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Best American Essays of the Century (11 - 15)
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s
“Corn-pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you
expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
11. Zora Neale Hurston. "How It Feels To Be Colored Me." 1928.
The title is the best summary.
12. Edmund Wilson. "The Old Stone House." 1932. A trip back to
the town of his youth and a mood of depression as it reveals to him a way of
life that he would never want to experience again.
13. Gertrude Stein. "What Are Masterpieces and Why Are There So Few of
them." 1935. Now I understand "A rose is a rose is a rose."
Convoluted sentences. Erratic punctuation. Her idea about masterpieces is
almost like TS Eliot's effacement of the author's personality in creating a
work of poetry. Stein says if you remember you are you, you cannot create a
masterpiece. You are limited by your personality and identity. If you efface
your identity, you can create a masterpiece. Automatic writing? Sensible ideas
are occasionally thrown into what appears to be a random collection of thoughts
in stream of consciousness. But the piece is well organized. She moves from
defining a masterpiece to explaining why there are so few masterpieces--most
writers remember themselves and their identities and therefore cannot produce
anything truly original. I guess.
14. F. Scott Fitzgerald. "The Crack-Up." 1936. Reflections on
what he now realizes was a nervous breakdown. Maybe it was only depression.
Youth and life end in unhappiness.
15. James Thurber. "Sex ex Machina." 1937. Man vs. technology
Best American Essays of the Century (16 - 20)
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s
“Corn-pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you
expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
16. Richard Wright. "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow." 1937.
Learning to live in a white man's world, a world of unspeakable cruelty. No wonder
Richard Wright and other blacks who endured this cruelty were bitter. This
story is raw and inspires hatred of the Southern whites.
17. James Agee. "Knoxville: Summer of 1915." 1938. Impressions
of an idyllic, soft summer night surrounded by family and friends. Told from
the point of view of a little boy. Reminds of Remembrance of Things Past
by Proust.
18. Robert Frost. "The Figure a Poem Makes." 1939. Frost
reflects on the response he has to poems. His most memorable line: "It
begins in delight and ends in wisdom."
19. E.B. White. "Once More to the Lake." 1941. On his return
to the Maine lake where he spent his summers as a child, as an adult with his
children, the author feels the years slipping away. Everything is the same as
when he was a child. Almost. Outboard motors are an irritant. And as he watches
his young son, he has a premonition of his death.
20. S. J. Perelman. "Insert Flap 'A' and Throw Away." 1944.
"One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone
house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest,
cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this
technique, the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340
degrees F., and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble.
The Jiffy-Cloz, procurable at any department store or neighborhood insane
asylum, consists of half a dozen gigantic sheets of red cardboard, two plywood
doors, a clothes rack, and a packet of staples. With these is included a set of
instructions mimeographed in pale-violet ink, fruity with phrases like 'Pass
section F through slot AA, taking care not to fold tabs behind washer (See Fig.
9).' The cardboard is so processed that as the subject struggles convulsively
to force the staple through, it suddenly buckles, plunging the staple deep into
his thumb."
Best American Essays of the Century (21 - 25)
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order, from Mark Twain’s
“Corn-pone Opinions,” 1901, to Saul Bellow’s “Graven Images” in 1997. If you
expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
21. Langston Hughes. "Bop." 1949. The origin of Bop, from the
noise a cop's nightstick makes on a Negro's head because he's black. Whites
cannot understand Bop since they haven't been beaten about the head because
they are white.
22. Katherine Anne Porter. "The Future is Now." 1950. An
assessment of where we human beings are in the history of our existence in the
world, with the atomic bomb the symbol of humanity's willful desire for
self-destruction. But it may not be a world completed and, in the future, we
could make a world in which its fragmented nature of today will be put together
with some sense of meaning.
23. Mary McCarthy. "Artists in Uniform." 1953. The author
tells how she reluctantly becomes engaged in a conversation about Jews with a
prejudiced military man. He thinks because of her Irish name that he can safely
say whatever he wants about Jews. He doesn't like them. The author waits until
the colonel is about to depart again on the train to tell him that she is
married to a Jew. A case study of a prejudiced miind and the futility of trying
to change it with arguments based on logic.
24. Rachel Carson. "The Marginal World." 1955. The shore
brings land and sea together. The author reflects on the interaction of the
two.
25. James Baldwin. "Notes of a Native Son." 1955. Baldwin
struggles with his hatred of whites. He recognizes that hatred is
self-destructive, and concludes that he must accept life and people as they
are, without rancor. But he is resolute that he will not stop fighting
injustice.
Best American Essays of the Century (26 - 30)
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order from 1901 to 1997. If
you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
26. Loren Eiseley. "The Brown Wasps." 1956. People and animals
cling to memories and to places that have since changed--a department store
replaces a field that once was tenanted by insects, birds, rodents and rabbits.
The elevated goes underground and pigeons who used to be fed at its stations
find the food they counted on gone. People and animals cling to the memories of
what once was.
27. Eudora Welty. "A Sweet Devouring." 1957. Author talks
about her love of reading series books. She discovers that the volumes that
follow are not as good as the first. Then she discovered 24 volumes of Mark
Twain, each book different. She had outgrown formulas for writing.
28. Donald Hall. "A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails." 1961.
The author reflects on the life of Washington Woodward who could do anything on
his farm, but whose life was wasted on moving rocks and saving old, used nails
and talking about every detail of his experience. The author seems to conclude
that the activities of Washington Woodward's life had no value to anyone. It
was a full life, but it had no social significance. Seems to suggest that the
traditional New Hampshire way of life was no longer relevant in the modern
world.
29. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "Letter from Birmingham Jail." 1963.
In a letter that I think is as eloquent as anything I have ever read, King
responds to white clergymen who criticize him for engaging in nonviolent
peaceful protest that results in violence and who urge black people to wait
patiently while white society adjusts to accept them. King quotes Aquinas and
Martin Buber. He uses scathing logic. He uses plain statement of the treatment
of blacks by whites. His message is, Why are not you, the white religious
Christians, joining us in the march to justice n behalf of your black brothers
to fulfill the Constitutional guarantees for its citizens? Unforgettable.
30. Tom Wolfe. "Putting Daddy On." 1954. Father visits his
college-dropout son, living like a hippie, to try to talk sense into him, but
his language, almost unintelligible in its use of metaphors, is incapable of
being understood by his son whose point of view is completely different from
his dad's. The two see the world differently, summarized by the father's final
comment to the narrator as they leave the son's "pad" to take a taxi:
"You tell me," he says. "What could I say to him? I couldn't say
anything to him. I threw out everything I had. I couldn't make anything skip
across the pond. None of them. Not one." That is, not one of his reasons
for wanting his son to return to respectable middle-class life made sense to
his son.
Best American Essays of the Century (31 - 35)
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order from 1901 to 1997. If
you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
31. Susan Sontag. "Notes on 'Camp.' " 1964. The best summary
of "Camp" is in the last sentence: "It's good because it's
awful."
32. Vladimir Nabokov. "Perfect Past."1966. Reflections on the
themes that emerged through writing his autobiography.
33. M. Scott Momaday. "The Way to Rainy Mountain." 1967. As an
adult, the author reflects on his Kiowa Indian culture as he experienced it
through his grandmother in his youth. The love of the sun and of nature stands
out.
34. Elizabeth Hardwick. "The Apotheosis of Martin Luther King."
1968. The author reflects on the meaning of the death of Martin Luther
King. She suggests that the Christian religion will no longer play a part in
the battle for civil rights.
35. Michael Herr. "Illumination Rounds." 1969. Interviews and
incidents in the Vietnam War. They add up to its incomprehensibility to the men
who fought it. "The Intel report lay closed on the green field table and
someone had scrawled, 'What does it all mean?' across the cover sheet."
Best American Essays of the Century
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order from 1901 to 1997. If
you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
36. Maya Angelou. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." 1970.
Growing up in Stamps, Ark., the author as a young girl suffers both indignities
herself and the indignity of watching her relatives as they are threatened or
taunted by whites. Her mother always sang hymns to help her endure existence
and to dream of relief from that existence in God. That's why the "caged
bird" sings.
37. Lewis Thomas. "The Lives of a Cell." 1971. The single cell
with its complexity.... "...with too many working parts lacking visible
connections...." is like the complexity of the earth and the earth is most
like the single cell.
38. John McPhee. "The Search for Marvin Gardens." 1973.
Contrasts Monopoly, the game, with the real world of the sordid streets
and places in Atlantic City.
39. William H. Gass. "The Doomed in Their Sinking." 1973.
Thoughts on the subject of suicide.
40. Alice Walker. "Looking for Zora." 1975. In looking for the
place where Zora Neale Hurston was buried in Florida, the author meets a number
of people who knew her. Their stories sometimes contradicted each other. But
Zora's personality, her ability to look at life as it is, without tears, and
her independent thinking, seem to have separated her from her family, from her
husband, and from the majority of other blacks. "She was not a teary sort
of person...." And she was a great writer and collector of
African-American folklore, who died in poverty.
Best American Essays of the Century
Editors: Oates and Atwan
Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company
2000
Why read it? The essays are in chronological order from 1901 to 1997. If
you expect these essays to be pleasant, comforting and fun to read, you are
mistaken. Joyce Carol Oates, one of the editors of the book, says, “My belief
is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment,
and one another Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our
sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.” Most of
these essays provoke. Many of them I had never read, but they paint a vivid
portrait of the twentieth century.
41. Adrienne Rich. "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying." 1977.
Using the technique of Pascal's Pensees and Eric Hoffer's The True
Believer, the author jots down random thoughts on the phenomenon of women
and lying, which most often occurs in order to survive in a male-dominated
world.
42. Joan Didion. "The White Album." 1979. The author tells
about and reflects on her experiences in 1968, experiences with the Black
Panthers and college takeovers. She summarizes by saying that another author
had said he put his experiences in writing so he could find meaning in them,
but she has put these experiences in writing and still finds no meaning in
them. Reflects the mood of the time.
43. Richard Rogriguez. "Aria: A Memoir of a Bilingual Childhood."
1980. The author noticed that the sounds, not the words, of his native
Spanish communicated intimacy with his family, that the public language English
did not convey that intimacy. It's not the words, but the spirit behind the
words that conveys intimacy among the family. It's not the language, per se,
that communicates intimacy, but the sounds and the spirit communicated through
those sounds that enclosed the world of his family.
44. Gretel Ehrlich. "The Solace of Open Spaces." 1981. Living
in Wyoming required the author to adjust to the wide open spaces, the laconic
conversations and the feeling of being sealed in by isolation. In general,
space is a good thing, enabling people to welcome all kinds of ideas, whereas
we in the East build obstructions against space by filling up our spaces with
the things we can buy.
45. Annie Dillard. "Total Eclipse." 1982. Impressions of the
world as it looks during a total eclipse of the sun. The world no longer looks
ordinary, setting off reflections on that changed world. A dead world. The
world when the sun burns out. But then the eclipse is over and people hurry
back to the now familiar world of their daily lives.
