Best Essays, and only 2 years behind
I get actual pleasure, a feeling of uplift and relaxation, from good writing. Since my semester obligations ended, I've been getting that chance to savor good writing more often, and the anthology The Best American Essays 2009 has provided an excellent dose of it. The poet Mary Oliver, was the guest editor for that particular collection, and made some excellent choices. The collection is also shorter than usual, but not because there are fewer essays. Oliver chose short.
She also leaned toward essays involving Nature, more so than I think most of these collections have. 40% of them have my little symbol indicating Nature as subject matter or metaphor; including "The Best Nature Essay Ever" which tells us how that would go. Less death-and-dying than most years, though there is some (dead and dying parents are a consistent theme of these collections, at least in recent years). A couple of dramatic moments from childhood (Lopez, Van Meter) that are very well done.
Part of what I love in these collections is the variety of subjects, including essays about my own avocation: writing. That's certainly true here. There's an essay on light pollution, an essay on being an aging writer, another on writing description, an essay on renting a monster-mansion in New Orleans, the orbits of moons as metaphor, and the vicious treatment wild deer mete out to arbor vitae. There's a whole essay about the words we use for measurement. Another about the genetics of dogs.
John Updike, who has never won me over to his fiction, wrote the essay on being an aging writer, which contains a wonderfully crafted paragraph on all the writing instruments he used through the different phases of his life. I'm going to teach that paragraph, and probably that essay, next semester.
Jill McCorkle's "Cuss Time" is a discussion of the ritual she invented for her son: five minutes each day, right after school, when he could say anything, use any words he wanted to try out. And about the friends who came home with him, wanting to do the same. It is completely charming, and wise.
I'll need to teach another of the essays here, Patricia Hampl's "The Dark Art of Description." My writing students need to enjoy that one.
Okay, I'll admit there was one weakness to this collection, for me. The essays are always presented in alphabetical order of authors' names, and that put two of the most strident essays in the first four. They aren't bad, but they preach rather than prove, and out of context that can be irritating. If you read this in order, don't worry. It's not exemplar of the whole.
I got something out of every single essay here, and was introduced to some interesting writers. Can't complain about that.
CBsIP: Down the Great River, Captain Willard Glazier, the Soldier-Author
Peanuts: A Golden Celebration, Charles Schulz
The Maker of Heavenly Trousers, Daniele Varè