore reveals his own thoughts about becoming a father and about his relationship with his own. (First published in Crazyhorse and republished in Harper’s.)

“Goodbye to All This,” Rebecca McClanahan

McClanahan, who has written two nonfiction writing guides as well as numerous award-winning essays, focuses here on the nature and meaning of home, as she simultaneously describes her move from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Manhattan, New York. Her prose is at once inspiring and distinctive. For example: “Last week, the footprints in our carpet grew bodies and names,” she writes to disclose that the house she and her husband put on the market has finally received an offer. McClanahan defines and redefines the meaning of the word home as the essay progresses, and the piece accumulates in power and resonance. (This is a chapter in McClanahan’s memoir, The Riddle Song, University of Georgia Press.)

“Macular Degeneration,” Gregory Martin

This is a wonderful and uplifting essay about an otherwise sad incident – uplifting because of the way the people involved react, and sad because it involves Martin’s beloved grandfather, whose failing eyesight causes him to make a crucial mistake. Written first as a discrete essay (in an issue of Creative Nonfiction), the piece was later revised to become part of Martin’s full-length memoir, Mountain City, which won the Washington State Book Award and was named a New York Times Notable Book. Comparisons between the two versions provide important genre lessons for student writers.

“The Mistress’s Daughter,” A.M. Homes

Adopted at birth, Homes tells the story of her initial and subsequent meetings with her birth parents. This long essay written by a masterful storyteller seamlessly interweaves scene, half-scene, summary, and reflection. Although she never states them outright, her complex feelings are nevertheless made palpable. How she accomplishes this is worth exploration. (In The New Yorker, December 20 & 27, 2004.)

“Bumping into Mr. Ravioli,” Adam Gopnik

When I first read it in The New Yorker in 2002, I photocopied this piece and sent it to numerous friends, only a few of them writers. It later won a Best American Magazine Writing Award and was included in the 2003 edition of Best American Essays. Gopnik approaches his subject – the way busyness displaces meaningful interaction – by means of a narrative about his young daughter’s imaginary friend who is always too busy to play with her and even too busy to talk with her when she phones. At once humorous and serious, the piece is also an important model of the smooth commingling of narrative and reflective voices.

"Documents," Charles D’Ambrosio

One of the most potent examples of the power of revelation through exclusion, D’Ambrosio’s heart-wrenching essay about love and abandonment is a model of the way one writer effectively uses organization and concision. Focusing on separate documents – and limiting himself to a discussion mainly of these (a poem written by his father just before he abandons the family, a letter from one of his siblings, the suicide note left by another, and his own correspondence with his absent father) – D’Ambrosio demonstrates that less really is more. (Originally in The New Yorker, June 17 & 24, 2002)

“A Voice for the Lonely,” Stephen Corey

Text and subtext work wonderfully well together in this essay about silence – “the right silence” – and the importance of music. What to relate, what to leave out: these are questions that challenge many writers. Corey’s brief essay demonstrates well how to meet such a challenge. (Collected in Judith Kitchen and Mary Paumier Jones, eds., In Short and published by W. W. Norton.)

“A Note About Allen Tate,” Kelly Cherry

This biographical appreciation of a favorite professor simultaneously delivers information about the essayist’s own life during the time she was his student. “Oddly, I can’t remember whether he smoked in class,” Cherry writes, but what she does remember and the way she imparts this knowledge is in itself memorable. (Collected in In Short edited by Judith Kitchen and published by W. W. Norton.)

"Why Write?," Paul Auster

In five numbered and diverse sections, some not directly about his own life, the author of fiction, biography, memoir, essays, poetry, and screenplays presents a list of reasons he became a writer. Valuable not only as an example of the power of the mosaic form, the piece demonstrates the ways the most subtle connections can be made among narratives when held together by, among other attributes, an appropriate title. (Originally in The New Yorker, but later published as a book.)

“Third Look: On Rereading Leonard Michaels' 'I Would Have Saved Them if I Could',” Shalom Auslander

In the form of a review of a “lost” book, Auslander creates a personal essay using as a vehicle his three readings of Michaels’ short story collection at ages 14, 24, and 34. His remarks about Michaels’ prose – for example, “I was in love with his sadness” – mix appropriately with comments about his own life, and we learn much about both. The essay provides a good lesson in the creative use of form. (In the Lost Books section of Nextbook Reader, Fall 2005)

"Water," Maureen Stanton

"Water" starts off relatively simply--the joy of being in the water, the joy of swimming. "I am a fish," states the narrator. As this essay continues, however, the lens of this piece opens and suddenly the essay is not just about swimming. Stanton has a unique eye in observing the world, but what is a good teaching point, is how her observations always turns back on the narrator, that as she looks at the other swimmers at the Y, she is uncovering something about herself. Reading "Water" is like reading the movement of water, the sentences sweeping with lyricism.

"Water" was originally published in Creative Nonfiction, Number 3.

"What They Don't Tell You About Hurricanes," Phil Gerard

We are all familiar with hurricanes from watching the coverage on television, so Gerard’s challenge is to relate what it was really like when Hurricane Fran slammed directly into his hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina. His unique narrative structure involves an implied question (what don’t they tell you?), repetition (whether, when, how hard, how long, and variations on the title), and shifts between first and second person. Note the small details he relates to make you feel as if you had experienced this event yourself – the frogs, the ice. (Found in Writing Creative Nonfiction, the AWP/Story Press Anthology)