“One
might, at an early age, wish to be a poet or a dramatist or a novelist or even
possibly a critic. One somehow wanders or stumbles into becoming an essayist.
But, given the modest reputation of the essay and the way it has tended to be
taught in schools, it is quite amazing that anyone should ever again wish to
read essays let alone write them.” —American essayist and editor Joseph Epstein,
A Literary Education and Other Essays (2014)
Although
I don’t think that one develops an interest in the essay from an early age, as
one does for the other forms that Epstein cites, I would not attribute this to
how it is taught. I think it has ever been thus.
Nearly
40 years ago, one of the best contemporary essayists, Edward Hoagland, told me,
when I interviewed him for my college newspaper, that, at least in his case,
resort to the essay resulted from “the reformer’s impulse” to set the world
right. Even if you qualify it and say one’s own world, that still holds true.
The
genre is a meditative one, one to come at the point in a life that calls for self-assessment
or self-improvement. Childhood is hardly the time for that.
If
one aspect of our age threatens the essay as a genre, it might the tendency
toward assertion—i.e., simply stating a position—rather than persuasion—a
thorough consideration of counter-arguments and an honest attempt to speak to
them. The confessional impulse behind the essay may be stronger than ever, but
without this attempt at reader outreach and understanding, I fear for its
future ability to engage those who encounter it.
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