Best American Essays 2010
September 29, 2010 § 10 Comments
The folks at Essay Daily have been nice enough to post the table of contents of Best American Essays 2010 for those of us still waiting for our copies to arrive. So here goes:
Elif Batuman- The Murder of Leo Tolstoy (Harper’s)
Toni Bentley- The Bad Lion (NY Review of Books)
Jane Churchon- The Dead Book (The Sun)
Brian Doyle- Irreconcilable Dissonance (Oregon Humanities)
John Gamel- The Elegant Eyeball (Alaska Quarterly Review)
Walter Isaacson- How Einstein Divided America’s Jews (The Atlantic)
Steven L. Isenberg- Lunching on Olympus (The American Scholar)
Jane Kramer- Me, Myself, and I (The New Yorker)
Arthur Krystal- When Writers Speak (NY Times Book Review)
Matt Labash- A Rake’s Progress (The Weekly Standard)
Phillip Lopate- Brooklyn the Unknowable (Harvard Review)
Ian McEwan- On John Updike (NY Review of Books)
Steven Pinker- My Genome, My Self (NY Times Magazine)
Ron Rindo- Gyromancy (Gettysburg Review)
David Sedaris- Guy Walks into a Bar Car (New Yorker)
Zadie Smith- Speaking in Tongues (NY Review of Books)
S. Frederick Starr- Rediscovering Central Asia (Wilson Quarterly)
John H. Summers- Gettysburg Regress (The New Republic)
John Edgar Wideman- Fatheralong (Harper’s)
Garry Wills- Daredevil (The Atlantic)
James Wood- A Fine Range (The New Yorker)
via Essay Daily: Not Really So Daily: Best American Essays 2010 Table of Contents.
BREVITY's Nonfiction Blog 
Not a whole lot of representation from the small literary mags, is there? 🙂
Not a whole lot of representation of women writers, either.
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My essay was originally in The Sun–and, as far as I’ve been able to determine, I’m a woman. But you’re right–only five women among 21 essay-writers, and two of us are named Jane, which is not a common name, despite a persistent rumor otherwise. Last night, my partner was perusing the Contributors’ Notes and told me that only three of us had mentioned our partners or children (I believe that the other two were men). Perhaps the gender disproportion explains that. Either way, I’m thrilled to be included in the collection–and I do also wish that I was in the company of a few more women.
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Always read it. Love it. A couple of my friends have been included. How can I become a candidate?
Strangely, Hitchens mentions in his introduction that he enjoyed finding work in small literary magazines, but he didn’t select very much. I’ve only read 5 of the pieces so far (3 of them before getting BAE), so I’ll withhold final judgment, but it’s true that for this year’s BAE, the selections are overwhelmingly East Coast publications written by men. I DID see in the “notables” several wonderful essays that I’ve read in the journals, many by women, so at least Robert Atwan is doing a good job of diversifying (and, frankly, finding better work that Hitchens must not recognize or agree with).
I agree with Patrick — Atwan’s choices are choice, but Hitchens seems to favor the usual suspects. My copy comes next week, so I’m behind on the analysis, but if anyone Pat or otherwise) wants to elevate this to a blogpost/essay response to BAE rather than just a comment thread, send your blogpost/essay along to brevitymag@gmail.com.
We always welcome guest bloggers.
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